Lore, Storytelling, and Trust

With the League of Legends being too restrictive a concept, I thought Riot could use some help with new concepts for some recent champions of the past couple years. I included nods to the previous stories so you'll know how much better these new ones are.

Don't worry, I'm keeping all of the personality and stuff other than "and then joined the League of Legends."

"My people need a moonstone! I think I'll splash around on the surface and help random people fight other people. If only I knew where to look for someone who could help me."

"The people of Piltover need their deputy! Better wander random forests punching monsters in the face." Better, there's no good way for her to compensate the city for all its property damage.

"I could distract everyone with a proxy war through a multinational organization while I bide my time waiting for ancient abominations to awaken... or I can just vacation somewhere in Valoran and freeze people who want to fight me."

"I'm on the run for killing people. Let's just kill everyone I find so I can clear my name."

Ugh. Okay, sure, nothing that happens in game represents these people's actions, but then we can't even trust that their representation in-game matches the actual character. If it's "pretend version of Yasuo" says stuff to "pretend version of Riven," that doesn't seem very satisfying.

Now, there are plenty of good suggestion about how to keep the League of Legends or modify it in a way that would seem to answer Riot's concerns (set it far into the future, run an event with its destruction, just toning down how influential it is in the world, making it a part-time thing for champions). And given how intricately linked it is with nearly all of the champions, it causes a lot of problems to remove it. As an example, which is more interesting: blind martial artist or blind martial artist who committed a horrible atrocity in his backstory and turned to self-immolation as a protest against violence? Is it uninteresting that the League provides a gathering place for outcasts and offers a kind of asylum to horrible monsters? Is it uninteresting that a high-ranking leader of one country has been impersonating the high-ranking leader of another?

But maybe there are some decent stories that could be told after removing it. But Riot's given us essentially no stories for the past couple of years. They've lost any trust we should give them on their ability to deliver interesting stories. If you want to give us interesting stories, great! Do that! But you were, and then you stopped. We have the wonderful people doing Factions who show that there are stories to tell if you keep the League of Legends. You yourself have shown that there can be resolutions to situations and character growth without breaking these boundaries---twice you've gotten new maps out of the process.

Be careful about making comic book comparisons. People get unhappy when things change, and so status quo is God in comic-book-land. If you really kill off Soraka? People are going to be unhappy about it, and there will be pressure to bring her back to life next week / month / year.

Oh, hey, you know what might be interesting? Warwick kills Soraka to stabilize himself as a werewolf forever, but her magic powers / the Summoners bring her back to life. She now has a stronger emphasis on healing but can never again channel her magic into other people. How does she react to that? How does Warwick?

Riot, even better: you could justify a price increase on Soraka due to her having to pay her debts to the League.

This is admittedly snarky, but I feel better having said it. I think the real issue, Riot, is that we don't trust you. You haven't done anything to earn our trust in your storytelling ability the past three years, and blogging about "hey, we're going to do some awesome stuff" doesn't cut it anymore. Show us some awesome stuff, don't just tell us about it.