Americas may lose sole Legends spot; new RMR format for Copenhagen

Liquid has been a longtime member of the North American region when they first entered the scene in 2015 by signing "Chill guys" which consisted of Eric "adreN" Hoag, Damian "daps" Steele, Jacob "FugLy" Medina, Keith "NAF" Markovic, and Nick "nitr0" Cannella. Since then, they've added a plethora of North American stars such as Russell "Twistzz" Van Dulken, Jonathan "EliGE" Jablonowski, Jake "Stewie2k" Yip, and Spencer "Hiko" Martin. The organization has always flirted with international stars like Oleksandr "s1mple" Kostyljev and Gabriel "FalleN" Toledo.

Now though, it appears that Liquid is finally moving on from the region that has been it's home for so long as they add Robert "Patsi" Isyanov and Aleks "Rainwaker" Petrov to their roster in place of Nick "nitr0" Cannella and EliGE. The move will also unintentionally impact the North American region come the PGL Copenhagen Major.

When Valve introduced the Regional Major Ranking (RMR) system, it was intended to replace the Minors with further LAN events to provide a better Major qualification structure. While the effectiveness of the RMRs can be debated, the system has been dynamic in allowing for further spots awarded to regions based on their performances at the Majors, a welcome addition for underrepresented regions like Asia and North America.

The Americas, however, has seen their Major spots dwindle in recent years. Despite starting with six spots at the 2021 PGL Stockholm Major, that was cut down to only five spots after the 2022 IEM Rio Major, where too many Americas teams failed to repeat the success from prior Majors and were eliminated in the Challengers Stage.

The 2023 Paris Major was the first time that the Americas only had five spots at the Major. While Liquid was successful in advancing out of the Challengers Stage, guaranteeing that the region would retain their five spots (with FURIA obtaining the Legends spot during the RMR), they also retained their Legends Stage spot by advancing to the playoffs of the Major. Now, all of that might be going away with Liquid's move to Europe. Below is an excerpt from the Major Rulebook, which shows how Liquid leaving will impact the Americas.

Teams that earn an invitation for their region (i.e., top 16 teams from the Major) are given a chance to defend their regional invitation at the following RMR. If a team is able to--and opts to--play in a different region, their previous region loses an invitation and their new region gains an invitation. In other words, teams that change regions take their invites with them.

In understanding the rule, we can see that Liquid's Legends Stage spot would now go to Europe, seeing as Josh "oSee" Ohm, Keith "NAF" Markovic, and Mareks "YEKINDAR" Gaļinskis are the core that would hold that regional invitation. Liquid will be unable to continue competing in the Americas region, despite their previous representation since the core of the roster will be considered European as Patsi is Russian and Rainwaker is Bulgarian.

For the first time, Europe will then hold every Legends spot at the Major and the Americas will be forced to only have four spots in the next Major, 2024 PGL Copenhagen.

The Americas will also have to undergo a completely new format due to their reduced allocation. Per the Major Rulebook, the Swiss System format will not be in use. Instead, there will be an eight-team, double-elimination format with all decider matches being a best of three. This new RMR will be an exact comparison to the Asian RMR, except there are more spots at stake. This is a massive reduction from the 16 teams that have participated at the RMRs in previous editions and will certainly produce a high-pressure event. Half of the teams participating will be able to qualify, but they will only enter at the Challengers Stage.

For Liquid, none of this might matter, but it also might matter significantly. The organization is already taking a massive gamble by moving to a European core and deciding to forgo the Americas RMR, which is considered to be easier than its European counterpart. Organizations like Cloud9 and Astralis failed to qualify for the Major, missing out on hundreds of thousands in sticker money. It is almost too difficult and too disastrous to quantify Liquid losing out on the Copenhagen Major with such a gamble like this, so let's leave those thoughts until we actually get there.