PEACE, the Oceanic representative of this year's League of Legends World Championship, will be missing top laner Apii throughout the tournament.
“After the personal efforts of the team and myself, I still cannot apply for an Icelandic visa in Sydney due to the pandemic,” Apii said. “The embassy is closed and… it is too late to return to China to isolate.”
Stricter travel restrictions have been imposed by international governments to stop the global spread of COVID-19. As a result, the LoL World Championship has been extensively affected. Beyond the tournament's first move from China to Europe last month, players like Apii are finding that getting to the tournament held entirely in Iceland is in itself a grueling task.
To make things a little easier for international teams dealing with the imposed travel restrictions, Riot continues to allow teams to take advantage of the credit system that was initially featured at last year's Worlds.
According to an update released by Riot earlier today, “If a team encounters an issue with a player being able to travel, they cannot add a free agent (or replace their substitute).” “To help mitigate this, we have implemented a limited loan program that will allow teams to borrow a non-qualified player who has a World Championship visa from another team in their league.”
With that in mind, PEACE could borrow another top laner from LCO to fill Apii's place at Worlds. Names like Pentanet.GG's BioPanther and Chiefs' Lived come to mind as native Oceanic players who could fill the void in PEACE's starting roster.
No official deadline has been set for when the PEACE roster should be locked in ahead of the World Championship. The Worlds play-in phase will begin on October 5, while play-in groups will be drawn on September 22 next week. It is assumed that PEACE will need to submit its full list to Riot in the coming days.