We’re going to begin testing international features on the PBE. The first feature we’ll be testing is a Korea-specific feature that gives players extra perks for playing League of Legends in PC Bangs (Korean PC Cafes). Korean players tend to play League of Legends primarily from these locations. In Korean PC Bangs, players pay by the hour to play the game of their choice in a social environment. Within this environment, most game titles (regardless of price) are offered to players via a reduced pricing structure or for free to account for the PC Bang’s usage fee. Our approach is to allow players to select any champion when playing League of Legends from PC bangs, as well as earn a small amount of additional IP. This feature does not affect Korean players when they log in outside of PC Bangs.
When this feature is active, you will see a small medal icon in the top-right corner of the League of Legends client, be able to select any champion, and earn an additional 20% IP at the end of matches. This feature does not actually “unlock” champions, so you will still need to own a champion in order to buy a skin for them.
At this time we have no plans for large-scale implementation of this feature in other regions.
Edit: To clarify, this feature will be tested for a few days every patch cycle to ensure the stability of our service in Korea. Expect more international features like this to hit the PBE in future.
Edit 2: Going forward, new champions and skins will be available only through loyalty for the first couple of days. You should be able to play new content like normal without having to purchase it. If you have issues with new content showing up because PC Bang rewards are not showing up for you on day 1, please report them here. Thanks!
For testing purposes, everyone who logs into PBE will be treated like a PC Bang user and will receive these rewards. If you do not see them, please consider this a bug and report it on the PBE forum.
Quick question, will the PC Bang users be able to use these unlocked champions in ranked? Or will it be treated like free week champions currently are, where ranked only lets you pick the champions you've actually legitimately bought?
I live in Korea but I play on the NA server. Just to clarify, will this feature, when completed, allow for people playing on the NA server in Korean PC Bang's to get these features?
To receive these rewards normally, you must play on the Korean server in a PC Bang. This feature is already live so you should be able to visit a PC Bang and try it out.
Why are we testing a feature that gives koreans every champ for free that we'll never see?
We currently only have one PBE and thus only one place to beta test all of our features. This includes the region specific systems like PC Bang rewards and probably others in the future.
Nooo, I want to be home and try this feature, ARAM etc ^_^
Any ideas how long this PC-Bang-sim be up for?
No exact times but we will be turning the system off tomorrow in the afternoon sometime. Fear not though for we will turn this on again intermittently throughout our 2 week development cycle to do more testing on it.
not exactly sure why this needs testing when it's already effective on korea.
Much like how our platform and our game are continuously changing, so is the PC Bang system. Every time we make a change, the more visibility it gets, the better.
We will be turning on PC Bang rewards again tonight. Everyone should receive these rewards so if you are not, please report it as a bug. Enjoy the free champs!
Korea-specific feature testing: PC Bang rewards
When this feature is active, you will see a small medal icon in the top-right corner of the League of Legends client, be able to select any champion, and earn an additional 20% IP at the end of matches. This feature does not actually “unlock” champions, so you will still need to own a champion in order to buy a skin for them.
At this time we have no plans for large-scale implementation of this feature in other regions.
Edit: To clarify, this feature will be tested for a few days every patch cycle to ensure the stability of our service in Korea. Expect more international features like this to hit the PBE in future.
Edit 2: Going forward, new champions and skins will be available only through loyalty for the first couple of days. You should be able to play new content like normal without having to purchase it. If you have issues with new content showing up because PC Bang rewards are not showing up for you on day 1, please report them here. Thanks!
Any ideas how long this PC-Bang-sim be up for?