The Difficulties of Story for League of Legends

Vrashk·May 14, 2015·7 votes·2,018 views

This is perhaps less of a discussion and more of an explanation. I'll be doing my best as someone with experience writing stories to give a perspective that might not be heard often, from what I've seen on this forum. And yes, this is a long post. A very long post.

It took me almost three hours to write. I'm in physical pain and I should be asleep by now.

##The Most Irritating Jigsaw Known To Man

This is a concept most people seem to understand, but few consider when looking at someone else's work: creating a fictional land that feels like it's alive is hard. It is so difficult because the world is one of the most finely-inspected parts of fiction there is. A large part of the wild success of J.R.R. Tolkein's Lord of the Rings book series is the expansive and detailed setting. This was a setting that Tolkein spent roughly 55 years developing over the course of his life. It can be argued that Tolkein spent so much time on this setting because his books were designed to show off what he'd created more than they were to tell a story (this turns Frodo into a short, hairy tour guide, and is why the books differ so much from the movies; exploration of a world doesn't sell quite so well on the big screen), but the point stands. Creating a world is difficult, and takes time.

##I Cut Off Your Hand, What'cha Gonna Do About It?

Conflict is the lifeblood of a story. If you have no conflict, you have no story. This is the staple of every story. Stories where nothing happens are bland and ignored. If I tell you about how I grabbed my keys off the coffee table, got in my car, sat in traffic for twenty minutes, pulled into the grocery store, bought three individual slices of pumpernickel bread, and then went home again, you wouldn't know why I told you that story. You might even think I'm trying to make you ask why I only bought three slices of such an inferior grain. There was no point to the story. Nothing happened.

Conflict is what changes routine. If Luke Skywalker had never received the message from Princess Leia asking for help, he never would have left his home in search of Ben Kenobi, wouldn't have left Tatooine, and the Emperor might have continued using his lightning fingers as an impromptu joy buzzer for years to come. It is necessary for things to happen.

##Hermione, The Original Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free Card

Conflict can't be overcome too easily, or whatever is at stake suddenly loses its value. If there's an answer to every problem, then there are no problems left and you have no conflict left, and we've already been over what that means. There's a fine line you have to tread with characters; they have to get close to success but only just succeed, it can't be handed to them on a silver platter.

In Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone, the final conflict is hidden behind a magical gauntlet that must be overcome to approach the Mirror and find the Philosopher's Stone. The obstacles are as follows: a lethal plant, a lethal game of chess, a test of dexterity, and a magical equivalent of the chance game Cups. The plant proves fatal to Ron and Harry, but Hermione uses her bookishness to slide right through the danger and move on to the next problem, saving her friends in the process. The game of chess allows Ron to step up to the plate, showing a side of him that hints at intelligence. The test of dexterity seems tailor-made for a quidditch player, and Harry successfully completes his challenge. The last challenge is what amounts to a game of chance. Given that Hermione uses logic to figure out what would have killed Harry on his own, the readers might like to think that she and Harry are well-equipped to deal with whatever comes next, and they would be right. Hermione has enough understanding of how the world works to spoil Professor Quirrel's reveal. So she goes back to help Ron. Now that the all-knowing Granger is no longer present, Harry is free to actually struggle against Quirrel.

##Events Don't Happen In a Vacuum

The saying "All the world is a stage" has some bearing on this. Any good acting coach will tell you that, to make your performance believable, you have to react to the other actors. If your best friend looks up from their dead dog with tears in their eyes, and you take a sip of your mocha as you wash blood and fur off your tires, then you had better be writing a dark comedy piece because that will get you nowhere in any other genre.

The world reacts to the actions of its people.

The butterfly effect is a real thing, if somewhat exaggerated.

For want of a nail, the kingdom fell.

Other vague yet poignant sayings.

If someone takes action, then there will be a reaction of equivalent meaning. If you kick a dog, it will either whine or bark. If you kill a few hundred people, you'll be killed yourself, go on to murder a few hundred more, or have been the indirect cause of the largest paperwork malfunction in the history of law. Actions have consequences, though they need not be direct.

##The Role of Foreshadowing

A reader needs to be able to follow along with the events of the world. Humans like being able to puzzle out the cause and effect of actions, so much so that sometimes they'll see false connections just because they want to see some connection. Foreshadowing helps with this, and lessens the shock factor that takes readers out of the narrative like a cold bucket of water. On the other hand, if readers can figure out the events of a story before they happen, they have no reason to read it.

Character death is an excellent example of this. If you are able to see that a character is going to die (such as the event of an explicit prophecy) you start to resign yourself. When it happens you nod, accept that it's happened, and move on. It's a fact that it has happened, and it's acknowledged, but it has little impact because you've already distanced yourself. Of course it affects the other characters in the story, but it isn't so important to you, the reader.

If, instead, a character suddenly dies of a heart attack, then there's no meaning behind the event. It was an arbitrary, if shocking, event that had no reasoning behind it. Perhaps the writer was just tired of that character, so whoops there they went. Maybe they were too convenient. In the worst scenario, the author is trying to get the reader to feel emotion, and so badly botches the job that it leaves you more disinterested than when you started reading.

The key is a middle-ground. The reader needs to know enough to see that something is coming, to make out a vague shape looming in the fog, but they shouldn't be able to figure out what is going to happen until it's happening.

And now, what you have been waiting for.

#How This Relates to League of Legends

So far, I've been elaborating on some basic information about storytelling. Now, I'll be more explicitly talking about the past and present difficulties Riot faces as they work with the Lore of league of legends, both in regards to the aspects of storytelling that I've explained above, and the specific problems that League of Legends has as a device for a narrative.

##Valoran As a World

What the Riot team is doing right now, is creating a world. A whole world, and they're doing it piece by piece. This is a long process, and while they have a team of people who can work on it (and hopefully agree on a direction), it will still be some time before they have their complete world. If the current issue with missing lore stems from tech problems, then we wait for the tech to get fixed. That's all we can do in that case. If it's a problem with piecing a world together, then we can only be patient. They're putting together a jigsaw puzzle the size of a city, with the advantage of being able to snap a photo of completed sections to show off to their friends. Let the jigsaw come together.

##Conflict and the Institute of War

The original story behind League of Legends was that there were mages that were so powerful, they could decimate whole swathes of land if so motivated. These mages came together to form the Institute of War, an organization dedicated to finding a less destructive method of resolving conflicts. Under this great magical threat, nations signed on to this idea and allowed their great heroes to join the Institute to represent their countries.

This creates a natural hub of the world at the Institute of War. All eyes of the continent turn towards the Rift to see what their future holds. But, with so much power concentrated in the Institute of War now, the nations didn't have any military threats. Noxus, who was originally a militant city-state, now had nothing for their military to do. Zaun, whose experiments had been used just as much for maiming others as they had for self-improvement, lost much of its patronage now that there was so little violence going on between other nations. The most common source of spontaneous conflict--violence--was now gone, leaving the changing power structure of the world in the hands of diplomats whose worst threat was "Let's just see what happens on the Rift, shall we?"

Newspaper's that used to report the number of fatalities in a war were now reporting on the budding relationship between Garen and Katarina.

Conflict was, essentially, dead. There was a quasi-peaceful resolution to any problem that cropped up, and a benevolent organization that controlled the most powerful champions on the continent.

The options that are left for the basis of a story are the corruption of said organization, a rebellion of the city-states (who have given up their best warriors) and the invasion of a foreign power. For a world that was based around explaining the game mechanic of summoning characters, none of these offer a particularly compelling arc that players can feel as if they are participating in the story.

The Institute of War as a vehicle for story has sputtered to a stop at the highway on-ramp. It has nowhere it can go. So, in the interest of pursuing a compelling story, Riot gets rid of the Institute.

##The Problems With the Current Known Lore

As a few other posters have said, there seems to be a lack of interaction between the city-states in this new version of the world. This can easily be the result of the Narrative team taking their time to focus on having a rock solid world before they start bouncing people against each other because, as I said earlier, actions have consequences. If Noxus weakens its forces against Ionia, Demacia might very well step in to clean up its rival nation when there is a greater chance of victory. If Zaun suffers from a massive fire, the food stores of Piltover might start running dry as the genetically modified crops from Zaun are being hoarded within city walls. Events have consequences, and you have to know your world before you can really figure out the consequences of any major events.

##The Fear of Change

Recent changes to the lore behind League have been some cause for concern among the community, for good reason. When champions that people have followed for months if not years are changed without prior information, there is an understandable amount of backlash. There is a reason Riot provides context in their patch notes, and a reason why players have some level of input in the degree and execution of champion changes: not knowing what's going to happen next to your favorite champion sucks. In the comments on another thread there is some concern that Viktor might be painted as a more stereotypical villain than he is right now, and that would be heartbreaking to me, personally.

This is what I was trying to get at with foreshadowing: if something happens to the characters and story that is totally unexpected, there had best be a reason for it hidden away in the dialogue somewhere. Especially for something with so much community input as League of Legends, when the characters themselves undergo such a drastic change, it can be almost the same as killing off a character in a story and then introducing a different person to fill the void. The new guy doesn't stop that pain, they aren't a perfect replacement.

Yes, this is a direct criticism of how Riot has handled the change in lore. I agree with the choice to change the lore, but it has been executed sloppily, and I think most Rioters will agree that there has been lapses in communication throughout this process.

##League of Legends Is In Stasis

Storytelling in video games often tells the story of a single main character that the player is put in charge of. Recent RPGs, the genre most known for story telling, have even allowed the player to make choices that directly impact the result of the game. Video games as a narrative have been progressively moving more towards the player actively participating in the world they're thrust into.

MOBAs are an awkward genre to have a running story in. When there was an Institute of War, players could feel like they were participating in something larger than themselves, they could at least pretend that their actions had some impact in Valoran. Of course this did result in problems of its own, namely the lack of a conflict.

With the current state of the lore, Riot seems to be moving towards a situation where they have a consistent story that runs along a timeline. This has worked impressively well for games like World of Warcraft, where, once again, the player has the opportunity to directly participate in raids that affect the outcome of the world. They get their chance to feel like they are part of a larger cause.

MOBAs create a situation where players are at best reenacting a single legendary battle over and over again with different characters, and at worst the actions of the players are totally disconnected from the story. League of Legends is currently in the latter category. This isn't a fault of Riot, but rather of the genre as a whole. Dawngate took a unique approach to the situation, giving players direct agency over the events of the story through having the results of each game affect the story. For League, there is a gap between the story and player's actions.

This poses a unique problem for gaming as an industry: how do we create a story for a video game when the players' actions don't directly affect the story? Again we can look to world of Warcraft for some inspiration. Blizzard releases novels that further the story of the world outside of the game itself. As it stands with League of Legends, this seems like it would be a convenient solution. Of course, Riot isn't as large an institution as Blizzard, they don't have the guarantee of selling the product that lets Blizzard ignore the risk of paying an author and publishing stories, but something new must be done. Adding continuously more characters without furthering the story of Valoran will leave no one satisfied, and is a waste of a truly interesting world with many (perhaps too many) interesting characters.

##The Future of Valoran

I know that this world has stories to tell if only because of the emotional attachment so many people already have to the characters that live in it, and without the Institute of War, those characters are now free to influence events. Perhaps the only question that remains to be answered is who will tell the stories themselves. Will it be the fans, left without an official story for so long they all turn to fanfiction to fulfill their imaginations? Will Riot hire an author to write League of Legends novels, or perhaps an artist to do a web comic? Or will Riot come up with something new that allows them to tell their story the way they want to, but still allows for champions to change and grow in a world that has finally dropped out of an extended stay inside Tempered Fate?

I don't know, personally. I think we'll have to wait until there's a solidly established history of the world before we see any new story coming from Valoran. There are plenty of opportunities with the character backstories that already exist, but there seems to be few available resources that Riot could use.

A lot of people are upset over the shortened lore, and the lack of communication about the direction of the new lore. I am too. But perhaps we could take a second in this thread where I have typed far too much information on one page, and talk about what you hope to see come out of Valoran for the future.

I'd like a bit more about Viktor, or this new Xerath. How are the ascendants from Shurima adapting to the new world they find themselves in? And what, oh what, are the void creatures actually doing if they aren't on the leash of the Institute of War?

14 Comments

CupcakeTrapMay 14, 20159 votes

I think you make many interesting and valid points, but I have to stop you as you go to rehash the tired and thoroughly discredited argument that the League of Legends prevented all conflict, or that Summoners were all-powerful puppetmasters. This is not the view that the community has generally adopted, and it's not even really supported in the old lore.

I'm honestly kind of tired of repeating this explanation, so I hope you'll excuse me if I tl;dr it. In short, the League has no mandate to stop all wars, and no power to do so. When war breaks out, it has the power to step in and at least put some boundaries on the conflict, and punish any combatant who resorts to world-breaking rune magic (magical WMDs) or otherwise violates the laws of war. Other than that, its jurisdiction is voluntary, not mandatory. If two states want to, they can agree to settle disputes on the Fields, much as multinational corporations in our world might turn to a national or supranational court to adjudicate a dispute. And, of course, the League plays an important institutional role, as an international forum and "neutral zone" where the various factions and their representatives can meet. Finally, it's something of a central magical academy, responsible for curating the arcane sciences, and selecting mages for instruction in summoning magic, a highly regulated version of the runespells of the previous era.

What power the League holds, it holds because the member-states will it so. If Demacia or Noxus decided they were done with the League, they could ransack the Institute without much trouble. (I'd say that the Summoners within might be able to at least pull a few clever tricks from their sleeves, but think about how many Summoners and Champions are Demacian—I have a feeling this wouldn't be a problem.) Without much trouble, until Noxus responded, "so glad you're done with this nonsense, now let's throw down, you sanctimonious jerks" and a new Rune War ensued.

The classic example is Kalamanda. The League tried and failed to convince Demacia and Noxus to resort to League adjudication or some other such process. The two superpowers kept at it on their own. They put troops on the ground. The League pleaded with them to stop. "We know what we're doing," they said. Sooner or later, fighting broke out. You can imagine the frantic midnight briefings that must have ensued at the Council level. The two founding superpowers of the League were engaging in open warfare on top of a nexus. So far as they knew, Valoran was hours away from apocalypse. They had two terrible options: wait and hope that Demacia and Noxus worked this out sensibly, or intervene and put everything on the line, playing chicken with two superpowers that hated each other to the point of national psychosis. They chose the latter. They made a show of force, freezing the advance guards of both nations in a time spell. They used force against two member-states. This was not a sign that the League was stronger than Demacia or Noxus. This was somebody getting in the middle of a knife fight and holding out their arms to separate the two combatants. That ends one of two ways: the fight stops, or the two knife-wielders stab the meddler full of holes and set upon each other once more. It was a symbolic gesture: the League was saying "if you two do this, fine, you know we can't really stop you, but the League will be discredited and destroyed in the process, and then you guys are on your own for Rune Wars Part II." The ultimatum worked; Demacia and Noxus decided that, as much as they yearned for an old-fashioned worldwide war, they weren't going to start one that day.

That's not "the League preventing conflict". That's the League making conflict a hell of a lot more interesting and multi-layered than it would otherwise have been. Without the League, you're looking at "Demacia and Noxus hate each other! THEN THEY FIGHT! SUPER HARD! RAAAAR!" That's just an explosion of violence. It's not particularly interesting, and it doesn't have an obvious future other than "more war".

As for why nations have armies, it's simply because the enforcement of laws of war and a treaty-making process do not obviate the need to actually be able to field an army. That's like saying, "welp, the UN outlawed offensive war, guess we can all just disarm." The UN might help avoid some wars, and it might make those wars that do break out a little less savage, but even the most idealistic supporter of the UN (provided they are nontheless sane) would not claim that world peace has been achieved. Further, even if you're counting on League mediation to resolve conflicts, you know that things are going to get messy enough that the League will be looking at the reality on the ground in making their determinations. That, and the League is only about 25 years old. It's far from clear that the League will survive to its 30th birthday. If everything falls apart, they'd better have armies ready to go. Speaking of, let's say Demacia disbanded its army and decided to just trust in its Champions and Summoners in the League. Here's a fun game: you are Grand General Jericho Swain. Demacia disbands its army and takes up arts and crafts, because it trusts in the League. Do you:

(A) Go, "aw, shucks, you're right! War is never the answer" and disarm (B) Morph into a giant bird (C) Lend Demacia some of your troops to make it sporting (D) Burn the Institute to the ground on your way to raze Demacia and salt its fields, because they're now completely defenseless

In other words, of course you maintain an army, if only to give your rivals some reason to keep going with this whole League thing.

Alright, so much for tl;dr. My apologies. It's only that this particular line, about how the League was so powerful that it prevented all conflict and seriously one time a kid tried to steal a candy bar from a store in Piltover and six Summoners teleported in and were like "HEAR YE AND BE WARNED: THIS AFFRONT TO THE SANCTITY OF CONVENIENCE STORES SHALL NOT ABIDE", really irks me. The way I see it, Riot wrote a bunch of derpy but kind of colorful and even somewhat innovative lore for its new game, that explained what was happening on screen and gave players a role in the universe. It was kind of broken and stupid, but the community enjoyed it, and the community worked out some handwaves and fixes, and really made something out of it…then Riot came along and retconned it right from under the community's feet. Dick move, Riot. Dick move. You created a derpy setting, we poured our hearts and souls into fixing it into something workable, we came to love it in the process, we became thoroughly immersed in it, and then you came around and justified the destruction of our universe by referring to how sucky it was before we fixed it.

SharjoMay 14, 20151 votes

What I basically get from the entirety of this is that the Institute was an ineffectual organisation that only operated on the good will of the other nations, which kinda defeats the point of the exercise doesn't it?

If the IoW is too strong it stifles conflict completely
If the IoW is too weak then it lacks the ability to actually do its job and might as well not even exist.

From what you've said the IoW just seems too weak to actually do what it needs to do. If it's so easy for one nation to pull out and say "we're done" then it shatters the entire image of the institute. If Demacia did that then Piltover, Freljord, Bandle, Ionia, they'd all be thinking "wow they really did that. We may need to reconsider our options." And Noxus would be drooling over the prospect and get ready to pillage the institute for all its secrets. Where's the sense in that? The IoW HAS to be strong enough to actually be a threat. It HAS to have weight to it, but if what you've said is the case then it doesn't.

As a note, the example you used for Kalamanda was kinda flawed in my eyes. The institute didn't go in as a neutral bystander and push two people in a night fight aside to stand between them, it had two guys come from behind them, get them to the floor and said "stop this right now or you're getting some broken bones." except in this case the broken bones were time-trapped soldiers having god knows what done to them.

CupcakeTrapMay 14, 20156 votes

{quoted}

From what you've said the IoW just seems too weak to actually do what it needs to do. If it's so easy for one nation to pull out and say "we're done" then it shatters the entire image of the institute. If Demacia did that then Piltover, Freljord, Bandle, Ionia, they'd all be thinking "wow they really did that. We may need to reconsider our options."

Demacia and Noxus are military superpowers. Bandle City has a much lower* population, and they're mostly little fuzzballs. The impact of Demacia and Noxus ditching the League would be massively different than the impact of (say) Bandle City and Bilgewater leaving the League.

That's not to say that only the departure of Demacia or Noxus could compromise the League's stability to the point of collapse. A gradual grumbling dissatisfaction with the League among many states could also break it apart, for instance.

Simply put, I respectfully disagree with your apparent claim that any supranational body must be either

(1) So powerful that it rules every nation-state with an iron fist (2) So weak that it doesn't matter in any way

I feel I shouldn't have to use real world examples in a game featuring sociopathic chipmunks and derpy barbarians with imbalanced arm strength, but I think the EU is a reasonable comparison. The EU has quite a lot of influence, and adds a fascinating dimension to the relationships between European states. However, it's also constantly fighting to maintain legitimacy, and its power derives mostly from the member-states; it has an independent budget, sure, but it's quite small.

More simply, recall the history of the League. It came into being because Demacia pushed it and Noxus grudgingly agreed. Not because a bunch of super-mages got together and suddenly imposed authoritarian rule on Valoran. It stands to reason that what the member-states created also relies on the support of the member-states to continue operating.

{quoted}

As a note, the example you used for Kalamanda was kinda flawed in my eyes. The institute didn't go in as a neutral bystander and push two people in a night fight aside to stand between them, it had two guys come from behind them, get them to the floor and said "stop this right now or you're getting some broken bones." except in this case the broken bones were time-trapped soldiers having god knows what done to them.

I do not get the impression that Demacia and Noxus were tackled to the floor and threatened with broken bones. They'd each sent out small advance guards to a disputed region, and those troops were the ones who were time-locked. Nothing the League did endangered Demacia or Noxus themselves. If you're saying that the League had the power to time-lock or destroy Demacia and Noxus, I would ask, first:

(1) Why would you look at the ambiguous lore available, and adopt the reading that makes the League as awkward and story-breaking as possible?

and

(2) Where did they get that kind of firepower? And don't say "the Rune Wars". Demacia and Noxus were fighting the Rune Wars long before the League existed.

And wait, are you implying that the League was time-torturing the trapped soldiers? I don't see much evidence for that, and I would find that a very stupid move on the Council's part. It would seem to almost guarantee a "screw it, no more League" reaction from Demacia and Noxus.

*: Short joke.

test accountMay 14, 20157 votes

If Demacia did that then Piltover, Freljord, Bandle, Ionia, they'd all be thinking "wow they really did that. We may need to reconsider our options."

There's a realworld example of exactly what you brought up here. It was the League of Nations. When the League of Nations failed, we got the UN (and some other groups, I guess). But even then, the principle was the same: These groups are only around because their member nations agree to what they say. The IoW was no different, and it could have led to some very compelling narratives -- if they found it too stifling, one of those narratives very well could have removed it.

CupcakeTrapMay 14, 20157 votes

Indeed. It's not exactly the same, but you might imagine our version of Kalamanda as beginning, for instance, with the US and USSR on the verge of a nuclear exchange in some outlying region. Perhaps they ignore the UN's attempts to get them to mediate, and are about to fire. The UN drops in peacekeepers who seize control of each side's local missile launch bases, declaring them to be in violation of international law. At that point, the two superpowers either shoot the UN peacekeepers and go nuclear, or they grumble and accept the truce. That's not evidence that the UN was mightier than the US and USSR combined, but rather that the UN represents something that both states grudgingly acknowledge they need: the rule of law, and some limit on their mutual aggression.

The collapse of the League could be a very interesting story arc. Just set up another Kalamanda, and this time have it go wrong. Or maybe use that "corruption" subplot they'd been working on. The League might end up returning later down the road in altered form, but you'd also have a vivid demonstration of what Runeterra looks like without it. It'd also be an opportunity for various characters and nations to contemplate whether and why they want the League. You could have neat stories about Summoners going back to their home nations, and trying to balance their commitment to the no-longer-existent League's ideals with their desire to advance their national causes.

Importantly, this would not be a retcon. To be honest, even over in Factions, I think we'd be fine running an arc or two without a League, and just say that the matches abstractly represent real battles or something. We could roll with that, and we'd try to do so, because we take great pains to hew close to canon. The retcon, however, was too much: we couldn't possibly "adapt" to that without deleting ourselves and the story so far. I briefly entertained the idea of going back and rewriting all those prior storylines, recasting them without the League. Then I said, yeah, sorry, but that is just too much. I am not going to betray the Factions community or the Factions story-verse to adapt to your stupid, shock-reveal retcon.

XulsigaeMay 14, 20153 votes

How about unscrupulous entrepreneurs making the fields merely gladiatorial with the League magics still in place? The fights go on, but without any reason other than the people will pay to see them.

CupcakeTrapMay 14, 20152 votes

{quoted}

How about unscrupulous entrepreneurs making the fields merely gladiatorial with the League magics still in place? The fights go on, but without any reason other than the people will pay to see them.

Kind of superficial, but it would certainly work. Champions might still show up, because such matches would be fantastic training. When you're a superhuman badass, it's pretty hard to find a decent workout.

Ethereal311May 14, 20151 votes

I always had a thought that the IoW had more of an impact on trade routes and impose standing army taxes if anything, something that could cripple any sort of nation if Civ 5 has taught me much. This in addition to hard taxes on larger military constructs (think super-heavy walkers) and preventing the use and development of WMD magic and the likes. It makes a lot more sense to me over this 'oh, these guys basically hold the entire conflict in their hands' sort of thing that people kind of got out of the League's Arena system.

MotajoMay 14, 20153 votes

{quoted} snip

I wanted to disagree with that part of the OP's post as well, but you beat me to it. That's probably a good thing.

KING OF MASKSMay 14, 20154 votes

Good work tl;dring it, Cupcake. Lol.

(But seriously, excellent response).

CupcakeTrapMay 15, 20153 votes

Thank you!

NorthernDruidMay 15, 20154 votes

Some casual observations and stuff (trying to keep this short because writing long posts is painful and makes me lose track of my thoughts):

They already had a nicely detailes world to work with, sure some of the seams holding it together were a bit rough, but they could easily have worked to fix the parts which were wonky and needed sorting out in order to make the setting have greater consistency instead of just ripping the core premises of the setting out completely and then leaving it there.

If you wanna talk about World of Warcraft, do not forget the dangers of the expanded universe. Before WoW the story of the warcraft games were largely self-contained and didn't take more effort to get the full picture of than playing through the campaigns. With WoW I see it not cool that I could participate in 25-40 man raids to get the complete story, I see it limiting that the follow ups to the story of a single player RTS series was denied to me unless I could find the time, effort, skill, gear and social prowess to be allowed on those raids. And then I had to read a lot of books and comics.

CupcakeTrap already wrote a better response than I could ever manage to convey to the issue with conflict.

Obligatory reminder: All the stories that couldn't be resolved because of the Institute of War getting in the way still can't be resolved, or at least won't be resolved. We went from a dynamic world where the infrastructure for unpredictable change to the setting was right there, to a static world where any such change relies on the storyteller to take the chance of letting a popular faction lose.

No Champions will be killed, stories of rivalry now have less resolution than before because the rivals no longer have an arena to fight to the death over and over and over.

I'm honestly disappointed at them abandoning the setting right when Shurima was being raised from the sands. Not only Azir, but the entirety of Shurima entering the League would be a kinda cool plotline to examine.

Like it or not, they're not writing for anything other than a game. The game needs to come first, and any setting or story related to it which doesn't have room is nothing but "what if" scenarios. Anything which runs counter to my experience of the game is not canon, A runeterra without the league of legends is just an interesting thought experiment and nothing more.

This is a game not a book. The story you write needs suit the game and enhance my experience of it or it's not worth reading.

And while some basic long form lores (as in character bios, not short stories) might be interesting to read even if they aren't canon to the game. Following an AU setting isn't really something I feel like doing.

Not when a fanmade initiative is doing something far more interesting.

MotajoMay 16, 20152 votes

{quoted}Like it or not, they're not writing for anything other than a game. The game needs to come first, and any setting or story related to it which doesn't have room is nothing but "what if" scenarios. Anything which runs counter to my experience of the game is not canon, A runeterra without the league of legends is just an interesting thought experiment and nothing more.

This is a game not a book. The story you write needs suit the game and enhance my experience of it or it's not worth reading.

I'd like to emphasize this part. If they're only using the game for character snippets and arbitrary what-if scenarios, what are they doing writing for a game? The story needs to fit, build from, and breathe life into the gameplay; it isn't supposed to cover up and deny the gameplay's existence as if it were some hideous, pulsating birthmark.