Summoners, the League, and You.

I started playing League of Legends back in 2012, but stopped playing because I didn't have any investment in the game. Shortly thereafter, my friends began to play, and I initially resisted their requests that I join them in this game. But as they continued to insist, I began looking into the game. I wasn't that interested in the mechanics or the gameplay, I wanted to see if there was a valid reason for me to stop playing my RPGs and single player games that I enjoyed, games like Darksiders, Fallout, or Skyrim, as well as the other multiplayer games like Team Fortress 2, Halo, Gears of War, or Minecraft.

What really got me to join them & to start playing the league wasn't the gameplay or the community, it was the story; I saw something in League that seemed to me to be unique: I was in the game. I wasn't taking on the role of a preset character, nor did I have to create one of my own. I was simply existing in a fantastical world, full of characters that interacted with each other, their universe, and our characters the summoners in a way that I had never seen before.

I devoured the lore, reading each and every character's lore over the span of a few days, followed by the Journal of Justice and the League Judgements. I watched the CG films, I read TVTropes, and I read the wiki page for each and every champion. I had fallen in love with this story that was being told, partially because I was in the story! I had a part of this massive universe, and I was excited to see where the story was going to go.

Now imagine my horror, when a friend of mine, who didn't actually play league, whom I had been trying to convince to play on the merits of the existing lore, messaged me with a link to the Dev Blog announcing that my precious lore was being thrown out. All of the ideas and stories that I had imagined, read, or had been created by other members of the community, gone. In an instant, everything that had drawn me to League had been wiped out. I read through the entire post, I read the comments, I lurked the forums, and all signs seem to point to Riot deciding to simply do what they see fit with the lore of the League. And they are in their full rights to do so; it is their game, their story, their right to do with it what they see fit.

But Riot, I am asking you, please reconsider. Please look at the sheer volume of comments, complaints, threads, and disappointment that you have caused by these actions. Look to the stories that others have developed in the silences between lore updates. Please, don't destroy the one thing that made League of Legends unique amongst video games.

I loved Magic: The Gathering for doing it, and it brought me to the League of Legends. Please, don't drive your existing fanbase away for some perceived benefits. Reach out and ask the community what they want, like you do with so much else. I promise, we'll forgive you if you demonstrate that you really do listen, and really do care.