So riot now that you have retcon'd the whole league these champions need lore updates

The Red Warden·Sep 4, 2014·18 votes·2,250 views

It is only a small list of over 60 champions whose lores are interconnected with or mention the league. This is after doing an hour long read of every champions bio and seeing which ones mention the league

First are the ones who now need full lore rewrites cause of it:

The rest are the ones who only need smaller changes:

All I can say is that you either have to make the league canon again or rewrite all of these lores so that they fit the new lore

31 Comments

Tapu FiniSep 4, 201415 votes

They may also consider renaming the game since it is League of Legends and all. The whole basis of the game...

The Red WardenSep 4, 201417 votes

I suggest "retcon of legend"

HelmightSep 5, 201410 votes

And Riot was trying to SAVE themselves work by retconning the League...

The Red WardenSep 5, 201411 votes

I actually am starting to believe they thought that people would accept the lore change, with no problem. Even though a lot of people like the lore and joined the game for that reason.

Are they really that much lost in the delusion that e-sports is what everybody wants?

HelmightSep 5, 20149 votes

See, I don't know why everyone cites esports as a reason for the current state of things. Esports is a separate branch of League of Legends entirely. It makes no sense that the Lore team would be working on esports. It makes no sense that anyone EXCEPT the esports team would be working on esports. Make no mistake - the Lore Team decided on this without any other branch affecting them.

And they'd be naive to just assume we'd all be okay with that. I'm sure they braced themselves for a storm - maybe not one this big, but they were obviously prepared for backlash. The question now is will they do anything now that they've seen how many people are angry?

The answer is probably no, but one can still hope.

The Red WardenSep 5, 20145 votes

I blame e-sports because of how much Riot prioritizes money for it while only leaving other branches like the lore team with a minimal budget.

HelmightSep 5, 20147 votes

So maybe I'm just being a bit naive here, but just how much do you think it takes to run a Lore department? 90% of good lore is in the writing, with maybe 10% relying on presentation. Neither one of those requires a tremendous budget to do well. The Lore team has basically sat on its ass this whole time, plain and simple.

The Red WardenSep 5, 20144 votes

Yeah a lore team may not mean much but I am trying to say that Riot is probably giving e-sports a budget much larger than other branches such as server management, the art teams (models, textures, splash arts), etc.

HelmightSep 5, 20143 votes

Again, unlikely. Esports is a big money spinner for sure, but I doubt the majority of their budget goes there. League survived on its playerbase before professional League of Legends was a thing, and that's where the bulk of their money comes from. Neglect that, and they won't be able to put on the LCS

PryotraSep 5, 20146 votes

Incorrect. Countless times they have said Esports gets the lions share of budget, and you can see it in how frequently they talk about Esports or players in the Pro scene in comparison to other things like lore, new skins, anything else really.

AbiwonKenabiSep 5, 20141 votes

Link to an instance where they mention the budget? I'm not doubting that it does take up a lot of their budget, but the most? I've never seen a Rioter say that.

I've also never seen them use the Pro scene to justify lore updates before, not even this ridiculous retcon. I'm not happy with the change, but we shouldn't sit here and bash the eSports just because its a really successful aspect of League.

PryotraSep 6, 20143 votes

Well, the best I could do with five minutes on google was this: http://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/1u35tu/are_we_going_to_get_a_new_client_for_season_4/cee9zns

Gets hard to track this sort of thing, but I guarantee you lore doesn't even get 1/10 of this. Not even close.

As for using the Pro scene to validate lore, I think you need to re-read again. I was saying they have more announcements per month on either the Pro scene or Pro players over any other announcement. Even if you count their new way of showing snippets on the Boards (btw, I actually like this. GJ Krylhos!), the count is still overwhelmingly in eSports favor.

Also, I would hope that with as much time, effort, resources, and PR they do involving LoL as an Esport, that it would be really successful. Heck, if it wasn't a rousing success, Riot would likely cease to be.

TwoPacalypseSep 5, 20142 votes

You need to hire good writers that have a vision, and KEEP them hired. You need a manager who will champion lore information getting presented in a meaningful way and INTEGRATED into the game in a meaningful way.

For instance, lets say RIOT decided on "Faction Based" queue, or another event like the Ionia conflict thing. Someone has to develop how that will occur, and tell the development and art teams how to make it happen. If you leave the lore team unfunded and unmanaged, you never get that done.

If you spend all your budget on esports crap, you have nothing to pay these other people with. That is how budget affects lore.

PhailRaptorSep 5, 20145 votes

See, I don't know why everyone cites esports as a reason for the current state of things. Esports is a separate branch of League of Legends entirely. It makes no sense that the Lore team would be working on esports. It makes no sense that anyone EXCEPT the esports team would be working on esports. Make no mistake - the Lore Team decided on this without any other branch affecting them.

Because at the same time that the LCS became a thing, and the playerbase exploded around it, anything that wasn't e$port$ took a complete nosedive. Balancing became more erratic (LEE SIN LCS BIG PLAYS), Champion releases slowed to a crawl (patch with a new champion every 2 weeks -> patch every other month, champion every other patch), and any advancement on the Lore front became non-existent.

ZetaSep 5, 20143 votes

Riot wants to sell players the fantasy of being an athlete that doesn't need to exercise more than the fantasy of another world.

HelmightSep 5, 20144 votes

I will agree that balance suffers as a result of LCS. They've said before that they primarily balance things towards the professional scene. However, champion releases and lore are two things that are completely unaffected by esports. All those animators/artists/writers/modelers etc. have nothing to contribute towards the advancement of esports - so how would its rise have anything to do with them taking a nosedive? Lore specifically had been dead for a long time before esports really took off and I don't think the lore team would have been able to help them at all.

Meanwhile, Riot specifically stated that they'd slowed releases so they could test champions more thoroughly before letting the general public have them. When I first joined, pretty much every champion released was overtuned or undertuned in some way (Diana, Zyra, Rengar, Syndra, etc.). After they slowed the schedule down, champions definitely were better on release. So the argument that esports directly contributed to a decline in Riot's other activities is nonsensical.

NaharaSep 5, 20141 votes

Riot has said before they don't balance things based on the LCS.

Things are balanced because they're broken or poorly designed or what-have-you. The LCS is just the best place to spot these problems because the players at that level are the best in the world with skill above and beyond the normal player base. They look for and theorycraft some things that maybe people wouldn't have thought of before and have the skills to pull them off.

The LCS is just the whisle-blowers that show everyone where problems exist.

AbiwonKenabiSep 5, 20141 votes

You guys are confusing correlation with causation. Basically just because two things are correlated does not mean one caused the other. The rise of eSports did not necessarily cause the fall of lore. Also, champion releases slowed because releasing a new champion every other week is kind of ridiculous, imo. Instead they started working more on champion VUs, which actually do share expertise areas with champion creation.

Tapu FiniSep 5, 20147 votes

"Ignore it and it'll go away" seems to be their brace here.

HelmightSep 5, 20144 votes

I don't even think it's that, unfortunately. They genuinely think that this is the best direction to take and are taking it regardless of what we want or think is best. It's unfortunate, but true.

AnarchyOnPandoraSep 17, 20141 votes

like half the playerbase going away? not like we fuel the company with support and spent money on skins.

AbiwonKenabiSep 5, 20142 votes

Thank you for mentioning that; it seems people endlessly blame the eSports branch for being cool and popular. They obviously know that's not all we want, which is why they are attempting this retcon in the first place. ESports has grown a ton for sure, but they cannot take away resources from other branches--like the the lore team dedicating members to eSports--it just doesn't work that way.

Honestly after this change, eSports is a big reason I am still interested in League. I'm not a huge fan of the idea of this retcon (I am very close to quitting over it) but eSports has yet to disappoint me (at least as far as Riot is concerned. Still disappointed that NA can't seem to nab a World Championship...this year maybe...).

Garlyle WildsSep 5, 20141 votes

I think this is a pretty clear illustration that it's not about saving themselves work, if half the champions in the game have to be reviewed and revised in at least some capacity in order for this to work.

ZetaSep 5, 20145 votes

Well, it depends on what you think of as work. If you mean in text alone - no, it doesn't save them work.

But being able to copypaste the lore of Runeterra into being a generic fantasy world where wizards and archers fight and kill eachother and hey "It's just like Game of Thrones/Lord of the Rings/World of Warcraft" now? That saves them from mental work, and from the work of trying to market the idea of semi-peaceful solutions winning the day in a genre that glorifies violence.

Garlyle WildsSep 5, 20141 votes

It works both ways, though. "But the institute intervenes and does [blank]!" is also an easy device for storytelling they could have taken.

Personally I don't think the Institute was the thing that kept Runeterra from being 'just another generic fantasy universe' - its cast and colour were, and that's got very very little to do with the Institute's existance.

That aside though, they certainly have room to blow it - or to succeed. At this point it's a matter of whether they're going to rise to hopes or fall to the expectations that've been set over the last couple years of relative inactivity.

ArinaxSep 5, 20146 votes

You may want to move Sona up. She'll need a whole new device through which she can communicate... to whomever she's talking to. Maybe she'll just be some crazy mute now.

Willahelm FulberSep 5, 20142 votes

sigh... or perhaps you will be playing AS Sona, the Maven of the Strings instead of her summoner? I'm pretty sure last time I checked whether you were mute or not didn't affect you thinking to yourself.

AbiwonKenabiSep 5, 20143 votes

Sona "Only you can hear me...me. What masterpiece shall we play today?"

Willahelm FulberSep 6, 20141 votes

Or think of the gameplay itself as a form of SSBB: Nobody cares about the story behind the characters in Brawl, the characters have their own video games for those. They just want to see their favorite characters duke it out.

MaganarSep 7, 20142 votes

That's exactly the problem. You might play SSBB; I don't. I think it's patently stupid. That's why I have played League. Depending on how this goes? We'll see if I still play League; I have plenty of other options (MOBA options, maybe not; but gaming options, sure I do, and I've relegated most of those other games to back-burner for the last more than a year since I found League).

AbiwonKenabiSep 7, 20142 votes

Yes, let me go play the game Sona is originally from...OH WAIT.

That's the problem with the SSB argument I see a ton of others using. Characters in League don't come from other games. They come from this one, they interact and develop one another's character because they exist in the same universe. That's like saying "Link and Zelda, who gives a crap about their interactions? I just want to see them fight."