Reasons and implications of Garena’s decision to merge ID League of Legends servers with SG/MY.
Garena, the publisher of Riot Game’s League of Legends in the South East Asia region, has decided to merge the Indonesia server into the Singapore/Malaysia server on May 15(Patch 9.10).
Background
For the uninitiated, League of Legends is in its 10th year running since its release on October 27 2009, with Garena releasing the game to the ASEAN region the following year.
The ASEAN region is comparative to Europe, with its fragmented nations and multiple languages and cultures. In 2011, the European server was split into EU West and EU Nordic and East shards in order to accommodate more players. There is a default server, or a “home server”, for players of both shards, but both are welcome to play on whatever server they choose.
The situation in SEA is a little different. As of 2019, Garena hosts 9 regions — Hong Kong, Indonesia, Macau, Philippines, Singapore & Malaysia, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam, each of them with their individual servers. Similar to the EU, players have their own “home server” and are free to play on whichever server they choose.
