@RiotFoundations: Ever thought about releasing a Runeterra History-Book?
This is mostly inspired by the new splash art - which is totally AWESOME I may add here.
It really looks like an old painting, and that artstyle woudl really be fitting if you were to tell stories of the world that took place long, long ago. Imagine a story from the founding-ages of Demacia, and then turn that into a modern animation like Twist of Fate. It would be weird, right? If something is that far in the past, even if it's a fictional world, this is not how we percieve something as "old" or "historical".
Instead, for stuff like that you would have textbooks with old-timey language, the citation of even more old-timey sources and of course old paintings and images of statues, etc.
This history book should of course cover none of the current lore, but rather could show interesting insights in the culture and development of the nations and areas it covers. And since we have some timeless champions, you might even drop the one or other hint here and there.
And art in the style of this splashart is just PERFECT to go with that. Actually, it's so good it even made me want to suggest this whole idea. On top of that, it's rather cheap in terms of resources: no need for ingame models, animations and so on... just text and art. That's still some work, but by far not the scope for what other stuff like a VGU can take.
Now, for the format: As I see it, you have two ways of making this work.
One: make seperate books. Like, one is a history book from Demacia, the other a scientific historical analysis from Piltover, the other a scribbled Bilgewater timeline made by a priest of the Bearded Lady or an old sailor. This variant would have the bonus that you could also show the perspective of the one writing it. But from experience I know that this is not so easy to write...
Two: Make it a series of the same fictional author, preferable a travelling historican and chronist. That would enable a more neutral stance while at the same time making multiple works from said author possible. Heck, you could bring in even different characters. I for one would be curious in the notes of an explorer like Ezreal, who is some kind of archeologist after all. And then you could bring in some other guy writing - after all there's probably more than just one wandering historican/scientist in this world.
This would not really give the universe new lore, but would rather would go more in-depth with what is already there. On top of that, if you can turn that into a regular publication, this might finally solve the problem of lore releases being so extremly irregular or being tied to new champions and reworks.
Seriously, the lore community is so thristy for every line of text - even if the publications were not building on each other (random topics, different authors, etc etc.) they would take it all.
Just for clarification: I do not want a revamped JoJ here. That one was gutted for reasons after all. Instead, I want more or less completed works about certain aspects and parts of Runeterra's history and culture. Mostly of events that are so far in the past that they do not directly touch today's events, but explain how stuff came top be and why stuff is how stuff is.
Also, take this as a chance for the artists. Dear artists: how does a demacian painting look like? How does it differ in style from a noxian one? How did the a style change over history as the culture evolved? How does art in Piltover look like? How are things in Ionia, in their case how does calligraphy look like?
See, so many interesting questions - and every single one is an excuse to create something totally badass! Don't let that chance slip away ^^