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I feel totally overwhelmed and it makes me sad

DamienSolta·6/15/2015, 11:10:07 PM·10 votes·1,736 views

After the artist spotlight on Lazuli and her wonderful zulidoodles I figured this world might have been more interesting than I first though. I came to this game right after the Journals of Justice were ended, and never had any reason to pay attention to the lore (other than, say, for a fun team composition of just yordles (but even figuring out who is and isn't a yordle seems impossible with an official source unless the League wiki is official) or through Easter-eggs and such during major events). It seemed to me like there wasn’t much there and that there hadn’t been much attention to it other than to randomly have things happen that were liked self-contained events that didn’t influence anything else.

After I got interested in Lazuli’s work (it’s so adorable and brings me so many smiles) I started to look to see what she was basing her stuff on and I discovered the convoluted and confusing (self-contradictory at times too) mess that is the league of legends “lore”. QQing about the end of summoners has been done to death (I didn’t even realize that they, and the institute of justice was even gone until very recently) but I’m not really interested in that. I never was invested in them (other than thinking Sona’s champ select lines were cool if kind of creepy). Instead, as of right now my desire to get interested in the lore is non-existent. Other than trying to figure out what Lazuli’s stuff is referring to, I will admit that I just am not super invested (I’m sure the majority of League players are in the same boat as myself) other than to want to play “Lore” related events since I like the game more so than the lore.

However, I am still quite curious about some things, and maybe some clarity in the state of the lore within the world (as quite frankly) the entire world is a mess. I have no idea what official sources I should look at, and the boards are huge (though if there is sort of a “State of the League Union” post somewhere that would be super). The league wiki is also confusing at best, and champ “bios” are confusing and vague.

Am I right in thinking there isn’t some overarching story at all and that most of the characters are just characters in this game world entirely separated from the actual arena battles (Draven and Sona and their respective ability names and voice acting aside) who only have self-contained lore when specific events happen, but are otherwise just static people? Is there a plan for some over-arching metaplot (because I honestly don’t know if it’s needed)? It really seems to me, as someone who never got invested and is probably never going to get invested in the lore now due to its current state, that having some generic characters (sorry but I’m not a fan of the champ intros/movies/comics etc, but that’s a matter of personal taste) and a generically defined world, who only really interact as Easter-eggs or vague “plot” events would suffice and still give us random fans enough to build our own world with?

TL;DR – Where’s the lore, if any, and how do I experience it because official sources are either non-existent (I can't find the journals etc) or are carefully hidden from a novitiate like myself. Hopefully I can get some help.

16 Comments

Sharjo6/15/2015, 11:40:24 PM12 votes

I'll explain as best I can, so buckle up son! Or daughter, I dunno if you're a lad or lass.

So right now there's a direction change going on with Riot. They've moved away from the old style of writing lore and bios and have moved to a different avenue. This began with Heimerdinger's VU and Vel'Koz in early 2014 where instead of long summaries for lore they had character pieces instead. This trend continued until around September, when something else big happened. They brought to light some story stuff for the region of Shurima, with some new things and some altered things concerning history and the champions associated with the region. At the same time they came out with a dev blog that basically said "We're doing a big reboot/retcon and removing the IoW from the lore while adjusting stuff accordingly."

Why is this a big deal you ask? Well the Institute of War (IoW for short) was the in lore justification for the game's existence. The game itself occured in the lore as diplomatic battles where champions from various nations would fight for the sake of said nations, or other parties. Everyone who became a champion had to go through the IoW, becoming a part of the roster for League. With this removal it has essentialy made it so that the game we play isn't canon in a lore context; the champions exist in the lore, the items exist in the lore, the maps are various locations in the lore, but the gameplay isn't canon and doesn't occur in universe.

This caused a few problems for some champions because some were intrisically tied to the League, meaning by removing the IoW they literally couldn't exist in the new canon with out adjustments. For some that's not as big an issue, for some it was/will be, but either way Riot has been moving towards this, but a problem occured.

The dreaded "Tech Issues".

Basically Riot, as part of this new approach, wanted to also divorce lore from the client to provide it in a better way via the main website. Problem is when they tried it everything broke apart. The website and client drew from each other, and so seperating them was not only hard but also brought other complications we don't even know about. To give some kind of metaphor, imagine that a doctor brings in a patient for a routine check and some easy fixes, assign some medication, what have you, but they discover their patient is actually dreadfully ill and things aren't nearly as simple. This led to the situation we have today.

Riot hoped to have short bios in the client that had a link to the website and the champion's lore, however because everything's still broken on this front, leaving us with the short bios while the long stories we were supposed to get have yet to be released bar a small number. Not everything in the lore was completely adjusted for the sake of this change either, and so some champions have lore that has yet to be changed, leading them to exist in a weird limbo of non-canon yet canon as we wait on the fix. Suffice to say people are really sad/mad/foaming at the mouth in frustration, I'd assume for both the players and Riot. This has led us to where we are today, where lore is in this weird and broken spot and is only slowly being fixed. The lore has many problems, not just relating to the tech issues, but you can look around this board to find out more about those. For now I'll leave this summary:

  • Riot took a new direction with the lore, moving from long summaries for bios to character pieces and more varied content such as videos, big promos and other media.
  • Riot proceeded to remove the Institute of War from the canon, divorcing gameplay and lore.
  • During the divorcing and retcon/reboot Riot encountered problems with their site and client preventing them from releasing content in the way they intended to, delaying the changes they had hoped to make.
  • The above has led to only short bios for champions being available a lot of the time, a broken website and some characters having weird lore that has yet to be adjusted for the new canon. The worst cases are as follows:Chogath Fiddlesticks Jax Kayle KogMaw Malphite Morgana Nautilus Nocturne Orianna

My biggest thing for you today is the following:

Everything that was released after and including Darius in terms of lore in anyway is almost certainly canon. Everything that came before that is debatable, depending on how much or how little needs to be changed for the sake of the new canon.

As an example; some champions like those worst cases I mentioned need complete rewrites to make them work in the new canon. Some champions like Ziggs, Varus, Fiora and Shyvana need barely any work at all. Hell Varus actually thrives in this new canon better than the old one! The League wiki is the best place to actually find everything lore related, including the now not canon Journal of Justice. Oh also, a final note:

Riot is very bad at following up on stories and developing them further. Most of what you'll find to be canon at the moment is essentially the prologue or chapter one of a larger story. The hope is this changes and Riot follows up more as they've said they will, but for now they have yet to do much of that at all.

And that's the whole lore situation as best I can explain it. Hopefully what I said made some kind of sense to somebody, and I hope it was atleast in someway useful to you kind sir/madam.

Puri Puri Taric6/16/2015, 12:38:10 AM8 votes

simple and short the lore turned to sht and its not worth bothering anymore it has been killed.

Impetual6/16/2015, 8:37:33 AM3 votes

I totally agree. The current lore delivery methods are not very effective.

Perhaps, Riot should look back to some of the previously successful and well loved methods of delivering like the Journal of Justice.

Lore updates have been really disappointing since the JoJ disappeared.

I don't think it's a coincidence.

FuryofThornsRedo6/17/2015, 2:48:20 PM1 votes

There is no difficulty in anything trying to be worse than almost everything! How is this sounding, GreeLore? I posted here, because I did not want to ruing your bottom line position with the comment posts. From: FuryofThornsRedo