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Entitlement/Rage/Distrust/Drama in Lore Community?!

OuttaControl56·12/2/2014, 6:39:32 AM·9 votes·3,761 views

As someone who is heavily invested in the Lore, from writing fanfictions to participating in endless shipping wars lore discussions, I've seen the original lore wither. After a good couple of months after the notorious "World of Runeterra" blog post, I've become very dissatisfied over how our community has taken the flux. The Change. The Paradigm Shift. The Great Restructuring. The End Times. The IoW's End. The Big Retcon. The Big Rektcon. The Huge Thing. The Great DownVote Cascade of 2014. What have you.

I was here a year ago. I saw the emptiness that existed in the LoL lore as the Narrative Team were going through the motions trying to figure out what to do with lore. I saw the utter lack of Rioter attention in the Lore Boards. I saw that article where that guy said that lore was silly useless stuff.

It. Was. Torture. We all know it was.

I saw what happened after the infamous blog post, I've seen the Sion lore and the Harrowing lore, and I can clearly confirm that these changes are a step upwards. I've seen interaction in the Lore (Story/Art) boards. Nothing to be satisfied about, of course, but god it is SOMETHING. You all know our situation just 12 months prior.

Yet there are some people who take this positive direction and find something to complain about. Lately I've seen an anger that the lore community has been kept out of the development of the new lore, which we all know is still slowly going through an entire revamp, as if that wasn't clear already. The stage hasn't even been set and people are already complaining about how they don't have a chance to influence lore. Heck, there are even accusations of lying and dishonesty. Really?

As a head-canon fanatic myself, I say be happy with what you have. For too long I've felt let down by the official canon, I don't care if I influence it or not. It wasn't like the original LoL lore was affected by the Lore Community, there was ONE EVENT where the plot of Ionia changed. As far as I remember, that was all the influence the summoners had, aside from a weekly lore AMA that changed little. And yet with this sudden growth in Lore, people are actually asking for more? As if the old lore they wielded narrative powers? Once again, I tilt my head and say, "Really?"

To hear people angered at being shut out from the reinterpretation of Runeterran Lore is vexing and tormenting, especially since I know how passionate many of these people are, how tormented and eager they are to see canon develop themselves, what good intentions and ideas they have. I relate to that, totally! I'd love to see Tryndamere and Trundle cross weapons, I'd dig a ocean duel between Gangplank and Tristana. There are hundreds of stories LoL can tell and we each have our own massive collection. Its an impatience and a passion that I can relate to, and I cannot blame them for wanting to see their stories realized. But trust in the fact that the Narrative team are taking this slowly because they want to stay true to the Runeterran universe, and present it canonically, a setting where so much could happen (so much). They can't freaking write every single story that swims in our cerebral fluids, and still the latests additions have been all great in my book. Kalista, Sion, and the Harrowing Lore are all smash hits, in my head. I just can't wait for the Snowdown lore.

Now this is going to be a bit harsh to some: No, I don't want to see the Void invade Valoran, thats completely off-kilter in regards to the entire theme that the Void presents. No, I don't want Zed and Syndra become a couple, completely contradictory to their characterizations. No, I don't freaking think Kalista hangs out with the Shadow Isles champs. As much as we try to keep our eccentricities in check, I still ship Kassadin/Syndra. But I recognize that I can't write the freaking lore. No matter how bad I want that Kassadin/Syndra story, it ain't happening. No chance. They may both be purple and represent the dual interpretations of how power can free and chain a person, but lets be real.

Try and restrain yourselves, summoners. Don't start a whole new bloody Rune War. The old lore isn't going away permanently, but you can't hold creativity hostage just to pump life into a storyline that's grown old and dated. Throwing in asteroids and random islands aren't going to cut it, nor are they really compelling stories. They are more like completely random developments that don't fit LoL lore and seem like the Kalamanda event all over again. Sure, you can bring ideas to the Narrative team, but instead of prescribing medicine and commanding obedience, just bring it up as an opinion.

TL;DR Blah blah Stop being mean blah blah Be patient Blah blah Ideas are great but try to exercise restraint and just keep it to discussions instead of compelling the Narrative team to follow a certain direction blah blah blah I'll post another thread about what I anticipate the new lore will be and the pros and cons of the IoW in relation to this new direction the narrative are taking things.

Blah. The end.*** I <3 you. *** Yes. You.

P.S. For real tho Kassadin and Syndra. Give it some thought.

64 Comments

Impetual12/2/2014, 9:28:01 AM6 votes

Keep in mind though, that Riot stopped supporting their lore years/months before they announced the changes.

If these changes felt refreshing, it may just be because Riot was actually adding something new after ignoring their lore for so long.

Just because they are adding to the games lore again, doesn't mean it's better than what we had pre-retcon, it just means that any new lore is better than no new lore, which is kinda what we had prior to the shurima and freljord events...(which both kinda sucked, as they retconned/ruined existing champions and added no progressive lore).

Compare both those lore retcons to a single released issue of the Journal of Justice. It's obvious that a single JoJ issue was far superior to the retcons we've been getting lately.

Riot, go back to your roots. Look at what you were doing right, and go back to doing it. Stop trying to be some cookie cutter mmo strategy game. Give us League of Legends.

Diahane12/2/2014, 12:22:31 PM6 votes

I think you, the OP, are misunderstanding the issue or oversimplifying it. It's not that some people believe the old lore was inherently better in all its part. Even old-lore lovers do say some things were just poor, because it's always been self-evident. What do old-lore lovers criticize then? Two main points:

  1. the retcon has erased the pillar of the old setting, which was the IoW, an element the old-lore lovers generally think as of being the only original in LoL's lore, past and present and threatens to erase many other such elements;
  2. the new content doesn't, in our humble opinion, always deliver at the quality bar narrative itself posed.

The first is a critique of the narrative framework in which Riot wants to drive the lore, the most recurring expression for this is "this way it's generic fantasy world #324323" (with the number varying but always being a pretty big one). Some people, among whom me, argue the IoW was the only original factor in the story and that it could serve as a rather cool plot device, able to foster plot development and character interaction. With the new setting, a lot of champions incur the risk of being either slammed into a big faction with potential loss of their previous theme (hello Skarner) or of being completely irrelevant on a global scope. Champions who were independent now have no way of interacting with the big players in the story. Think of Nidalee, if she stays the Kumungu jungle savage she is, she won't ever interact, say, with Janna. Being such a savage, she won't be in any open field war too, because she lacks affiliations with a faction. What's her role then? They'll probably have her interact with Rengar, but is there really anything else for a character like her? Rework ensues and that may leave Nidalee fans embittered. So this is considered a negative effect of the decision.

The second point is a literary critique. The Shurima event was a narrative failure (show, don't tell...), Reborn was excellent, the Harrowing had a cool video of the puppeteer, but was underwhelming lore-wise (we weren't shown anything, we've only got Graves telling us things, plus a timeline, which is as much lore as a timeline is the real subject of an history course). We did get few stories. Azir's was good, Xerath's too, but it committed the deadly sin of losing sight of Xerath's old character and core theme: he is not the same anymore, nor coherent with his in-game behaviour (quotes and all). As an anecdote, I wanted to unlock Xerath just when the story came out, because I liked his old gig; after Unbound I won't ever unlock him anymore. So I can't even fathom what Xerath's main have felt. Must have been completely akin to what old Trundle's fan felt. Then we did get Kalista's story, which was criticized by some (me included), because from a narrative point of view it shows nothing about her. It tells us what the sword-wife thinks and feels, but the champion is Kalista. From that story, I'd rather have had the sword-wife as a champion. The critiques of the second kind are thus not inherently comparisons with the old lore, but a narrative analysis of why they feel underwhelming, especially after the narrative team raised expectations talking non-stop about not wanting one-dimensional characters (hello vengeful Kalista! Hello mindlessly beastly Rek'Sai!) and writing characters who live and breathe, bringing these reasons as arguments in favour of the retcon.

So, people don't think those are valid arguments for the retcon, but even putting that aside and giving the new lore some chance (thing which I do, at the cost of being constantly let down), they don't deliver on their intended goals. That's the biggest critique out there.

Sneak Dog12/3/2014, 12:45:55 AM5 votes

I was on the euw forums a year ago. I watched narrative replace a character for a new one, because it fit their story better. With the dev blog, all I see is the continuation of this line of thinking. They couldn't write their stories with the IoW around, so they removed it. Xerath, same thing.

I'm ok with removing the IoW, but I hate how there is no replacement for the immersion it brought. I also dislike that the setting of the story is now a bunch of basic factions and there's conflicts. Mainly I don't like how the choice seemingly has been made lightly. They put out a dev blog. Now the premise of the story is entirely different, no AMAs or external discussions required.

However, what I am not ok with and what has made me lose all faith in Riots narrative is that** there's playable characters getting replaced.** I don't care if the new character is better/worse of if the old one wasn't popular. They are replacing playable characters for new ones. They even started with one of my favorites lore-wise. Trundle just got bluntly replaced for a similar but definitely different troll. Now, one year later, Xerath too, unless you believe main motivation is not a core part of someones character (Kalista says hi). Heck, I don't care the troll is an ice troll chieftain, I care that he should and could have been Trundle but isn't.

I've waited for a year, Trundle still is not Trundle. Why should I be even more patient when Riot seems to not even care? They just retcon not only the IoW but whatever they like and pretty much ignore our response to it and have done exactly as such one year ago. Perhaps the only reason I'm here is because there might be someone else than the lore department, like Ironstylus, reading this and thinking to himself that perhaps the narrative department should start living up to the standards of the other departments. Their content is getting to the quality it should be, but their approach is utterly infuriating for this old Trundle fan. They're not working with a blank slate and they shouldn't act like they do.

If you call me entitled for not wanting playable characters getting retconned after I invested time in reading their lore and started caring for them, do so. I indeed do feel entitled to exactly that.

I'll be in the lore forums for reasons probably best left uninvestigated, faithless in the new narrative department until they actually show respect for their old characters, retroactively. Or I'll just leave when they stop spreading the lie that they'll keep the core of their characters intact (or did I misinterpret that?) and admit that nothing is sacred in this time of retconning.

LordHippoman12/2/2014, 11:55:36 AM5 votes

I can probably say something about this, if you don't mind.

There's a lot of reasons not to like the retcon. Do I think the IoW and League should have gone? No. Do I think it was a good idea? No. But it's a new direction for them to take, and I can see why they might make it. I don't think it was a good direction, but I'm willing to give it a chance. And honestly? I've been playing since Renekton's release, and Reborn might have been the best Lore event I've seen. That was effort. That was cool.

Could it have been done with the League? Yeah. But it at least shows that there are some cool ideas that can still happen without it. I like Azir's story. I like Xerath's, though I do recognize that, yeah, it messes with his original character a fair bit, so big fans of the champ might not like it, and that's okay. I don't think we've gotten a piece of really bad Lore so far. No passionately passionful Katarina or anything like that.

And we still have a lot of really good discussion happening. DialMark4Action makes great threads almost every week, for example. The recent Morde and Mundo VU threads have brought up a lot of good points involving two underused champions. And I got to join in CupcakeTrap's Factions last night, and I watched a really cool match of Freljord VS Bilgewater champs (With a Godlike Anivia, damn).

So there still is a lot of good stuff happening. It's kinda hard to see sometimes, but it is. And there are a few posters who just seem to harp on Riot in every single message. Godwin's Law has been invoked like 4 times. Some posters who like to lash out at the anti-retcon crowd like they're some crazy cult worshipping a rock with the words "LEAGUE OF LEGENDS" on it. And that's not cool either. I think what unites us as a community is stuff like what I mentioned above, and so long as that keeps going, I'm not too worried about us suddenly melting into the abyss or whatever.

"Summoners" or Summoners, we still play League, we still read Lore, and we still make cool stuff. That works for me.

Speeks Engrish12/4/2014, 6:37:27 AM4 votes

I agree with the first part of your argument, but not the second. Yes, the anger and whining needs to stop. The retcon happened, it was terrible, and we all hated it, but it's over and done with now. Time to move on.

However, the retcon itself has left a large hole in the game. I realize that a lot of lore folks are probably capable of handling the separation of game from lore much easier than I can, but to me that immersive quality of LoL was huge. Champions were more to me than just pixels on a screen because off of the Rift, they had lives and backgrounds. If I read a fan fiction about an adventure Ashe had, or a conflict between Kassadin and Cho'Gath, I'd say "huh, so that's what's going on when they're not running around on the Rift." It felt like they were real people whom I occasionally interacted with through the medium of the game. That was cool. That was immersive.

And now it's gone.

I've heard people say "LoL is like Smash Bros now," but even that analogy doesn't work. Smash Bros. works because the characters involved already have their own preexisting lore through which players have come to know and love them. This lore defines them so that even when they are yanked out of context and made to fight against each other in am arena for no good reason other than "because it's fun," the players don't mind because the characters are predefined by other games.

League of Legends doesn't have that. Everything in the lore, from the characters to the IoW and the League itself, was derived from the game. New lore sprang into being alongside new characters as they were released and the settings that they lived in slowly came to life as the cast grew ever-larger. Now the Narrative team is saying that nothing we do in the game has relevance to the actual story or characters, other than the fact that they have the same names and are from the same place. In short, we loved the characters because of the game, but now Riot is expecting us to love the game because of the characters.

Even so, that might have worked If the characters had been built up before the game's release, whether through a comic series, TV show, or novellas. However, that did not happen and 5 years of lore and familiarity later, we're being cordially reintroduced to characters we thought we already knew and being given an alternate storyline to the one we'd come to embrace. Granted, that original storyline was pretty sparse, but it was relevant to the game and made us feel like we knew the characters. Now they're just strangers with the same names. Without that immersive quality, why even bother paying attention to the lore anymore? Might as well scrap the Narrative team and focus solely on the game itself at this point.

I approve of Riot's new direction towards making new stories and better communication (and boy have they been bold in stepping into some really hairy discussions on these boards!) and I sincerely hope they are considering, or working on a way to bring back that immersive quality by weaving the game into the story. If they can so that, I'll grab my Riot gear and hop into the mosh pit with them in a heartbeat.

In the meantime, I'll keep playing LoL, but I don't think I'll be able to shake the feeling that the game just got a little more hollow and meaningless each time I play it.

Solideus12/3/2014, 8:11:09 PM3 votes

I loved it when I heard about the retcon, the lore was overdue for some upheaval and a solid, clear direction. Stuff like the JoJ was cute, but it doesn't really build an appealing world, in my eyes.

It gets tiresome to see the first page covered in complaints, It's great to hear some fellow proponents do visit the forums occasionally. Sometimes it seems like the contrarians occupy the forums, scaring away new lore-fans, derailing threads and downvoting supporters into oblivion. But there is hope!

Diana x Me12/4/2014, 12:55:40 AM3 votes

bear with me here.

So i started here. CoD is mainstream and people don't think you are a gamer for playing it as it's pretty much become part of everyday life for a lot of people. People play CoD for the multi player not to learn about the campaigns. Did you see the gradual ripping away of the lore from the client? First the JoJ goes, then in the ingame tab where you can look at your stats and stuff like your armor pen etc. their used to be a lore tab right beside it, so that was removed. Then they started shortening lore in the bios. All the videos, yeah, they have nothing to do with the lore except the shurima incident where they said they screwed up and won't be repeating it.

Why is all the lore being put on the site instead of the client?

Easy, they want it out of sight and they see it as a compromise.

They for lack of a better term are essentially denerdifying the client.

Everyone forget Riots main mission? They want LoL to be on networks like ESPN etc. Recently ESPN shot them down saying they were not popular enough and would lose money if they aired. How to become more popular?

Make it more presentable to a bigger audience and that's exactly what they are doing. Which is also why lore is now separate from the actual game. They don't want people drawn away from it because some people think lore etc. Is nerdy/ for geeks their is too much stuff to look at or somehow think they have to know this which will push them away. The new art etc. more sexualized than ever. They are updating everything graphically to look more appealing. Large crackdown on toxicity. Adding new servers to even more places . Big one is massive focus on esports.

All these little pieces add up to a greater sum.

Earl Eulrich12/4/2014, 10:43:18 AM2 votes

But trust in the fact that the Narrative team are taking this slowly because they want to stay true to the Runeterran universe, and present it canonically, a setting where so much could happen (so much).

Maybe I can reply in about 10hours when i won´t be laughing and crying at the same time about this like a maniac anymore.

"stay true" is about the last thing I would ever associate with the retcon. "market things for the twitter-generation that can´t read more than 50words before becoming a headache from it" though, that´s the first thing that comes to mind.

Melancholy Exile12/2/2014, 11:02:02 AM1 votes

No, I don't want to see the Void invade Valoran, thats completely off-kilter in regards to the entire theme that the Void presents.

Sorry to go slightly off-topic but would you mind elaborating on this?

I have no great desire to see a Void invasion myself, and am equally perturbed by the new apocalyptic bent on 'The Harrowing', but I certainly can't claim to understand how such a thing would be in any way unfitting.