With the New Lore...

Unfortunately, characters will not be allowed to die, because then they could never tell any more stories about them (barring backstory deaths like all undead characters have).

That sounds like a pretty quick summary of the situation, especially the Freljord part - without Ashe being able to work with the Institute to actually get something started in the Freljord by showing her people what cooperation with the outsiders has let her accomplish, Lissandra has every tool she needs to completely manipulate the Avarosans and Winter's Claw into nothing more than puppets.

That said, I don't think they really care that this removes all the fun from the game knowing these are the brutal end fates of our favorite characters - characters we took to and came to love partially because of the stability it gave us in our lives to know they would always be there to be summoned by us and to enact our wills - a stability a lot of people don't feel they have in real life. If they'd considered that, they wouldn't have moved forward with this. To add to this point, though, I don't really expect them to make it very far with this plan before some other major retcon or "start from scratch" or something, because their delivery at the beginning of this new start has been so utterly lame and they'll have to realize at some point that glitzy animations did not make Shurima interesting, nor did Ascension appeal to anyone except the people who have begging for URF since it left, a fickle population that is always fascinated by any high-speed, strategy-lacking bloodbath regardless of whether or not it has any "lore connection."

With now Iow or league, there is nothing stopping them from killing champions. They want the game to be separate from the story for some reason. So why not, kill some off. In either case, who cares, because if its not relevant to the game anymore, I'm not particularly invested.

Riot's new decision to immerse the player less is frankly boggling. I play Warhammer 40k, and even there, the novels outside the game ADD to the player immersion when using various armies and such, not detract from it. The codices give me back story and reason to choose various armies or units and characters because they mean something. Riot is doing everything backwards these days.

Are...uh...are you okay?

I think you left out Graves putting two barrels of buckshot through TF's face, but maybe TF will get the drop on graves.

If we require a realistic grim world for the new lore, then... Yordles should be extinct. Not about to be erased, but already erased from a long time. They are just, like, not even a leg of a human. I bet Zaun would have bombarded them to chemical death just to spite them, Teemo specifically.

(I'm obviously joking a bit by taking it to this extreme!)

They never will. Want proof? If Sivir had died during Azir's ascension, it'd have put way more weight(theoretically) on the event, and have made Cassiopeia's actions have real depth. Hell. We still don't really know what exactly happened there...

No one wants to see their favorite champions die. But now that this is happening, HELLO GAME OF THRONES - shit I meant HELLO LEAGUE OF LEGENDS!

I am waiting for the writing to not sound like I wrote it while in the second grade. "They walk into the chamber. They go to open the doorway. The blade is a key." You serious m8?

This sounds like an amazingly awesome story... You've convinced me that Riot is doing the right thing.