@Riot: It should be pretty clear now that the community is enraged by your decisions involving Lore
[Edit 9/4/14] Holy fuck, this just took on new levels of outrage. The Institute of War is no longer canon. [/Edit]
RITO killed Ezreal's lore!!!! @Riot THIS is what you call lore now?? Riot stop right now. Do NOT change Skarner's lore. I am OUTRAGED at this excuse for "lore" being made Welp, Shurima is the new Frejlord "Lore does not make money, lore is not e-sports." Let's talk about the lore Riot! "But MOBAs can't have lore" I have new info on Void Lore!!! New Lore for Every Champion Confirmed! Wow Riot changed Ahri's lore too?
Even better, this one has a poll in it, though at the time of my writing this it has low participation:
Poll: New Lore (Shurima Patch)
[Edit 9/2/14] A days later, I've just found this thread. The responses are quite relevant.
So the hype train on Azir and the Shurima event. [/Edit]
This should have already been apparent from the backlash over the Great Freljordian Retconning. But for some reason, we are doing this all over again. You are brutally savaging the intricately detailed backstories of Champions, and replacing them with 1 or 2 paragraphs of super general facts. Worst of all, you aren't giving any explanation as to why you are doing any of this.
With the creation of Azir, it does make sense for Nasus and Renekton to no longer be from another world. The more reasonable among us can at least understand that. And you obviously have a lot of story there that you want to tell, what with Azir having a number of VO lines confirmed through PBE for Sivir. But if you're not going to ever share the story behind all of this, there really is no point in putting that story together in the first place, and ripping the beating hearts out of our chests and grinding them into dust before our eyes. Renekton used to be a deep character. His own love for battle was tainted by the continuous exposure to evil. Now he literally is just a rage-beast hellbent on killing his brother, with no actual context as to what caused it, or why it's Nasus's fault.
Speaking of Sivir..... Since she got her VU, there's been this unspoken understanding that she is from some kind of desert nomadic people, whom she left to pursue her career/interests as a mercenary, which made her incredibly rich. While you are, in part, solidifying that through Azir's VO lines for her... there's still an enormous amount of story there that is missing, to bridge the gap between her VU Lore, her previously existing Lore, and how that relates to Azir. As it stands, she's kind of ending up in the same nowhere-space that Sejuani is -- "Rawr, I'm an angry barbarian and I like to raid and pillage people and stuff, and I'm going to rally the people of the Freljord behind my war banner or crush them under Bristle's hooves!!! Oh by the way Olaf and Volibear are here too." We know there's a lot more going on somewhere behind all that, but you aren't telling us what it is! Similarly, if we pretend Sivir's old Lore doesn't exist for a moment, she's just this chill bandit chick who went exploring with Cassi this one time and something happened TO BE CONTINUED (not really).
It doesn't matter if whatever you have going on behind closed doors is the best story anyone has ever thought of in the history of storytelling IF NO ONE EVER GETS TO SEE IT
I don't even know where to begin on this one. I literally cannot wrap my brain around the reasoning for doing this. Skarner's backstory was the most unique among all the Champion Lore for one specific reason. He was the only champion who's presence was rooted completely in a plot element. He was the greatest protector of his people, awakened by the use of the portable Nexus to freeze the warring Demacian and Noxian delegations in time. He worked to create the Crystal Scar, the battlefield upon which Dominion takes place, in such a way as to further protect his people, rather than continue to awaken them. He was alone, but his loneliness kept his people safe from the harm they could suffer from a world not ready for them.
Now he's just a giant sentient scorpion from a desert who maybe is guarding someplace deep beneath Shurima. I'm sorry, what? Not just the fact that you destroyed the most unique thing you had. Not just that you totally destroyed the interesting backstory of a champion. Not just that you destroyed all ties between him and the Dominion game mode. But you did ALL OF THIS, and replaced it with, quite literally, nothing. I can't fathom who thought this was a good idea, and I refuse to even attempt to contemplate what the motivation was. There can be no end result that justifies this kind of mistreatment of a truly beautiful character.
The long, sad tale of Amumu. Originally he was just a boy with no memory and an unfillable void of sadness. Then he became a Yordle who woke up in a pyramid with no memory, but the unshakable feeling that something really bad happened to him once. Now he's just an animated cadaver. Granted, it seems like you've never really known what you've wanted to do with Amumu, giving his alternating species over the years. But I fail to see what the point of even retconning him was if you're not going to actually give his story some expansion. In fact, you did just the opposite. You took the shortest, least defining Lore of any champion in the game, and made it smaller. I don't know if you really want to be congratulated on that impressive feat, but you've certainly earned it.
And you did much the same thing with Rammus. Before, his Lore indicated some really cool things about the Plague Jungles far to the south, and the mysterious wild magics that happen there. Now he's just an armadillo that somehow became sentient, no idea how that happened, and he's got this cool armor and he wanders around looking for something. These are your oldest characters. These should be the ones with the longest, and most compelling backgrounds. You've had years to think and elaborate on them. Instead, you're just sucking the life out of them. And we still don't know why.
And last but not least, there's Ezreal. I hope you're going to throw out his existing VO lines and write him some brand new ones, because his existing set is anything but "embarrassed". He's supposed to be a smart mouth who doesn't care what anyone else thinks or says. All of his existing VO lines support this, demonstrating a boisterous attitude and a cocky disposition. And now he's magically embarrassed. Bigger question though: why? Why make this change? Furthermore, why throw out a far more descriptive Lore, going into details about his origins, for no other gain beyond something that is completely at odds with all the other content related to the character?
You may have noticed a certain little 3 letter word that keeps coming up every time we talk about your changes to Lore.
Why?
Why are you wiping away all the beautiful details that made champions interesting, that gave players reasons to like them beyond what their 4 buttons do? Why are you going to such great lengths to forge half links between characters, if you're not going to actually connect them? Why are you demolishing the most unique aspects of your game?
Why?
Here's the part that's really telling about all of this. You'd think, from the way I've written this post, that I main some of these champions, and play the others fairly heavily. But that's the thing. * I DON'T MAIN OR PLAY ANY OF THEM * I mean, I'm decent at Ezreal and Sivir, and I manage to do ok with Nasus and Renekton in ARAMs. But no, I do not have any real gameplay attachments to any of them. I care about them because I find their Lore to be fascinating. Reading the backstory of each new Champion, and figuring how they relate to the other existing champions, is awesome. And somehow I doubt I'm alone in this view.
Recently, you have been going out of your way to starve a portion of the community. And the thing that keeps echoing in my head, over and over again, is that same 3 letter word.
Why?
