Map showing the new regions
Tonight, Riot is splitting the European League of Legends Region into two separate regions: EU Nordic + East and EU West. This change is reportedly occurring due to the large volume of players in Europe which had become more than the single region could easily support. As a result, the community is being divided into the two new regions, in a change that will hopefully turn out to provide a better over all experience for players.
Expected to last twelve hours, the downtime will no doubt be a bit hard on players, but fortunately this split is happening with a few weeks of forewarning from Riot.
The eSports scene will likely feel some impact from the split, although it is unlikely to cause any hitch in the explosive growth of the game in competitive circles. However, many established European teams are currently debating which region to go with. Currently, according to Fnatic, it seems that many will be heading over to EU West.
Also worth note is that Riot recently provided an easy method to change regions in the patcher for the game, and players will be able to select which region they would prefer to be in after the split is performed, but will be auto-assigned to one or the other based on their location first.
UPDATE: Riot has stated that European players will be receiving a 14 day IP boost credited to their accounts as well.
