The announcement for this year's "All Star" tournament finally came from Riot revealing the event is to take place at the start of May in Paris, France. Unfortunately a new venue was not the only change, a long with it came a new format. Gone is the fun tournament of fan voted best players in the region competing together for glory of last year, in its place is a $50k winner take all tournament between the 1st place teams of OGN, GPL, LPL, and both LCS regions all done under the banner of more international competition.
A lot of people had fun with last years All Stars tournament format. We expected it to make a return after being so successful. Naturally myself and many others on Reddit and Twitter were making predictions about the All Star rosters for different regions. Debating on who was the best in the region or who would fit together better to bring about an All Stars victory. Hype had been building for weeks, when I made my lists for All Stars in mid February plenty of others were also talking All Stars. That hype should have turned to frenzy after the announcement, instead talk about All Stars has completely disappeared over night.
The source of the lack of enthusiasm is easy to see, the fans have simply been left out of this event. The teams picked are whoever's #1, instead of debating and voting we just have to sit back and watch what happens. Riot attempted to make up for it with a show match, 2 players voted on per region (10 total) will be split into 2 teams and play against each other. It's hardly compensation though, the top team is exempt from the show match so many fan favorites like Faker will be excluded from voting. All this is without touching on the fact that the 1v1/2v2 show matches from last year's All Stars event were highly criticized.
Problems with the new All Stars don't stop at the elimination of fan involvement though, they run right to the core of the event. Unfortunately the fact that only the 1st place team from each region means that many of us with an objective eye turned to the League scene already know how things play out. In fact thanks to the way team selection works and the fact that OGN won't finish in time we know for sure SKT T1 K, the Season 3 world champions and current unstoppable force in OGN, is already confirmed to be the Korean team attending. The SKT teams stand head and shoulders above the Korean region at the moment and thanks to IEM Katowice we've had a firm reminder that Korea stands far above the rest of the world. While the best of NA, EU, and SEA were relatively competitive with each other they struggled against some of the worst performing Chinese teams at Katowice. Worse no one was able to put a dent in KT Rollster Bullets, the only Korean team at Katowice, and KTB's only wins with their current roster come from the Katowice event.
With IEM fresh in our minds it's hard to imagine a world where the top of China and Korea don't take the top 2 slots at this new All Star event. Almost as difficult as imagining a scenario where SKT fails to walk away with the winner take all $50k prize. Riot made the change to answer the call of more international tournaments, but they have utterly failed to account for the realities of the international scene. The LCS and GPL simply haven't caught up to OGN or LPL in terms of talent yet. Without more teams, more variables, we simply have too much knowledge to be surprised by this event, and that makes for a lack luster tournament.
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