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A post to the Lore team on the Shurima event and other future lore events

Jingerbeardman·9/22/2014, 11:07:14 PM·19 votes·1,779 views

Why is the Shurima event ending so quickly? I understand the game mode is going back into the vault for a while but that shouldn't stop the story coming to an extremely abrupt halt. A fair amount of the retcond champion lore was not even touched or mentioned... Such a great opportunity for the lore team to redeem itself is being completely wasted. People want a story, something to spark their imagination and allow them to delve deeper into the world of Runeterra. You had such an amazing setup and then... insert raspberry noise here

Right before the event you came out with a devblog explaining your goals and direction. You built yourselves up saying great things are coming to satisfy our pallets. Then we get this single paragraph wrap up that doesn't even touch all of the other champions whos lore was rewritten and now tied to Shurima. Just because the game mode goes away doesn't mean everything else has to stop... Keep the story going while new ones unfold, heck tie them together at some point. Cassiopeia is bound to be returning to noxus after her expedition gone wrong with news of the resurrected Shurima empire. I find it hard to believe that Noxus would simply turn a blind eye to this sudden appearance of power to its south.

That is the kind of story telling people are looking for. With the Shurima event ending almost the same way the freljord event ended, vague and unsatisfying, you are letting down the fans who wanted to renew their faith and trust in Riot and its lore department. Such an amazing opportunity squandered and I imagine many fans lost as a result. I doubt such a chance for redemption will come along again, even someone as forgiving as I am has lost faith that anything of real merit and intrigue is going to ever be done again. Ya dropped the ball on this one Riot and I wont be holding my breath in hope of it getting picked back up.

13 Comments

Xeneth9/23/2014, 2:02:26 AM8 votes

I disagree that length or detail are where this offering faltered... The core problem with it is that it tells instead of showing.

It reads as a series events that bookend each other to bring all these characters together in the same regional setting, but fails to use "show, don't tell" to glue the pieces together. We've sorta got "An event occurred, and another event occurred, then a character performed an action, so a thing happened, then..." when what ends up feeling more satisfying is akin to "An event occurred because of a worldstate, and that forced another event to occur which made a character feel something that compelled them make a thing happen..."

Going forward, I hope the writing is tighter and is more about Runeterra than positioning characters in it. It overreaches a bit to drag Cass into the mix, and in the end, fails to connect me to Azir by showing me why Shurima is a thing that I should mourn. This arc should have been a love story about a lost culture that made people identify with Azir in my opinion, and the actual tomb decanting and "rebirth" of something like 4 characters a mere current event that's a side effect of those shifting worldstates. Sivir, Nasus, Renekton, Xerath, and Azir should be mere ruins caught up in the sandstorm of an entire culture's rise, fall, and potential rebirth; Interesting and worth studying to be sure, but not the main focus of the initial piece.

The current Shurima arc was definitely a miss for me, but here's hoping they manage to weave some better notes in when they decide to touch on Amumu and Rammus down the line. Plus, the Sion teaser is starting off with a bang, showing early signs of adhering to some of the mechanics above, do give that a chance!

Sneak Dog9/22/2014, 11:32:19 PM2 votes

Look at it differently. We got a single storythread, Cassipeia and Sivir opening the tomb, but we got the whole story thread with conclusion. Now we move on to a different faction before returning to Shurima for the next Shuriman story thread, slowly uncovering more about each region. This way you can tell a story about Shurima, leave it while having both a proper conclusion and mystery.

It does leave a lot shrouded in mystery for now, but if every piece of lore will come as fast as reborn followed Shurima then it'll be fine, great even, as long as mistakes are corrected (Looking at Trundle, the reason I withhold myself from just diving carelessly into this new lore but rather look at it with squinty eyes).

Lord Milutin9/22/2014, 11:43:43 PM2 votes

Yeah, I posted nearly the same thing in the first thread here, and got so many downvotes. I just don't like endings that are so poorly written and vague. :(

Impetual9/25/2014, 7:55:49 AM2 votes

Here's the thing. When we had the Journal of Justice, the stories were about the characters.

Yeah, they had their goals and aspirations spelled out for us in their bio's, but the JoJ is where we got to see them as people.

Anyone remember when Jax and Gragas got drunk and wrecked up a bar! That was awesome!

Remeber Morgana's bakery? Or Blitzcrank's dating service?

It's a shame that the new lore direction doesn't seem to want to give us the personal sides of our champions, but rather it just focuses on making their bio's fit into the boring new world they seem to want Runeterra to be.