Riot Games planned on holding the first-ever Teamfight Tactics world championship this weekend. But due to logistic issues, spectators and fans will have to wait to see if their region is the best. Riot Games announced the postponement of Hextech Havoc, just hours before the original start. This is due to connections issues prohibiting certain regions from participating.
⚠️ Due to technical issues, we unfortunately can't ensure equal connection experiences for Hextech Havoc: Double Up and are choosing to postpone the event.
For now, @GiantSlayerTFT will be hosting a smaller international Double Up event in its place. Our sincere apologies. pic.twitter.com/udmRY68dPv
— Teamfight Tactics (@TFT) January 15, 2022
According to a Reddit comment made by one of the Hextech Havoc players, “Ramblinnn” the connection issues stem from the regions around Europe. The event was going to be held online due to COVID-19. This is possible thanks to the tournament realm server specifically built to host big events. The tourney realm also features the spectator mode which isn’t available on the live servers. Many of the EU teams could not get a stable connection onto the tournament realm and thus were forced to withdraw.
But there is a tournament going on this weekend. According to the same announcement made on the TFT twitter, a smaller event will take place. The team behind North American TFT esports, GiantSlayer, will host the mini-event. Day 1 of that event has already taken place. The regions competing in this event include Japan, South Korea, China, North America and Oceania. China has two teams competing, North America and Japan also have two teams competing along with South Korea and Oceania.
Spectators, and even players, took to Twitter to voice their own grievances about the matter. One of the EU players, “Luque,” said on Twitter that his team was ready to play, but due to the last second audible to play in a smaller event, Riot Games took the first eight teams out of the 16 teams that were originally supposed to play. This happened while Luque was still sleeping since Riot locked in who was playing early in the morning.
There is currently no news on the new dates for Hextech Havoc. The broadcast of Day 2 of the mini-event happens Sunday on twitch.
