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@Riot, This is Hard to Say, but Because of Your Recent Decisions, I Don't Care About Lore Anymore.

Impetual·12/17/2014, 9:23:03 AM·114 votes·8,317 views

Seriously, why** should I care anymore?! The history of Runeterra has been re-written. ** And for all we know, it could be again whenever Riot feels like it. What is the point of getting invested in something that could change on a whim?

Riot's Narrative department won't even let us know who is on it. How can we blindly trust them, and take their words at face value, like we do the other departments at Riot when they're being so secretive for no reason? We don't even know who is in charge of Riot's narrative department!

The world that was built through the Journal of Justice and in depth champion bio's is no more. Runeterra is not what it was, and seems like it will never be again. After years of waiting Riot has still has not found a way to deliver lore content with the quality or quantity that it used to during Season 2.

Good job Riot, you created a great game, and then you threw the lore supporting it under the bus. You're doing the exact opposite of what WoW is doing with "Warlords of Draenor" right now.

You could have built upon your old lore, but you decided it would be better to erase it and take the lazy way out.

It's such a shame that we'll never hear any of the storylines developed within the JoJ continue.

I'm sorry if this post sounds too negative, but seriously...It feels like you guys threw away some of the opportunities that you had in order to deliver a game that (story-wise) feels inferior to what it used to be.

Edit: Seriously, to all and any Rioters and players, I would love to care about LoL's lore again, I just can't find a story driven reason to care about any of the games I play. If I'm missing something, please let me know, because I'm starting to feel like LoL is declining in terms of importance when it comes to the gaming community at large. This saddens me.

90 Comments

Athenes Lulu12/17/2014, 10:40:02 AM39 votes

League of Legends was actually considered special, apart from other MOBAs out there, because of the existence of the IoW and how the JoJ expands on it. I mean, that's what separates LoL from the other MOBAs.

Too bad the lore team got lazy and decides to ragequit on the whole thing because they feared that people wouldn't be able to catch up with the lore stuff. Yeah, of course people would be confused because they removed the "lore" tab in the first place! Not only that, the IoW was rather an opportunity, not a restriction to storytelling. Too bad they can't think of a reason for Gnar and Jinx (they are probably the worst offenders) to join the League, so.. "hurr durr, let's just erase the entire IoW altogether!"

Yeah, making Gnar being forced to be a study subject because he was the "neanderthal yordle" is totally not a good idea. If the IoW was rather a tyrrany rather than some peacebringing organization, that would still be better than nothing because that's actually something to develop on.

I'm gonna sound even more negative this time. Let's just fire the entire lore team if they can't even add legit lore to the existing champions. Or continue to make shitty repeated material such as Kalista's 3-sentence lore, cinematic, and her short story all saying the same thing.

Boswick12/17/2014, 7:17:06 PM27 votes

I hate to say it but I'm with ya OP. Removing the IoW was one thing, (a horrible decision) but why should I give a crap about the new lore when it is now "divorced from the game"? Lets be honest, we all got into the lore because it further immersed players into league.

I can't believe a narrative rioter (Opeli) honestly had to ask "why should video game lore be about the game". Just how clueless are you guys? I mean just.... Derp.

Sneak Dog12/17/2014, 12:09:39 PM26 votes

Hey, someone else on these forums finally joined me.** I don't want to invest in a lore where my favorite characters can be retconned and replaced.** If I would invest in it, I'd just get hurt again the next time Riot retcons a favorite character. It'd just be plain stupid of me to allow that to happen a second time.

Too bad narrative seems to be the only part of Riot actually unwilling to defend their decisions on the forums (well, and security, but that's for security reasons). Heck, it even seems they're taking this retconning of the very premise of the lore lightly. 'Put out a dev blog and move on.' I hope these things aren't intentional, but they sure seem that way.

Auryiel12/17/2014, 5:25:14 PM24 votes

{quoted}

We don't even know who is in charge of Riot's narrative department!

Neither do they

Avios112/17/2014, 6:45:35 PM21 votes

I ask for something here, if riot reads these comments, does everyone here Remember Ionia vs Noxus? back around season 2, Riot threw up a story that appeared, called Ionia Vs Noxus, where Demacia and Noxus had signed a peace treaty, but Noxus had looked elsewhere. Noxus would have invaded Bilgewater or Zaun, but their strength was more powerful than Ionia, and Noxus had planned to take it over. They had gone to the Institute of war to Settle their disputes, where Ionia and Noxus had reached an agreement. If the champions fighting for Ionia were to win, then Ionia would be able to keep their land and Noxus would have to withdraw from Ionia's shores. But if Noxus were to win, Noxus would gain permenant control of the three Ionian provenances. The battle was fought using 10 players, and the winning team would be able to choose an in-game item that would be added. That gave birth to what is now known as item 3158. I suggest that Riot does another thing like this, where two factions are pitted against each other, deciding the lore through losing or winning a game.

Trylobyte12/17/2014, 4:23:04 PM21 votes

A few things.

Riot's lore department needs a public face. Most community regulars can name important people in most departments - Gradius is information security, Morello is balance team, Hippalus is eCommerce, Phreak is eSports, Tryndamere is the CEO, IronStylus is art, CertainlyT is champ design. They all have 'faces' that we can assign to them, and that helps us personalize them. They have people who usually communicate with us so we get a look at what they do and why. Who does lore? I honestly don't know. The last name I know for sure was Kitae and that was well over a year ago, and I'm pretty sure I heard Kitae isn't in that department anymore. Lore has no name to go with it.

They also fumbled the IoW's removal from the lore. While I'm glad they kept us informed on their plans after so long, they removed something major from the narrative but had nothing equally big and impressive to replace it with. It's like a surgeon removing an organ from a patient, then having to wait for the transplant to arrive - You save time but it's not good for the patient. They promised great future content to come, but were pretty slow at getting it out there. A lot of their new material has been good (Sion finally has a respectable backstory) or at least different and thus interesting, but it hadn't been nearly enough to make up for everything that got damaged in the IoW's removal. It's also hard to find a lot of the time, which means I'm sure there are many people that don't even know that, for instance, Azir and Xerath both have point-of-view descriptions of the doomed Ascension that created them both as we know them.

Retconning the IoW entirely wasn't even necessary. They could have killed it 'in character' easily enough and made a big plot arc out of it. The IoW was powerful, but it was never established how powerful, and equally they were never described as being especially smart - They were people like any other and they could have easily fallen apart on their own. They stopped a skirmish between Demacia and Noxus, but destroyed a city in the process - What would they do if the two city-states ever really went to war? Or if both city-states, incensed at the League intervening in their conflict, decided they'd both be better off without the IoW and both attacked them? Further, how much would their own people let them get away with? Kayle was always there and always watching, and her contract doesn't state loyalty to any one person after all... if the High Summoner tried to commit enough atrocities she might quickly find out that leading a huge all-powerful organization doesn't mean much when your bodyguard wants to murder you. The League also had 'members' who were antagonistic towards the IoW like Nautilus - Suppose he got in one day with his new buddy Malzahar, smashed a few doors, and let Cho'gath loose? Or Brand? Or all of them at once, like Bane did to Batman? Any chinks in the IoW's armor would have severely damaged their Mary Sue reputation and made them vulnerable to the other forces, which would've been a damn good plot in and of itself.

KillerPenguins12/18/2014, 12:04:59 AM11 votes

I feel like the problem is that the people reworking the lore weren't invested in it. They're trying to tell stories that fit with their understanding of the game, which isn't the same as the lore we used to get. Maybe in the long run it will be interesting, but as it stands now they're just taking and not giving anything.

Baval12/17/2014, 1:21:46 PM11 votes

Heimerdinger being turned into basically a Noxian in his disregard for others turned me off the lore forever. Some of its still good, but its inconsistent and clear they dont give a shit about what came before.

Overlord Forte12/17/2014, 8:39:04 PM11 votes

There are two ideas I want to draw attention to, mostly.

The first of which is the 'changing of the guard'.

The original writers and storyline developers are, to the extent of my knowledge, almost certainly not with Riot any more. There is a certain difficulty in inheriting another artist's work, in due part because you are not them. If there is no documentation, especially thorough and precise, the new guard has the insanely difficult task of trying to carry on the old's work. To complicate this affair, the new guard has a different perspective, which means their vision may not align with the old whatsoever.

This is just the technical, the bones of the body, level administration.

Your new writers have to have a clear goal, idea, and the ability to present a vision that's in line with the previous product. Then there is customer expectation management, deliverance, and quality control to make sure your new work actually does its job. Consequentially, there is an adjustment period, an extensive internal R&D phase, and so forth. Then, once you have your new work force up to speed, they have to hit the ground running and not stop.

If the conditions are not right, this process takes magnitudes longer, and the real possibility exists your new writers may simply not work. Maybe they're incompatible, maybe they quit/are fired, etcetra ... the whole process can be triggered over again on a whim, potentially destroying hundreds of hours of time and money. Even the most stalwart advocates of story writing can pause at such an idea - no matter how much you like doing it, throwing money into a fire burns your house down eventually.

Our goal is to throw just enough money the fire burns brightly, but not dangerously. Everything is a balancing act in regards to that, because if we don't have a house, nothing will get made - full stop.

The second idea is the very struggle of artistic agency.

There is something to be said about 'wiping slates' and starting over again. Building a lego construct, a Minecraft fortress, or what have you - using methods and ideas the first time around, you know what to do differently in the second. Better or worse? It's hard to say, you have to create it to observe the improvements. Sometimes it is, sometimes it is not, at the end of the day.

Mass retcons and rewrites are the nuclear options for writers - scorching the earth so completely that the vision can be rebuilt with modern improvements. Yet artistic vision grapples with expectation and sentiment: your work could be objectively better, but factually worse because your readers care more about the old work. There's nothing you can do about that. In some ways, trying to cater to this group just stifles your talents and vision, and you can't put your heart into the work. Why create then, when it's just some assembly line product that your soul cannot be put into?

By necessity there is a pain to improving or creating, as much as we human animals loathe and despise it. Some people will lose when it happens, others still will win - the mutable viewership will change, but we can only see for better or worse after the fact. If our work succeeds, we can continue on course because we have the confidence of understanding our path.

If our work fails, we have to revisit everything and find something different. We have to unlearn what we did, and learn something completely new again. Time, energy, effort. Resource costs. At the end of it, we may simply find ourselves too tired to bear the burden.

I do not write this to excuse them, or belittle your feelings on the matter. It is the mechanical, systemic design that produces artistic work that I want to address. If we have that understanding, when we as consumers say, 'your product is terrible, please fix it', we will do so with the understanding of the people designing it. They may not be able to do what we ask, and Riot will have to find people who can. If so, we won't have anything for a long time - and in doing so, people will question why resources are even being put into the effort. Why devote resources into a blackhole that has the promise of returning something, maybe?

Starving artists is a cute idea, but a corpse cannot make art.

The cold reality is that a perfect storm may not happen and we will lose out - consumers and creators alike - because the machine could not be built to perform.

I Main Swain12/17/2014, 9:17:59 PM9 votes

I agree entirely, this if anything was one thing that made me really disappointed in the company. It wouldn't be as bad if the new lore weren't so aweful too. I mean, really, I could write better lore than they do in less than half an hour. there is no longer any central tie in story, nothing to hold the world of Runeterra together or give any explaination as to why all these random legends are here fighting each other. now, it doesn't have a much more central tie than super smash bros

Keevalroy12/17/2014, 2:38:34 PM9 votes

{quoted}

You're doing the exact opposite of what WoW is doing with "Warlords of Draenor" right now.

Some departments are still in the Cataclysm phase: "It's our game, deal with it. We don't care, buy our stuff lol!" Right now I think Narrative is coming into the Pandaland phase where they realized how bad they screwed up and don't really know what to do, so they do nothing and hope people stay.

After a while they'll enter the Draenor phase and look at what the community concerns are and see what they can do to actually make something enjoyable for the consumers. Look at what happened with the Lee situation - they apparently had no idea he was so overbearing and there are talks of him being changed based the interaction between Scruffy and the community.

I hate to say it, but waiting is probably the best thing you can do.

Xonra12/18/2014, 12:48:13 AM9 votes

Pretty much stopped caring as well.

I used to nerd on about it (yes I was one of THOSE people) and loved everything about it, is what made this game different for me. The game seemed alive, not just "go punch each other till you can't".

Now I don't even know what the lore is half the time, the characters don't feel special anymore aside from random people that showed up to fight.....except there is no more actual lore related fighting since there are no more summoner's, which I guess means no more summoner's rift, which means half the champions shouldn't exist, which means....a lot less reason to care.

I liked the reason a chick with a tribe based around the sun and the poor girl who was cast aside and is sort of a moon warrior now...joined the league, cool stories but now it is just randomness and neither character make as much sense.

Characters I LOVE are now completely irrelevant and are just kind of there. Without The Institute of War which does the whole "LEague of Legends" shtick there would just be a massive never ending...world slaughtering war, all the time. Everyone in this world seems to hate each other and are violent as all hell and the league solved a lot of that....so are people still fighting? We don't know. What about the people summoned just to the league? We don't know. What about the champions that were only not destroying the entire world because of the summoners? Guess what, we don't know.

So I just stopped caring because there are too many questions (and not in the good way) and likely never going to be answers. It makes the lore frustrating, not fun.

Stars Shaper12/17/2014, 9:22:05 PM8 votes

One of the reason I threw away DotA 2 was exactly the feel of: "Hey, there's a bunch of guys without any relation messing around in this field for various reason, enjoy it!"

Shíny12/17/2014, 4:30:00 PM8 votes

{quoted}

You could have built upon your old lore, but you decided it would be better to erase it and take the lazy way out.

They aren't lazy, theres a lot of words you can use to describe the narrative team and their decisions but lazy isn't one of them. They were disrespectful to those engaged in their world, their initiatives are unimaginative (Wandering Valoran has become the new entering the IoW) and not very exciting (I mean the best part of the shurima event was when they stopped talking and let the cgi team do work.) and they've become stubborn with no signs of empathy for the fans of characters in the way of the retcon (Hello to the new politician ascendantXerath)

Just need to stop saying they're lazy guys, you're being lazy by not finding the right words ;P

Otherwise though i agree, Riot has lost a significant amount of the trust or engagement they had in the lore of the world.

Flamingo Tango12/18/2014, 1:59:57 AM7 votes

I really loved the lore. I was sad when they took it away from the in game, and I really loved the storylines. IT's such a shame. With the latest they didn't even try.

I miss the lore really bad. I guess they don't care anymore but as a player I am really sad to lore. I loved the lore.

Axests12/17/2014, 5:08:13 PM7 votes

my question is how summoners didn't make sense? seriously riot stated the the existence of summoners and the institute of war didn't make sense but their new 'lore' makes even less sense.

Diana x Me12/18/2014, 6:45:22 PM6 votes

You know there was nothing wrong with the IoW being in the lore. It made sense. Yes, it prevented devastating conflict like the rune wars. But, the way i see it. It did not stop people from conquering anything. You want something done you do it through league. You want territory you do it through the league. You want to be a ruler you do it through the league. Monetary gain, prestige, power, land or whatever the hell you want, you can do it through the league. You get my point by now.

It's like gambling and basically anything is fair game. Now as far as revenge is concerned or taking over a territory like Noxus taking over Demacia or vice versa things get a little more complicated but, I have ideas for those too. This is kinda a rough summary of what I am trying to convey.

Now for revenge against a champion, no you can't kill them but, almost. More like imprisonment and they can only be released during matches. You can pretty much do whatever you want to a countries property etc. ( no you can't kill everyone part of a faction that's straight up evil) if all champs belonging to a faction are "terminated". Now here is the catch. It can be contested by the loser every "insert whatever the league deems fair for whatever it is". If you win, whatever ruling was made previously is now dissolved. If you lose nothing changes and you stay in that position or the winner can take more if possible or desired. Whatever rulings made are enforced by the league.

This was the original design behind it all. That's how the Ionia vs Noxus match was settled. Ionia wanted back all of southern Ionia and they played a match for it. They lost the first time and originally they were supposed to wait another 10 years before the could contest for it again. But, that's when Lee sin lit himself on fire and lost his eye sight (not sure how long after the first match they waited I don't remember tbh). Ionia took a gamble and put more on the table for there land back. They won the second time.

So what exactly does the IoW prevent besides the world being destroyed and champion deaths? Nothing.

el immagrente12/17/2014, 6:57:39 PM5 votes

To be fair, how interesting can it be for two warring factions (i.e. Damacia and Noxus) to be mortal enemies, when any kind of unrest is settled by a slap on the wrist or a show of force by the all-powerful summoners.

huhwhat12/18/2014, 3:59:44 AM5 votes

Back when they did extravagant stories for champion releases, and/or had interesting light-hearted background to characters (when the game first came out), with an approachable JoJ that seemed interactive with the community, that's when I followed lore. Then Riot neglects its for other priorities (ok fine), but completely throwing it all away and starting over? If you're not going to even try to creatively change the story (rather than just start over from scratch, regardless of your intentions), why should I care now? Amumu had his lore changed? OK great! I'll get right to ignoring it and never reading it, so when it changes again, I didn't waste my time reading Amumu_lore_rough_draft_v2.

BLU Medic12/18/2014, 11:58:39 AM5 votes

Every since the lore was 'redone', I've found myself playing less. I don't like the feeling that one say, Sona will stop talking to me and Cho'Gath will stop threatening me.

Narasimha12/17/2014, 5:49:04 PM5 votes

You can really say this about anything. Why get attached to anything? Everything is mutable. Any story can be changed at the author's whim. And in the end, thats their prerogative. Just enjoy whats there now. It might not be there later.

Zamaje12/18/2014, 4:00:41 AM4 votes

Ultimately nowadays, since the lore is so scarce. I simply say...

I miss League of Legends Lore. Any fleshed out lore would be better than what we have now.

But please, keep it serious. The fascination with poros is nice and all, but this is the opposite direction that the lore needs to go in. Do not make the lore cater to a child's cartoon. Have serious conflicts with major consequences.

2pudge1cup12/18/2014, 12:40:27 AM4 votes

I was never a terribly huge fan of the lore one way or the other. If a game plays well then that's good enough for me. This isn't Shakespeare.

That being said, lore is a part of Riot's broader problem of removing what worked for so many years. They constantly seem to get stuck on this phase of wanting to revamp something that works while ignoring an actual gameplay problem.

AYD Ankrauser12/18/2014, 9:00:01 AM3 votes

I actually liked the lore between Nasus and Renekton being on different worlds as brothers. 1 Beast faction saw the potential of the humans and so helped them. The other faction thought they were superior and started a war. Brother vs Brother until summoned to the League. Their lore went in-depth too instead of the measly couple sentences they now have. I stopped playing Nasus because of his lore change. item 3070

Ark Angel HFB1/16/2015, 6:11:58 PM3 votes

I haven't played in over a month and a half...

You could argue that is due to ranked being down... and you'd be right... but that is the problem.

I don't play the game for the joy of the characters anymore and the silly happiness the lore gave me...

No now it is merely a grind I do to prove some amount of skill.

Just saying the move to kill the passion that was built up over 5 years was a mis-weighted one at best.

Dotintheparadox12/17/2014, 10:50:55 PM3 votes

This post speaks to me, but unfortunately I think that the reds have just simply abandoned the boards due to the absurd level of head-butting that occurs on it. I mean we could still legitimately try and send a message about the general dissatisfaction the community has with the current lore to a higher state of office. From what I've seen, you would probably get better exposure over Twitter, since that's where most rioters like to talk now apparently.

But another screw you to us, we have no idea what anybody on the lore team has actually written so far or what projects they've worked on. Through their positions at riot they have adopted an astounding level of anonymity regarding their pasts. The only person that has even hinted at past works was Carnivalknights, who said that they had written H.P. Lovecraftian horror once in an AMA on a new champ.