Warriors, Summoners — Lore Kills Us Off, eSports Brings Us Back

http://i.imgur.com/yWgkOJG.jpg From the Warriors video.

The Narrative team announced that it has kicked us out of Runeterra, declaring Summoners, the Institute, and even the League of Legends itself non-canon and non-existent. Amid the considerable backlash, a Rioter made an off-hand remark (in response to a question about how they could delete Summoners from a game played mostly on "Summoner's Rift") along the lines of "well, I mean, yeah, I guess you're still Summoners in the game, but the game doesn't have anything to do with the lore any longer, except for using some of the characters."

For months, the usual gripe had been that Riot didn't care about lore because all it cared about was pushing the eSports thing further and further. Maybe it feared that lore would damage its super-serious eSports image. Whatever the case, we thought that eSports was driving the extinction of lore.

Once, lore and eSports had fused together, with top-level Summoners fighting it out on behalf of Noxus and Ionia to shape the lore's future direction. Those days were clearly over, but we pleaded with Riot on the Narrative team's behalf to let lore be part of League of Legends again, to understand that it didn't need to drive lore out of its game to support its eSports initiative.

What a peculiar twist of fate, then, for the Narrative team themselves to be the ones to kill Summoners, and for an eSports video to bring us back, at least in a symbolic form.

—Summoner CupcakeTrap