The Realm SoloQ League began on April 3, opening with more than 650 players in NA and EMEA and over 100 games played. Offering $150,000 in cash prizes for daily participation and leaderboard placement at the end of each season, many pros and content creators have flocked to the new league, preferring it to the traditional ranked ladder.
Realm currently only supports a solo queue system where teams are randomly created before each match begins, a feature that has already drawn criticism from pros for uneven matchmaking. Realm quickly responded to the issues with new tiering systems and announced the production of a Team Queue feature, set to release in May 2023.
The new feature will allow for three players to group up and queue together, effectively making pro league-quality lobbies of established teams. In the regular ranked playlist, solo queue players can be matched up against premade groups, causing a massive imbalance in team coordination that deters players from taking each match seriously, leading to frustration from pros trying to practice.
Pro League scrims in Apex have also suffered multiple issues, with many pros voicing out their discontent in past seasons. Teams throw games by griefing others, some quit after a few games or don’t even show up, and other factors have pros concluding that scrims are just a waste of time. Apex streamer NICKMERCS joined the NA Pro League at the beginning of the 2022-2023 season on Tripods but was surprised at the quality and quantity of scrims once the ALGS started.
NICKMERCS’ woes did not end there, as he found trouble grinding on the normal ranked ladder as well. Hackers, cheaters, and other griefers constantly plague the ranked games despite Respawn’s efforts to combat the issue. Pros and content creators have echoed NICKMERCS’ worries for the state of the game, acknowledging the rampant problems that stop the game mode from being a serious way to practice their skills.
After dealing with hackers on his last ranked experience, NICKMERCS has exclusively streamed Apex on Realm’s matchmaking, clocking in over 15 hours of gameplay ever since the start of the SoloQ League. Many other pros and aspiring ranked players have also switched to the new matchmaking format, finding the quality of matches much better than the majority of their ranked games.
Realm’s format has left an impression on many pros, who agree on the positive impact the new system has brought, and look towards the future of Realm. With additional development towards the team queue feature and a focus on catering to each tier of competition, Realm could soon become the new golden standard for pro practice in Apex Legends.
The Realm SoloQ League runs daily from 7am to 1pm CT for EU, and 1 to 7pm CT in NA. Season one of Realm started on April 3 and runs for three months until July 3, 2023. Aspiring players can still join mid-season to compete by completing verification details on Realm’s official website.
Participating players in Realm’s leagues compete for a $150,000 prize pool each season, divided between daily results, the overall leaderboard placement, and the season finale tournament, which features the top 120 players from each region. Spectators can watch the end of season competition on the official Realm Twitch channel.
