14 DAY TRIAL // League of Legends developer Riot Games confirms that it wants to improve the server and infrastructure of its European activity as well, after revealing a few weeks ago that it wanted to overhaul its network in North America. However, given that it's emphasizing quality over speed, players will have to wait until they see some actual enhancements.
League of Legends is one of the most popular free-to-play online titles out there, with tens of millions of people jumping into the multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) experience every month from all over the world.
As you can imagine, in any multiplayer experience, latency and lag are a deciding factor in terms of player enjoyment, so Riot tries to ensure great connections to all popular Internet Service Provides from all over the world.
Unfortunately, since it still relies on middlemen in terms of bandwidth or server infrastructure, there's only so much it can do to improve the online experience.
Riot is trying to improve things in Europe, not just North America
As such, after confirming that it started creating its own infrastructure backbone in North America, Riot reveals on the European forums that it's started a similar process in Europe, so that its Frankfurt and Amsterdam data centers can provide the best experience possible to players on the old continent.
The process is already underway and things are going rather smoothly, as some players can already notice improvements when it comes to their online matches.
"As mentioned in previous announcements, we are working on creating a large cross-continent Riot backbone that would connect major cities and regions in Europe. In fact, with the launch of the Amsterdam datacenter and some changes to the Frankfurt datacenter we now have over 500 direct connections with ISPs throughout Europe and we’ve already completed an initial high-speed private link between our datacenters in Frankfurt and Amsterdam," it says.
The process emphasizes quality over rapid completion
According to Riot, due to the limitations of the companies that act as middlemen, the infrastructure isn't really equipped for multiplayer gaming, so the customized design the studio has in mind will prioritize this aspect.
However, given the intricacies of the European countries, the process isn't exactly fast, but the studio hopes to steadily establish partnerships with more and more ISPs.
"The key takeaway is that we’re committed to bringing improvement to the Internet connection between Riot and ISPs which means we are stepping away from heavy reliance on existing middlemen backbone providers. However, we want to do this right and give you the awesome experience you deserve," it added.
As such, while it may not be immediate, League of Legends players in Europe will get some better experiences while playing online in the future.
