The Institute of War wasn't a restriction, it was an opportunity.

Impetual·11/7/2014, 9:02:39 AM·27 votes·2,075 views

It was a place where any champion within the League of Legends could interact with any other, for whatever reason.

It was a place that gave the battles on Summoners Rift a purpose.

It was a place where champions worked hand in hand with summoners (who were NOT all powerful) to try to prevent war, all while trying to further ulterior goals in the shadows.

It was a place of intrigue and mystery. Where high stakes political espionage happened daily.

While each faction gives a fairly clear picture about what is going on in each section of Runeterra, The Institute of War was where things combined into a intricate and confusing collage of every different faction slyly vying for more power against the others.

It was the reason why Champions existed.

It was the reason why Summoners existed.

Riot Please, bring it back.

27 Comments

Gross11/7/2014, 7:15:09 PM9 votes

Ugh, there were so many missed opportunities... instead of retconning a crucial part of the lore, they could've...:

A) Rework summoners. What is a summoner, what do they do, who are they, where do they come from, what is their relation to the IoW and the champions, etc.

B) Retcon summoners, but keep IoW, possibly rework it. I'm pretty sure IoW could keep its position as a kind of a '' problem solver '' without summoners or a menacing force that is trying to use champions for their own gain. There's also the possibility of reworking IoW to a more '' entertainment '' related thing, like Pokemon tournaments. This way IoW can exists, without sidetracking from the IMPORTANT, RELEVANT story-telling. This would also mean League of Legends THE GAME is yet again part of the lore, yet it's not a BIG PART of it, but you can use it to write some lore IF YOU SO CHOOSE TO.

C.1) Destroy summoners, keep the IoW. If summoners are a big deal, you can just make champions go against them and rebel. Combine this with a possible new champion, new game mode and you have a ridiculously cool and fun event planned, that is also important lore-wise.

For instance, champions are getting fed up with summoners getting all the credit, wealth and recognition (comparable to proplayers and League celebrities, that use League of Legends as a platform to jumpstart their career as a gamer/entertainer) and champions feel as if they are nothing but play things in a game called League of Legends. Include a new champion that likes to cause drama, war and riots, and possibly manipulate peoples feelings, thoughts and subconscious, and there you have it. Champions vs Summoners. And how about a newISH gamemode? Champions start breaking the rules of League matches (Awesome Buff of Awesomely Awesome Buffing, robbing the merchant, start with level 18?) and are up against the best AI that the Summoners have developed (Doom Bots) and there you have a ridiculously stupid game mode that is sure to be intense and fun.

At the end of event, champions have won, and IoW is remade into a neutral '' problem solver '' as it should've been in the first place. Whether it continues to be a entertainment central or a political arena, that's really up to writers.

You could also add an item commemorating Summoners and the war that happened between champions and summoners.

C.2) Destroy summoners, destroy the IoW. Same thing as above, but IoW will crumble as well. It's better than retconning everything...

D) Rework summoners and IoW to a clearly neutral force that doesn't interfere with conflicts, and doesn't force or recruit anyone to join their battlefields. They can still maintain their status as a conflict solver, even if they don't push their agenda to the high heavens that might make IoW and summoners seem too powerful.

But whatever, retconning it is, instead of replacing less important lore (than IoW and summoners), or giving something the end it deserves.

Sneak Dog11/7/2014, 9:18:04 AM9 votes

They weren't preventing conflict, merely wars. Most were actually furthering or resolving conflicts.

PickleBabah11/10/2014, 8:22:01 AM7 votes

I completely agree.

In all respect, the more recent champions are mostly just cliches that are covered over with 3 sentences and whose stories aren't as heavily invested as I anticipated. I feel like overall the League Judgements need to come back though. Riot wants to tell a story? Don't do it through quotes and interactions. I have learned far more, felt so much closer from the champions with League Judgements compared to those without.

Some ideas will be flawed, such as Gnar, who can't communicate with the Summoners, or the fact that not all champions will fit into the League as well as they should, or that there are only so many reasons why they would join the League.

All of this is somewhat reasonable. But in all respect, the Narrative Department just so happens to be working for the most played game in the world and they just aren't providing the content that should be. Five seasons. 27 million players daily. At this point, honestly, lore should not be 3 sentences long. The reveals should not explain more than the actual lore. Quotes and interactions should not be the main way to tell a story or develop a character. The cinematic trailers develop characters, but they honestly don't have a story to have characters to develop for.

It's all random. It will only be more random unless you have some sort of thing to keep the champions together, to develop characters there, for a reason for us players to feel valued, like the League. You shouldn't be destroying the League, you should be building it, elaborating. The League of Legends without a League is like Elvis Presley winning 3rd place in an Elvis-Look-A-Like Contest: Pitiful.

I do not mean to show disrespect in anyway, but it really is frustrating to see something with potential fall apart and be put to waste just to go the easy way out. I just hope to see that the newer content will improve in length and quality.

-Yours truly, a concerned Summoner who wishes to stay a Summoner.

@Riot, red response now.

Athenes Lulu11/8/2014, 9:00:26 AM6 votes

A place where I can meet new friends and show off my sweet, amazing magic that others will actually like. Now that it's gone, where do I go? Maybe I should tug Veigar to see what's up then! But, wait, I can't, because Rito doesn't even bother expanding any form of story further.

Seriously, though. Just because you can't think of a legit reason for Jinx or Gnar to join the league. (There are other offenders but these 2 are among the worst since Rito can't even write decent stories.)

Fed by Snu Snu11/11/2014, 6:10:02 AM4 votes

Meanwhile, the Freljord war is still going on somehow and apparently that is more interesting than the Ionian event that concluded with a public event that even had an item named in commemoration of it.

Because having temporary game modes keep track of global stats and having lore shaped through that is too much of a hassle and thus "uninteresting". Amumu's 2 lines of story are better 100%.

Mori Please11/8/2014, 12:37:49 AM3 votes

the only main thing that upsets me is how they just made the institute go poof!

Narasimha11/7/2014, 12:45:15 PM2 votes

I would have agreed in the past, but the recent lore outputs have changed my mind. The Shurima event and the Harrowing especially revealed backstory and character points that would be extremely hard to pull off in the Institute of War. We got to see GP and MG actually work together to do something. We found out why Renekton wanted to kill Nasus so badly. We learned that Hecarim and Mordekaiser might not be on the same page after all.

GreenLore11/7/2014, 11:19:52 AM2 votes

Overall the thing is that while summoners were not invincible,they were still the most powerful faction in all runeterra,so I can see that riot had a problem with that.(I mean with the help of Zilean they were able to stop the 2 most powerful armies and they showed with Morgana and the other other-world champs that they are able to summon champions against their will,not to mention how Lee sin destroyed a whole village by accident)

However I agree that it is a shame that now there doesn't seem to be a place for the champs to interact with each other anymore. Now there is no reason why for example Anivia would ever meet Teemo because they live at the opposite of the continent and have no reason to go on a big vacation(and even then it is rather unlikely for them to meet all the other champs).

Sure it does open up the possibility of search-stories,I mean it wouldn't be so hard for vel'koz to find zilean if he can just meet him at the institute of war,or stories where 2 champs meet for the first time and not just "hey I've seen you in a league match,you were the guy who was feeding the whole time" But they could work around by that,by simply saying the league doesn't extist for such a long time and so still do stories like this.

Overall I'd say that if they merely made the institute less powerful or maybe changed the way it affects the conflict of the factions(like instead of deciding who gets to get a certain territory through a league match,they could merely support the winners in their war,with weapons/troops),then it'd they could keep the benefits of the league without most of the drawbacks.

Fried Noob11/7/2014, 12:54:53 PM1 votes

The main issue with summoners is that they have to be powerful enough to contain the horrible, powerful nightmarish creatures that are Fiddlesticks , Nocturne , and Chogath while also are proven as being super powerful by being able to rip champions like Malphite and Nasus from their home worlds. This power disparity means that if anything super interesting between factions (like say a massive war in the Frejlord) would have to be reduced to a battle on the Rift because that is the decree of the summoners.

Sadistic Cheese11/9/2014, 12:56:29 PM1 votes

What they mean is that in a storytelling sense it was restrictive. I agree with you, though. It was certainly a unique element, but I think the issue is the fact that the concept was too cut-and-dry to allow for drastic expansion. Their point about 'why did so-and-so join the League?' always needing to be answered is a valid one. So many champions who never had an explicit reason were asked about when they were released, or more accurately, complained about: "waaah! Jinx has no reason to join! waaaah!" "Vel'koz wasn't captured by the League! why would he join?! waaaaah!" so on and so forth.

If people had simply accepted those characters and not questioned it, we might have been able to keep things. But true to our nature, we wanted answers.

Ultimately though, I think this is just their way of turning a poor situation into a manageable one. A game like this needs to have a backstory that's broad, simple, and can make reasonable most of the things the designers want to do. For example Blizzard's newest title Overwatch (Youtube it. It looks like League had a hot night with TF2 and forgot to use protection. and the results are amazing.) In the cinematic trailer one character notes that "Everyone knows Overwatch got disbanded. Half of them are mercenaries now anyway."

It's a simple concept that gives a reason for conflict across whatever maps the team designs, and it also allows for explanation of shifting rosters, avoiding such awkward questions as "why are Thresh and Lucian on the same team, let alone laning together? Shouldn't they be at eachothers' throats? Why is Rengar perfectly fine with going top with Kha'zix in the jungle?" The Institute of War idea covers that problem and others, but it lacks the basic nature and simplicity of other options that would allow greater storytelling freedom AND make it easier for them to satisfy our desire for reasons and details on a case-by-case basis.

I think what chafes most is that they had the Institute of War to START WITH. If they had had a simpler explanation to begin with and were moving INTO the Institute concept, that would be a far different pill to swallow. We'd probably be excited about the idea. We don't know what the direction really is moving forward yet. Let's see what we're moving into, and if it works to give us more of what we want (champions, game-modes, etc.), before we complain too hard.

catraven11/9/2014, 1:51:50 PM1 votes

cmon op, no1 believes a silly little summoner can direct an independent champion to be killed. no champion with any self respect would hand over their lives to some jerk summoners. plus no outside commander is going to respect the little games these jerks play in their little temple...noxus would simply invade while they're doing it.