League of Legends World Championships schedule announced

Riot Games announced today that tickets for its League of Legends Season 3 World Championships will be available on August 15 at 12 PM PDT. In a post on the League of Legends subreddit, Riot director of eSports Whalen Rozelle stated that there had been no decision made on ticket prices as of yet, though "they will be in the ballpark of last year."

Riot's announcement comes as both the European and North American LCS seasons come to a close, with the last few matches of the regular season being played out during next week's "super week." The European regionals will occur during the following week at Gamescom with their counterparts playing out their regional matches at PAX Prime the last week of August.

The company also released a preliminary championship schedule including the event locations for each date. While Riot had previously announced the USC Galen Center and Staples Center as the locations for the semifinal and final matches respectively, the previously unknown third location is described in the release as "a Los Angeles studio." Tickets for the studio location will also be available, though Rozelle explained the audience size will be small.

The studio will showcase group stage matches September 15-17, September 19-21, and will broadcast the quarterfinal matches September 23rd and 24. The group stage will include 40 games played, indicating a format in which every team will be matched against each other team twice, a departure from the best-of-one format used at the Season 2 World Championship playoffs. The quarterfinal round will include best of three matches, with semifinal and final matches consisting of a best-of-five.

Further details are said to be available on lolesports in the near future. GameSpot eSports will be on-hand at the North American, European, and World Championships to provide live coverage.