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We still don't have a good reason for why the league had to be closed.

The Red Warden·10/19/2014, 4:12:50 PM·48 votes·7,580 views

The explanation that Riot has given us is just that the league was too confining, and that it was hard to expand on, and I am worried that this will be the only actual reason given for a few years.

Look at the evidence so far if you don't believe me. The new Azir and Xerath lores could have been written with the league still in place (neither died and was a long time ago), the time between lore events and champ releases take a while (which seems to be the only time we actually recieve new lores), and that the lore team is sounding like they won't actually have anything major like a champion dying off until every champion gets a new bio(which will take years at the current pace).

Meanwhile the Xerath retcon shows how don't really care how much the bios go against the champions established personality. Xerath's qoutes in game are almost all about how he wants more power and knowledge while his lore makes him sound like a "oh no what have I done" type of character.

During the Shurima event every lore piece of him showed Xer as a power hungry villain, yet Riot has already retcon'd that within a month. Now you may wave this off as just the lore team deciding on a better course of actions, but it still shows how the lore team doesn't care that much for the pre-established stories. What does that say about the rest of the old bios and themes of champions and how they might drastically change them?

123 Comments

Dotintheparadox10/19/2014, 4:39:28 PM17 votes

They just don't want to actually think of a plot that would lead any champion to the Institute, even once, for a match.

They had Abernathy for months, he had a track record of ignoring what fans enjoyed in a game's story, and replacing it with boring tropes... and a few bad-asses, but that was not enough to make up for the glaring disregard for already established stories.

Even with Abernathy gone, this lore department has been indoctrinated into that school of thought, and for a community driven game like league, that is a horrible abomination, that is now wreaking havoc on the lore the majority (There was a poll, old lore won (64% of us), HARD, if there are any new lore supporters (8% of you), hold another one, if you win use it as evidence against me.) actually liked.

Shokah10/19/2014, 6:51:45 PM12 votes

Even worse, it just means all the incoming retcons will eventually be forced into faction to be able to have any interaction, then from there all the minor factions will be aligned to either Demacia (mostly good guys bar a few perhaps) or Noxus (mostly maybe not all...bad guys).

Welcome to the World of Warcraft!

Saint Latona10/19/2014, 5:49:52 PM3 votes

Every champion they made while League existed in the champions' lives would need to have the following question answered in each champion's biographies.

Why did they join the League in the Institute of War?

OuttaControl5610/19/2014, 7:03:54 PM3 votes

Its not that hard to understand why the League was not good for stories. There would be no civil war in Freljord, Azir's and Xertah's beef would be finished in a single match. The league is a superior way of dealing with conflicts, period. This was established with what occurred in both Kalamanda and Ionia. Both were spiraling towards conflict and devision, both times the League stepped in and solved the problem.

Thats bad. Good for the world stage, good for the existence of the League, but ultimately bad if you want to see Ashe and Sejuani duel in the Tundra, or would like to see Katarina cross blades with Garen in a dark alleyway in Bilgewater. If you have a problem, go to the IoW. There's no reason to inflict collateral damage.

Thats at least why I think Riot decided to start over. If the new lore will be good, hard to tell. We've had so little of the new Runeterra exposed to us. All we know about is Shurima, Noxus and maybe Freljord. What about Demacia, the Void, Ionia, etc etc etc?

We'll see. Once all of the Factions have been fleshed out... THEN we'll see if the global Runeterra has better story-telling than the JoJ lore. Of course, how long we'll have to wait for all of the Factions is another bloody question and ultimately we just need to be patient, which of course we've been for SO DARN LONG. As a person who joined LoL in 2012, I can attest to how dismal this wait has been, and I can only guess how painful it has been for others.

John Berserk10/20/2014, 12:05:32 AM1 votes

Playing devil's advocate here for a sec, but, looking at Azir and Xerath's new short stories, why would they even need the IoW? I mean yeah they can fit it in easily, but is it really necessary? I dont know, to me, it'd seem like it'd almost be forced in.

It should also be taken into account that, yes, while they did pretty much do away with Xerath's original themes, it seems most people are of the opinion that his new character is better and more original than what we had before. If they plan on rewriting all of the lores to fit this style, assuming they can keep the already-original and interesting characters original and interesting and make the boring and 2D characters original and interesting as well, then would the IoW really be needed?

Also, Xerath's power-hungryness was not retconned within a month. The Shurima videos were not shown from his perspective. Thats why whenever everyone complained about "Eww Xerath is now Jafar-tier villain gg Rito PLS", Riot continuously stated that what they showed in those videos was not all there was to their lore and bios and all that, and that none of them were from Xerath's point of view, which we WOULD see (and we did). They just took their time is getting the actual stories to us.