If you play League of Legends in Australia, you’ve noticed. The OCE servers have been struggling for months. Queue times are longer, ping spikes are more frequent, and the ranked experience — never great on a small server — has deteriorated noticeably through the second half of 2025.

I’ve been tracking this issue since it started getting attention in the community around August, and the picture isn’t encouraging.

What’s actually happening

The core problem is population. The OCE server has always been one of Riot’s smallest, and the player base has been declining. League of Legends globally is still massive, but in Australia specifically, the numbers have been dropping. Competing games — VALORANT, which ironically is also a Riot game, plus the usual suspects like Fortnite and the latest battle royale — have pulled players away.

Fewer players means longer queue times. Longer queue times mean wider matchmaking ranges. Wider matchmaking means worse game quality. Worse game quality makes more players leave. It’s a death spiral, and it’s been playing out in slow motion for the last two years.

The ping problem

Separate from population, there have been genuine server performance issues. Multiple players have reported ping spikes and packet loss that didn’t exist a year ago. The OCE server infrastructure, hosted in Sydney, should provide sub-30ms ping for most east coast players. Instead, players in Melbourne and Brisbane are regularly seeing spikes to 60-80ms during peak hours.

Riot hasn’t publicly acknowledged a specific infrastructure issue, but the volume of complaints on Reddit, Twitter, and the official forums suggests this isn’t just a handful of people with bad ISPs.

Perth players have always had it rough — 50-60ms base ping to the Sydney server is standard. The recent instability has pushed Perth ping into the 80-100ms range during bad periods, which is borderline unplayable for a game that requires precise timing.

Riot’s response

Riot’s approach has been to merge OCE matchmaking pools with other regions during off-peak hours. In practice, this means late-night OCE players get matched with SEA server players, resulting in higher ping for everyone and communication barriers.

The company has also encouraged OCE players to participate in cross-regional competitive events, which is nice for high-ranked players but doesn’t address the core experience of the average Gold player trying to get through their promos at 9pm on a Tuesday.

There have been no announced plans for server infrastructure upgrades in Australia. No planned additional server locations. No publicly stated commitment to improving the OCE experience specifically.

What the community wants

I’ve spent time in the OCE League community forums and discords, and the wish list is consistent:

A server in Melbourne or a second Sydney node. More server capacity to handle peak loads and reduce the geographic disadvantage for Victorian and South Australian players.

Separate ranked queues that don’t merge with other regions. Players would rather wait longer for a match with good ping than get a fast match with bad ping.

Communication from Riot. Even just an acknowledgment that there’s a problem and a rough timeline for improvements would go a long way. The silence is what frustrates people most.

The bigger picture

League of Legends isn’t dying in Australia. It still has a significant player base and an active competitive scene. But it’s at a crossroads. If Riot doesn’t invest in the OCE infrastructure, the decline will accelerate. Players have options now — there are more competitive games than ever, and many of them have better Australian server performance.

VALORANT, by contrast, has solid OCE servers with reasonable ping across the country. Riot clearly knows how to support Australian players when it wants to. The question is whether League of Legends OCE gets the same attention, or whether Riot has quietly decided it’s not worth the investment.

For the thousands of Australian players who’ve put years into League, that’s a frustrating question to be asking. The game is still great. The experience of playing it here just keeps getting worse.