Whatever the BIG Lore Reveal for the Bilgewater event is, it's not going to be worth it

I feel the lore fans have been repeatedly punished by the Narrative Department.

What I mean by this is that a lot of our trust and goodwill and most especially patience has been trampled repeatedly. We are promised a lot and therefore our expectations are constantly rising - and that is even moreso given the vast amount of time since the retcon (10 months) to fix things.

Tech issues. Shorter Bios. Promises.

So this is what's going to happen:

"The greater the anticipation, the greater the disappointment"

I think League prides itself on producing not a living, breathing world, but a spectacle world. It's trying it's damn hardest to look cool to catch that momentary interest before fading away. Then it expects to be given props for doing that.

I'm going to go off on some education/social theory now regarding why League Lore is so inadequate.

Look, there are three forms of engagement: Behavioral engagement - People do this everyday out of force of habit [e.g. Someone who goes to work and flips burgers. It's not the strongest form of engagement but it's still engagement. Other examples include putting the toilet down and etc - essentially force of habits that become almost second nature]

This is the sort of engagement most of the Board actually engages in. We sign on to play League for the first-win of the day bonus. We log onto the boards to check stuff out/up or downvote/check reddit/comment/post/etc...

**Emotional engagement **- Something new stimulates a response [e.g. There's a fire or a burglary happens or someone buys a new car or something EXPLODES. It stimulates the effect of either fear or happiness - some emotional response - and that makes people want to know more about it]

This is clearly the form of engagement the narrative team wants and is also poorly implemented. Emotional engagement is actually the weakest over time as it cannot sustain itself (usually once it's out of sight, it's forgotten). Yet the Narrative and marketing departments repeatedly focus on this, but with several months in between these bursts of activity - it's not enough to keep players interested and certainly not entertained or happy.

Cognitive engagement - It's so interesting that people FEEL compelled to seek more knowledge of it. [e.g. A riddle or a logic puzzles a student so they continue to think about. A difficult game or challenge occurs and people seek more knowledge of it. Think of how much theorycrafting people do for games like EVE, Starcraft, Diablo, and etc... there's clearly a force of interest that sustains itself much more greatly than either behavioral or emotional does. People will be ACTIVELY thinking of new ideas instead of consuming them and accepting them - asking themselves how this change will affect them. This is the kind of stuff you see in the SurrenderAt20 PBE updates where people are theorycrafting and discussing balance changes.]

This is the strongest form of engagement and certainly the one Riot should be aiming for as it produces the best longevity of any series. Warhammer especially is filled with it because as detailed as the world is - there's still so much mystery and open ended unknowns to the several running plotpoints. Granted the fans may disagree on several key detail points - but this only shows how much stronger the engagement and thus connection to the game is.

**And that's why the Narrative team will fail: **they focus too much on emotional engagement rather than cognitive engagement.

We're going to get another spectacle burst. Bilgewater happens but nothing substantial gets added. There's no new information - nothing to theorycraft on - just nothing. Oh hey we added some flavor text. Oh hey we have a new map and a few paragraphs of bio.

That's not enough.

There's no where near enough. Because those who are cognitively engaged will exhaust all of that in an afternoon before going 'well, what now? I'm done and there's not enough here to actually answer the questions I have... if I have any.'

I am confident that whatever lore the Narrative throws out at Bilgewater is going to look great, cool, awesome, and shallow as crap. There's no depth. There's no mystery. What the hell does the word Buhru or whatever mean to me IF I DON'T HAVE A GODDAMN MAP? What's the point of all these pirate captain-kings and outlaws and bandits if I don't even know what Bilgewater looks like? MUCH LESS WHERE IT IS ON THE MAP. How am I suppose to go beyond the crappy trope-ladened-fest that it's a pirate cove den (done repeatedly to death by other franchises) and ask myself: Hm, how is this different from any other generic fantasy franchise?

It looks cooler? Thanks to the Art team.

But does it tell a better story? Does it make me want to know more about the world? Can I find the answers I'm looking for in text, audio interactions, or flavor text and not have to be spoonfed in imprompto AMAs by the narrative team members?

Yeah. When most of our current lore understanding comes from random Riot red posts popping up now and then - that's a bad sign.

It's going to take months of consistent lore releases, reversals, and some serious output by Narrative to reverse this. Otherwise, once again:

"The greater the anticipation, the greater the disappointment."

tl:dr - Bilgewater will entertain us for a day then we will go back to feeling empty and hollow after our lore-drug fix.