League of Legends preps for 2015 Ranked Season with patch 5.1

Readying for a new season of ranked play in League of Legends, developer Riot Games has confirmed that patch 5.1 will release tomorrow, January 15, 2015. At the start of the patch rollout, ranked queues will be disabled, followed by a server shutdown for about three hours.

On 1/15/15, starting at 01:30 PST, ranked queues will be disabled in preparation for patch 5.1. At 03:00 PST, the servers will be shut down and all games currently in progress will end in a draw and stats will not be recorded. We estimate the battlegrounds will be unavailable for 3 hours.

It's important to note, however, that while patch 5.1 may be the one that starts off the new season of play, the 2015 ranked season won't actually kick off until January 21.

Seeing for the start of the new season will consist of ten placement games; however, this time they are going to work a little different.

"…in previous seasons, placement games were way more impactful than regular season games. Challenger players could lose all ten games and end up in Silver during the 2014 placements, while Bronze players could go on lucky winning sprees and end up in Plat before getting their butts kicked repeatedly until they fell a few tiers. Neither of these are good experiences, so while this year’s placements are still important, they won’t cause established players to swing as far up or down because of good or bad luck. Your placement will still be heavily influenced by where you ended up last season. If you’ve never played ranked, then your form in your placements will be all that matters!"

Looking to give everyone a fresh opportunity to rise in the ranks, Riot has also run a soft reset to player position with the start of the ranked season. This means you'll likely place lower than where you ended the previous season.

Since the end of the 2014 season, Riot has implemented number of new features and changes in League of Legends — the most notable being a massive facelift and overhaul to Summoner's Rift, complete with reworked jungle mobs and items. We've also had the release of new champions, like Rek'Sai. Basically, there's been a ton of changes and you can read up on all of them here.