League of Legends carves Europe in half

By Robert Purchese Published 30 June, 2011

Territory now EU West and EU Nordic & East.

The European territories of free-to-play competitive online game League of Legends are to be split in two.

Developer Riot Games will create two new "platforms" called EU West and EU Nordic & East, wrote the studio on its website.

If you're a European you'll belong to one of those in the coming weeks. But not both.

EU West will contain Ireland, the UK, France, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Italy.

EU Nordic & East will contain Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Ukraine, Moldova, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Romania, Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Albania and Greece.

Russia is absent.

Developer Riot Games decided on the plan to "drastically reduce the amount of service impacting issues". "Lengthy" Log-in queues should disappear, as should reliance on overflow servers housed in New York. The service should be more stable as a result.

The only problem is that pan-European friendship groups are being broken up. If you're in that position, however, Riot Games will offer one free transfer to another cluster of territories.

"It’s been quite a journey, summoners of Europe, and we’re excited to be able to bring you a service upgrade that should bring about a lasting resolution to your concerns! Thanks for your patience, and thank you for playing League of Legends."

The League of Legends launch trailer.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds. @Clert on Twitter.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

You may also like...

Comments (28) Latest comment 11 months ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • superfurry #1 11 months ago

    EU West! EU West! EU West! Bring it on you Eastern swine!

    Oh........wait.

  • Erinan #2 11 months ago

    Cue various comics, here's one from our Scandinavian friends - http://i.imgur.com/tJooQ.png

  • hiddenranbir #3 11 months ago

    West side represent.

  • Xardan #4 11 months ago

    Wow, surely EU West must be heavily outnumbered?

  • Erinan #5 11 months ago

    Not necessarily, there is a shitload of Polish and Russian players. The problem will be with the free transfer, a lot of competitive teams will be cut in half with this change. An exodus from East to West is expected (just like good old times).

  • Mkwone #6 11 months ago

    The French and the Swiss? Not my first two choices for partners in a war.

    Still Germany should be helpful.

  • Atropos #7 11 months ago

    Would make more sense to pair some of the southern EU countries with the East, rather than the Nordics, language-wise.

  • hiddenranbir #8 11 months ago

    Why so worried about allies? Britain has stood alone on many occasion and always survived.

    RULE BRITANNIA!


    Besides, we can always rely on our colonies and ship in the best and brightest.

  • rockavitch #9 11 months ago

    Oh so I move from Ireland to Hungary, spend a lot of time playing this with my friends back home as a way to keep "hanging out" and now I'm getting split from them, cheers.

    EDIT: Damn this storm not loading up full pages, look's like I get a free transfer, now to choose between my friends there or my friends here, cheers.
    Edited by rockavitch at 30/06/11 @ 14:57

  • Honey_Badger #10 11 months ago

    All they need to do now is split Germany down the middle for a nice little nostalgia trip.

  • Dizzy #11 11 months ago

    Then again.. they could just add servers? Too easy?

  • actionfitz #12 11 months ago

    could be worse. they could have split UK from EU entirely and lumped us with the yanks...
    seem to remember that happening with an MMO recently due to how they sold the rights

  • pbz #13 11 months ago

    EG always seem to drop news about LoL - but never once have I seen anything mentioned about HoN...


    /prepares for LoL > HoN comments and many negs!

  • Dannyboy1100 #14 11 months ago

    Fucking finally decided to fix the servers eh riot?

  • hiddenranbir #15 11 months ago

    Then again.. they could just add servers? Too easy?

    Seems more of getting software to handle so much rather than hardware. Probably a similar reason as how MMOs split players too.

  • rivuzu #16 11 months ago

    It's to

  • rivuzu #17 11 months ago

    Shit, fucking android app posting before I finish writing. Curse you.

    It's to do with pvp.net apparently. Something about how it runs off of a single database for all account details. En masse logins are causing it to go kaputt, as though they were ddos'd.

    Small correction though, unless they changed their mind, but Austria is to be part of East, not West.

  • Doncommie #18 11 months ago

    #13 LoL only has four news and a review so not excessive but youd think there would at least be a HoN review.

  • carbonic #19 11 months ago

    Worst decision ever - splitting a already gathered community. Cannot see how that's even an option. Also the nordic countries only seems to be with eastern Europe to facilitate an equal split. The nordic countries have way more to do with western Europe. Thanks Riot for saying "screw you" to the Scandinavia!

  • overkill1991 #20 11 months ago

    Austria being part of East was changed within hours after several players on the German forums went ?!lolwut?! at Riot for that ridiculous decision.

  • Saxo #21 11 months ago

    Seems stupid. Scandinavia has way more affiliation with west than with east, and if its geographical then austria and germany should be east too :S. Dont play that much LoL, but would be mad if blizzard did this to SCII
    Edited by Saxo at 30/06/11 @ 19:01

  • butler` #22 11 months ago

    really strange split imo, the scandis are usually pretty tight/comfortable with UK players due to the common language

    but beyond that, regardless of being the 'right thing to do', this is far too deep into the game's lifecycle for such a change. it very showing of the dev's (lack of) experience

  • hiddenranbir #23 11 months ago

    You can easily transfer to where you want to go.

  • rivuzu #24 11 months ago

    @overkill1991

    Thanks for the update. Didn't know that. As a regular mid-elo player on league, I can't tell you how.much this needs to be done. It's ridiculous trying to play at the moment. And as mentioned, they do offer a transfer ability.

  • King_of_Hyrule #25 11 months ago

    I think the "gaming-english" speaking people should be grouped together UK+Scandinavia+Benelux+Eastern Europe. The second group should be the countries that speak other big european languages: Germany (& Austria, Switserland), France, Spain, Italy, Russia. Multilingual countries like Belgium are a little trickier but in general that should work out.

  • overkill1991 #26 11 months ago

    @King_of_Hyrule

    Couldn't agree more.

    As a Dutchman myself (that means I'm from the Netherlands :p ) I would prefer nothing else but being able to play with my Scandinavian friends, they feel the same. Benelux, UK and Scandinavia have always had a ''connection'' in terms of gaming culture. It's these people that in every online game or MMO end up playing on the same servers, speaking English together and creating clans and guilds together.

    French, Italian, Spanish, German and Russian people on the other hand get their own website, forum, support department and servers in almost any decent online game or MMO. This has a reason. Generally speaking these people only speak their native language and have a very limited if any understanding of English. Needless to say these people almost always end up playing with their own countrymen and almost always create clans and guilds exclusive to people that speak their native language as well.

    Therefore it makes absolutely no sense at all to mix the UK and Benelux with the countries that will have their own language and clans (France, Spain, Italy and Germany) and to mix the Scandinavians with Eastern European countries but most of all Russia, same thing applies here, Russians always get their own language, servers, clans and what not.

    The countries that always rely on each other to make the whole gaming experience more enjoyable are being split up.

    It's obvious Riot is an American company with predominantly American employees because no European in their right mind would ever think of this specific split up and mix of countries.

    The split up in itself is a much needed measure that had been long overdue, but simply not in its current form.

    wall of text crits for over 9000 .. tldr etc...

  • Bumbuliuz #27 11 months ago

    Intresting that the Nordic country's are put with Eastern Europe (no offence to them) I'm just saying because of the geographic locations.

  • shadowdogg #28 11 months ago

    Rich vs Poor nations :p