LoL Patch 13.24 has dropped and with it we got the newest champion Hwei, as well as the return of Arena onto live servers. But things didn't go as planned.
LoL Patch 13.24 dropped on December 6, 2023 and just a day after the entire League of Legends client broke. Literally. LoL Ranked was disabled, Arena didn't start and playing with friends... well forget about that. The entire EUW server was broken – I can attest this since I was trying to play some games with friends.
Arena, Hwei and a new League of Legends event all released on the same day and it completely and utterly broke the League client, which left many players frustrated and dissatisfied. So, what actually went wrong?
LoL Patch 13.24: Arena, Winterblessed & Hwei Broke LoL Client
The Arena start has been somewhat cursed. At first, most players thought the new game mode would be released in Patch 13.23, only for it to actually be 13.24, which Riot failed to communicate properly beforehand. Then, when it was finally time for the release patch, it was delayed by another day, which also wasn't clearly revealed by Riot.
Then, finally, December 7, 2023 came and everyone was able to receive their Saint Nicholas gift a day late. Arena was back, Hwei finally released, and the Winterblessed Event was also finally on live servers. So, players hopped onto the LoL-client only for it to completely break.
Parties & Lobby Issues In LoL-Client
Players had to wait to join games with error code: OU showing up. Simply changing runes could kick you out of a game lobby and cause you to get penalized for leaving the game in champ select. Trying to form lobbies with friends also felt impossible.
Players would also get kicked out of the queue for games and then re-joining lobbies also seemed impossible. Re-starting the client didn't help, re-starting the entire PC also felt futile since players were just forced into these long waits once again.
Let's also not talk about ranked getting disabled at some point and taking hours to be re-enabled...
Arena Issues With Release
Arena launch step by step:1. Delayed by over a day.2. Then finally up - but enabled for a few minutes, bugged like crazy. 3. Instantly disabled + ranked also disabled.4. After an hour or so it got re-enabled.5. And now again after ~30m Ranked + Arena are again both disabled pic.twitter.com/8jK7eGsOjV
— Vandiril (@Vandiril) December 7, 2023
League of Legends content creator Vandiril also noted how messy the start of Arena was. He stated that the interface for the Arena lobby was extremely wonky and messed up. Players were kicked out of lobbies as well, unable to play a game of Arena.
Those who did manage to get into a game noticed some major bugs. Vandiril even posting an image of a bright line in the middle of the terrain which obstructed the view. That line was Ekko's passive.
These issues seemed extremely bad on the EUNE and EUW server, with players experiencing issues for hours on end. This prompted multiple people to let out their frustration on Reddit, asking for Riot to finally fix their buggy client, so that future events won't have abysmal starts like this one. Can you already imagine what the 2024 changes will do to the game?