To answer your questions:
are they going to replace old splashes around the world (specifically NA)?
Yes these splash arts will be used in all regions,so they'll be also used for the NA server
Why are they so different, and imo, bad?
The art style of them is different/the quality is low,because they were originally made for china and are actually really old splash arts,however they are used because riot still sees them as the better alternative.
why are they being censored for all (specifically Karthus)?
statue of karthus has a censored face because it is based on the old chinese model(phantom karthus as well,but since the splash art update he actually does look like that)
And the darkness over the regular karthus face seems to me more like a homage to the old one,I mean pentakill karthus looks pretty similar(just in a different color) and they never needed to censor his face
Why don't other people get input
polls would need to be made in every region for every splash art,which is too much work for something that is supposed to be temporary and where riot expects most people to agree with their decisions anyway.
they rather change the ones they think are better and if there is a huge outcry they'll change them back(they did this with nightraven fiora for example),so if you don't like one of them complain about it and look if others agree with you.
why doesn't someone acknowledge that there is a near 10 : 1 ratio of people who dislike the new splashes to like?
actually the opinions are pretty mixed.Keep in mind that people are much more eager to write about things they don't like,so if a splash art change goes uncommented then it is a good sign that people are ok with it and I've also seen threads praising certain splash art changes.
Why would they do that?
-these splash updates are only temporary,almost all of these chinese splash arts are considered outdated and will be updated with an entirely new splash art eventually.However since that takes time they instead do this for now,since it also makes the coding a bit easier for them.
