Before telling this incredible part, it is necessary to recontextualize the thing. The protagonists are a group of friends whose goal is to break the longest ARAM world record, in a legit way. Which means, by falling against random opponents, who do not necessarily have the same goal as them. No question of bringing together 10 players and then launching a custom game, killing only the minions who approach the towers to prevent them from destroying it. Their goal was to fight for the duration of it, even if they admit that they had not done everything to destroy enemy structures. After two months in the Howling Abyss, they finally stumbled upon their dream game.
4000 AD, Gathering Storm nerf?
A few days ago (the precise date was not given), the 4 friends finally found themselves in the ideal part. Not only was their pick-up quite enthusiastic about the idea of trying this crazy adventure, but their opponents also decided never to give up. The game lasted a total of 238 minutes, or 3h58. Our protagonists team consisted of Teemo, Karthus, Kindred, Ezreal, and Maokai, while their opponents played Ekko, Soraka, Heimerdinger, Nunu, and Gragas. Although they do not know the runes used by their adversaries, they suspect the latter of having choose Gathering Storm, which grants bonus AD or AP based on game duration and your champion’s build. Thus the Ezreal ended up with over 4000 AD in the end. Players explain that his ultimate or that of Karthus could oneshot any of their opponents as long as they hit. A screenshot taken by Kennen’s player at 201 minutes (3:21) shows that the rune granted him 2693 additional AD.
Given the duration of the game, not all players stayed until the end. Two players from the enemy team ended up AFK, while their pick paused for a while, in order to breathe a bit. It can be perfectly understandable, after all. they had just left to play a quiet game, not to beat a world record!
Who won ?
In truth, no one. After 3h58, the game simply crashed, which means that it does not appear in their history or on OP.GG. From there, one could doubt the veracity of the story, but many players testified on the post reddithaving already had games that disappeared from their history, if they had lasted a little too long. Of course the durations mentioned were very far from 4 hours of play, but several players said that ARAMs of 40 minutes or more had already gone for a walk in the Void.
If it’s easy to point fingers at Riot Games’ code, it must nevertheless be recognized that the present situation is exceptional. No game of League of Legends is meant to last that long, let alone ARAM, the fastest game mode currently. Faced with this anomaly, that the server decided to shutdown the game is not surprising, since it could not know if it was a bug, bots or real humans playing.
Bad news ! The price of RP will soon increase on all League of Legends servers. In the euro zone, prices will increase by 15%.