Today’s maintenance was supposed to remove Normal Draft mode from the list of available queue types, along with re-enabling ranked game modes. I was pleasantly surprised when I logged in and found that Normal Draft was still enabled.

Later in the day, Tamat followed the surprise inclusion with this post:

We’ve heard your feedback, and as a part of our ongoing commitment to making League of Legends an even more fun and awesome experience for players of all preferences, we are officially introducing Draft Mode into Normal Games! Now you can play like the pros without any impact on your ranked rating!

I have to say, this is probably the best feature launch we’ve yet seen in League of Legends. Why? Because we didn’t expect it. It wasn’t overhyped (unless you count the rumors/occasional red posts saying it may have sort of might be almost is kinda getting worked on). Hell, we were even told we wouldn’t be keeping the feature.

And yet, here it is, and it’s pretty awesome. Good on you, Riot. Good on you.