One of the hottest points of contention in LoL is the utter lack of a competitive ladder system. The longstanding response from Riot is that “it’s coming,” but without any timeframe players are starting to get restless. Solomid.net popped up some time back as an alternative for high-tier players looking for scrimmages. It has since continued to grow and is now offering an ELO-based league for anyone that’s interested.

Signups are simple – they’re using Quakenet IRC to run things with a bot to set up games based on the internal ELO. One of the big benefits to Solomid is that they use a draft system for official games, which is really the only way to have a skill-based competitive match in my mind. The downside, though, is that you’re playing most of your games in practice so you’re receiving reduced IP. There’s also the potential for the same kind of elitist community to pop up as did with TDA in DotA.

The good thing is Riot is embracing the Solomid community. Whether it will fail or fly, it’s the best solution for players looking at a competitive option until ladder season starts.