Smurf accounts in League of Legends are everywhere and everybody has encountered them at least once. The problem with smurfs is not a new one, but the situation has got even worse over the years. Now, fresh accounts are even reaching the highest tiers of the SoloQ and the community revolts.
LoL smurf accounts are once again the reason for a massive outbreak of anger in the community. The problem itself is nothing new for League of Legends and its players, but now these accounts are reaching the highest echelons in the game and are affecting high ELO players.
LoL Smurf Accounts Are Now Ruining Master+ Games
All of us encountered them at least once during our playtime, and sometimes don't even recognize them for what they are – smurf accounts. They can destroy games for more inexperienced players and are often found in lower Elo's. But now the problem has reached the highest tiers of the SoloQ and has started to to affect game in the Master+ ranks.
Since the end of the first split and the big ELO reset, fresh accounts have made their way into LoL's higher leagues. An incredible frustrating process for the players, since these accounts
are tending to solo win a game or totally destroy it. One user, called "Assarad", took to the League of Legends Subreddit to share his experiences with the problem. In the thread, fittingly titled "Fresh accounts in Master+ elo are a plague and it needs to be addressed", Assrad gave his thoughts and received many reactions from the community.
Fresh accounts in Master+ elo are a plague and it needs to be adressed. by u/Assarad in leagueoflegends
"It is very frustrating being in this elo right now. It's insanely hard to not get tilted when being run down by a fresh account", describes "Assarad" the current situation in his games, "The players behind those accounts either just solowin the game or outright softin the game because they dont care".
According to him the "absolutely immense amount of low level fresh accounts" are "polluting the games". As you can imagine a problem like this is very important to many players and so the discussion gathered steam.
Community Reaction
The comment section was quickly filled with hundreds of users, that were rather complaining about the smurfing problem in general, which is logical of course, since the lower ELO, where over 98% of the players are active, is getting hit way harder by smurfs than the Master+ region. And the discussion went way deeper with users pointing out reasons behind the problem, and not the problem itself.
For example the user "ParadoxIrony," who wondered about the partnership of streamers and boosting websites and how Riot Games could allow this to happen:
Something also ignored by half the people in game is that 60% of the streamers popping off right now are sponsored by smurf websites or boosting websites openly. I don’t really understand why that’s allowed but that’s life. The longer the game exists without any of this being addressed in any way the more ways people find to make these things the “norm.”
Meanwhile, the user "Padouch1038", is seeing the new two-split concept as the main problem:
Riot actually thought that making the game into 2 splits and introducing people with the idea of not caring since its only 6 months and not a year till you get "another chance" will get more people to play it.."But its what Fortnite does" - yea but in this game an average round doesnt take 12 minutes...
And the user "xBarryHill" pointed out, with a hint of irony, that the discussion might be a little bit elitist, since the problem existed for most of the player base for years:
News flash, it's not just Master+ elo that has to deal with fresh accounts and smurfsDouble news flash, this isn't anything new and people have been complaining about it for years
In the end you could say, that there isn't anything new regarding the problem itself. It just has reached the highest castes, who are now confronted with the typical problems that smurf accounts are bringing with them. After all these accounts are somehow managed it to reach one of the highest ranks in League of Legends in just a few dozen matches and maybe some of these players are deserving of their place amongst the Master+ players. (Of course not for botted or bought accounts).
It will be interesting to see, how and if Riot is going to react to this new wave of complaints. But nearly nothing has happened in the last couple of years, so it's unlikely that something is going to happen this time. In the end, the problem might be even too big for Riot Games to handle. Or the problem is smaller than many players want to acknowledge.