Can someone explain what's going on with the lore and why it's such a big deal?

AngryVegetables9·3/7/2015, 3:18:23 AM·2 votes·2,198 views

Disclaimer: I haven't really been a huge follower of the game's lore, nor do I follow how it changes. It's always seemed so scattered and misplaced. Almost as if it were all congealed and not set to a specific timeline. Recently I've seen a lot of people commenting about how "they want their lore back" or "what happened to the lore?" So, as someone who does not keep up with the lore department in League or with Riot in general, can someone please tell me what they are doing to the lore that is so monumental? It would really help me and others get some insight on what exactly people are talking about on every single post on this board. An article or video would also be good if anyone feels that someone does an accurate job at explaining it on a third party sight.

8 Comments

Omnipherious3/7/2015, 3:45:11 AM5 votes

When the game was young, the lore had every champion join a organization known as the League of Legends. This organization's purpose was to prevent war; they accomplished this by having representatives of each region in the League. So when there was conflict, images of the champions are summoned to fight instead of waging war.

Champions used to be released every 2 weeks and had their own little lore pieces. We even had a newspaper thingy called the Journal of Justice which was part tabloid and part hints at new stuff.

There was a point where the journal was discontinued and champion releases slowed. During that time, communication between Rioters and the community in regards to lore became less and less. Eventually all that was left was silence on the part of Riot even though there were members of the community which clearly saw that the previous lore was being quietly phased out.

About 6 months ago, Riot broke their silence and announced the new direction of lore and that they would be working on better communication, lore presentation, etc. This event is what people refer to as "the great retcon". Thus far, Riot have been producing quality stuff lore-wise but not at the pace at which the community is satisfied with / expected.

Part of the reason for this dissatisfaction is that a lot of lore is "up in the air" / uncertain because there were specific champions and events directly tied to the existence of the League of Legends in lore. Now that it is gone, a lot of the old stories are no longer canon.

High expectations and low patience is the reason you've been seeing what you've been seeing.

NorthernDruid3/7/2015, 2:12:16 PM4 votes

The old lore was innovative. Rich on gameplay/story integration and worldbuilding.

Then half a year ago, Riot made a dev blog where they claimed they were retconning everything.

They shortened a bunch of champion bios, and then...

silence.

The part so many of us are upset over, is the fact that we are attached to the high points of the old Lore, the League of Legends which the game is named after, the Institute of War which is the organization maintaining the league, the Noxus-Ionia war and how it was resolved via an actual game. And of course, the Summoners, us, the players, our rune pages, our masteries, or victories on the rift.

They made us part of the world, made the world vibrant, gave it something unique.

And now they want to take all that away because the new guys in charge of narrative doesn't like it.

Personally, I joined late last summer, and was starting to get into the lore barely when the Great Retcon happened.

I'm pissed about it, it tears me up every day, reducing my ability to function.

In part because I don't deal well with having these kinds of experiences removed from me, even if it's currently just a threat to do so, and in part because a game with so deep gameplay/story integration is something I've been wanting for the last 5-6 years...

It doesn't help that a lot of their arguments for the retcon were factually wrong.

As in, they cited the lore and got their facts wrong, in particular their vision of Summoners as all-powerful puppetmasters is disproven in the Journals of Justice, the defunct in-setting newspaper which answered a lot of questions like that.

So that's the deal really, their lore had a big enough crowd following it, and they decided to claim they were gonna screw us over because they wanted less work.

And then didn't follow through on any of it for 6 months.

So currently, we're sitting here waiting for the hammer to fall, and trying to plead as much as we can in the hope that they redecide and keep the story they've shown us intact, as they've seen fit to do after they announced the retcon.

It didn't help their case that all the lore they've released since the announcement fits neatly within the old lore.

Zmuecat3/7/2015, 3:26:17 AM3 votes

They pretty much wiped the slate clean in terms of story and what the lore/story/whateveritactuallyis can do, but they never really did anything with it.

They used to have a story they could build off of that had a means of reading it in the LoL client, they removed it. All that's left is champion descriptions, which just explains who the champion is, doesn't really produce a story. All the champions had some meaning for being on Summoners Rift, because the summoners (which were removed/retconned) gave them something to participate here.

We used to have a lot of things, and while the story wasn't something that should be written in the history books as grand, it was something that people enjoyed reading and gave the game depth outside of #LCSBIGPLAYS.

To put it simply, the lore department isn't really doing anything.

SNSD Tiffanyx3/7/2015, 3:21:44 AM1 votes

riot changes lore

people cry

nothing new

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlMRstKf8B0