A Player's Perspective on the Necessity of the Lore Change

A lot of people seem to be asking why. Why does the lore behind Runterra need to change? Why can't we just keep things the way they are and move forward with it as it is. As a player since Season 1 who used to read and enjoy the Journals of Justice (the Shaco interview was really my favorite), I'm going to give a little bit of my own personal reflections and perspective on why the Lore needs to be retconned and how it doens't make the lore worse, but makes it more integral to the world's fabric.

I want to start with the Ionian conflict, because that was central to many of the Ionian champions joining League of Legends. "Trial for the Isle" is an example of how the storyline of League of Legends originally worked. At the time, Noxus was at war with Ionia and had taken up strongholds throughout the island and the Ionians joined the League of Legends in order to ultimately have them evicted from their island. There's a few things here that I will bring up later, but I want you to consider how fragile this precedent storyline really is. In this world, there is a power which supercedes all other political rivals to the point that they cannot oppose their judgements and will. All conflicts would end up being solved the exact same way. It's a very static world with little fluctuation.

We'll come back to Ionia in a moment, but let's leave it right there for now. We all know how that fight ended (spoiler: check out the Ionian Boots of Lucidity). Let's go to the next major conflict: Kalamanda. This was Demacia and Noxus's attempt at ignoring the League's might and starting a war again. It ended with the creation of the Crystal Scar due to a massive spell cast by the Summoners which disrupted the area. It [i]also[/i] was the premise for Skarner's introduction. This piece of the lore really reinforced that the League of Legends was the only way to solve the conflicts between the nations/city-states.

And for a long time afterward, the Lore side of League of Legends was quiet. Wasn't that strange? If you're Riot at this point in the storyline, where do you go from here? Do one of the nations circumvent the League somehow? Well, that doesn't work because you can't really incorporate a conflict that doesn't involve the group that has quite literally monopolized war. You could go off in another direction by just simply introducing neat stories along the way (Riven/Yasuo for example). But at this point, the storyline you have built up is dead because in order to progress it would have to move beyond the League.

Then we had the Howling Abyss and the Freljord events. All of a sudden Lissandra bursts onto the scene. Her goals are pretty clear in that she wants to revive the Watchers and free them from the Howling Abyss and that she was integral to the history of the Freljord. It's at this point that I personally realized the dilemna that Riot was in (I even asked about it on the boards at the time, but it wasn't ever addressed and no traction amongst players). If you think about it, Lissandra has absolutely no reason for joining the League of Legends or meddling with the League of Legends. In fact, the very existence of the League is would be a challenge to Lissandra, since the Watchers certainly aren't going to want to submit to it. This puts Lissandra in direct conflict with the League.

At this point, I'm sure most people are thinking "that's great!" And you're right. You've got this crazy ancient ice lady wanting to take over the world and there's this opportunity for the world's powers to all unite in a struggle to fight for the future. It's a really rivetting tale. There's just one problem.. The very engine through which conflicts are solved go through the League. Summoner's Rift and the Crystal Scar's Nexuses belong to the League (and by extrapolation, so do the ones on the Howling Abyss). Champions wouldn't get summoned the League would be fighting against Lissandra. Lissandra wouldn't be fighting in the League. And so, we can really start to see here that there's a pretty clear break between the world/lore design of the past and present.

Let's get back to Ionia. What does the change for Ionia and her history? The truth is, not very much. Instead of the League intervening and settling the dispute, Ionia repells Noxus on its own. Hell, they could even do it after a long, protracted stalemate (which is what happens, actually) by challenging 5 champions to a duel. Or the history could be retconned to remove the League's influence and the war could be won a different way.

Here's the main difference. In the past, League of Legends was an active part of the game world. We played in that very world. Now, there's a split. We play a game based upon the heroic exploits of these champions, and you could even come up with ways to tie these battles more directly to the world (think of it like Homer's Odyssey or the Illiad to the Greeks). The point is that in order for the world to evolve beyond the Kalamanda incident, the League had to be separated from the world narrative.