League of Legends’ All-Random, All-Mid (ARAM) mode is the perfect antidote to your LoL ranks grind. Simply load in with whichever champion you’re given, and smash it into the enemy team over and over until one team wins. It’s usually a fairly quick affair, but over the years coordinated groups of players have attempted to string it out as long as possible. Now a new world record for longest ARAM has been set, and it’s a whopping three hours and 58 minutes.
In a thread detailing the feat submitted to Reddit, user ‘trystomatic’ says their merry band of players have been attempting to beat the previous record of three hours, ten minutes, and 57 seconds for the best part of two months. Despite a few good attempts, most games ended either in defeat, or the enemy team straight up leaving.
However, for the record-setting attempt the stars aligned, as trystomatic’s crew happened upon an enemy squad which was not only up for the task, but was equipped for it too. “Everyone took Gathering Storm, and even the enemy had it by chance”, they say. By the three hour mark, two players on the enemy team and one from trystomatic’s own had gone AFK, but those remaining persevere.
“We had over 4,000 AP from Gathering Storm alone,” trystomatic notes, “Karthus ult and Ezreal ult one-shot anyone it hit.” Although the group had cleared the previous record with ease, it continued in trying to string out the new record for as long as possible. However, disaster struck around the four hour mark.
“Right when we hit three hours and 58 minutes, the server disconnected everyone,” trystomatic says. Unfortunately, the game was not officially recorded to the annals of League’s match history as it became a ‘ghost game’ – the result of all players simultaneously being disconnected from a game.
This isn’t the first time a record has been set in a ghost game. The previous record, held by ‘Kindred_OTP’ and co. failed to register on their match history. It certainly seems that Riot’s servers can’t quite comprehend the monstrously-long games, and we’re not surprised.
Needless to say, for trystomatic and their fellow record-holders, even the longest LoL ranks game now probably feels like naught but a leisurely sprint.