Remember when he was a daring magus who sought to master the arcane? Remember his Judgement? Remember what he lost to attain his power?
Yeah, screw that. Let's make him a bitter nobody to shoehorn Azir into the story. When your champion releases retcon compelling characters into this kind of crap it's really time to reevaluate your writing decisions. This isn't as bad as the Jayce/Viktor thing but it's pretty close.
Shokah6 votesDoing things for 'power' is pretty common. The ability to change things comes with power to do so. For us money often equals power. Be you politician, manager or king. In a fantasy setting "magic" being power shouldn't be that hard of a jump.
Most people can fathom a terrible accident as the result of their own mistake or decision as a result of misguided hubris.
Plotting the genocide of your own people is an act that if you can identify with says much more about YOU than Xerath.
It's the difference between 'stock' bad guy and 'tragic' figure.
If anything he should have some empathy or sympathy for his fellow slaves. Making it so "he done goofed" because Azir freed everyone is lame cop-out to make Azir seem more 'good'.
I don't have an issue with Riot making a change to the champion but to pretend they attempted to keep his core motivations is completely inane.
Accusing me of being to unable to appreciate change is a lame attempt to deflect the point of my post and by proxy the thread and the opinions of those who are unhappy with it. I'm sorry you can't handle discourse or that you are personally bored by it. So far Riot's ability to keep the core has a terrible track record. Ask Trundle, Karma and Cass fans. Riot should just own up to flat fiat changes of the characters and everyone can go home ;P
LordHippoman4 votesHave you read the new short story that pretty much aims to restore that by giving him reasons to do what he did? Because it's stickied. Right above you. And it's pretty good.
Dunderflump5 votesHave you read the new short story that pretty much aims to restore that by giving him reasons to do what he did? Because it's stickied. Right above you. And it's pretty good.
Yes. It's very weak. Azir's story is good and Xerath's is not.
LordHippoman2 votesWhy do you think it's weak and Azir's is good? They have pretty similar basic structures. I'm not trying to slam you or anything, I'm legitimately curious.
GenoXx1 votesThere is no reason
Dunderflump4 votesWhy do you think it's weak and Azir's is good? They have pretty similar basic structures. I'm not trying to slam you or anything, I'm legitimately curious.
Because reducing him from what he was to some bitter slave is a terrible retcon. Go read Xerath's judgement and reread this new story and tell me the new one's better. The writing isn't bad; it's the characterization.
LordHippoman4 votesI liked this one better because it gives him more connection to the world. He has a link to another major character now, and it IMO makes him way easier to empathize with when he's been a slave his whole life, and his bitterness causes him to do something he didn't really think all the way through (Azir really thought of him as a friend and freed every slave in Shurima, but Xerath was so blinded by his own anger he didn't really realize that until it's too late to stop it). The old thing with his wife was good, but she was a character who existed to have like 2 lines and then explode. Azir is a character who has personality and prescence in the game, and I think "I did what I thought I had to do, even if people had to die for it, although I have my regrets" is a better sort of misguided villain trope than "I like magic power a lot even though I accidentally blew up my wife".
Just IMO though, I can see why people like the Tabia thing, and I wish it wasn't a retcon, but making do with what we have has been the Lore forums thing since like Season 1.
DG Ashabel5 votesBecause Xerath's story makes him literally Van Hohenheim from Fullmetal Alchemist except evil. He's a story stolen from a popular graphic novel, simplified from a simple slave's discovery of knowledge and ambition that leads him toward an act of hubris, to a mere "I want to be free therefore I'm going to scheme and murder and be evil".
I won't defend Azir's story either though. The thing is a disaster stylistically. There are such things as pronouns and descriptors, instead it goes Azir Azir Azir Azir at you every other sentence. The ending is rushed and descriptions are lacking.
It's just not very good writing.
Shokah4 votesWhat? "I blew up the whole F'in empire full of innocents because this guy is a dick and I'm bitter" vs. "I exploded the town because I didn't realize the effects of what I was doing til too late."
Clearly we have differing opinions on what makes him easier to identify with.
Valaran Nara5 votesThe one who blew up the empire had a realistic motivation whose actions were driven through a more realistic thought pattern and perspective. He hated Shurima because he's been a slave all his life. Sure, instead of an empire, he blew up a town, but instead of it being because of deep seated emotions it was "I did it for the power!"
Wait, scratch that. Not power. MAGIC POWER!!! Because, you know, instead of being human with deep grudges and emotions like in the new lore, they should bring back the sociopath that had an unhealthy obsession with gaining ultimate power and, oh, let's slap on the lost of his wife, JUST to make it seem super sad and less 2-D
Cause, you know, instead of losing his wife, he kinda lost his brother...and everybody in Shurima...after realizing he done goofed up and being completely unable to undo what he started. You know, stuff. It's okay though. Change is hard. We need to make sure everything stays the same so new developments could never happen, so we won't have anything to worry or complain about.
LordHippoman4 votesI don't mean the actions are justified. I just think it's easier to understand "I hate these people because they enslaved me my whole life" than "I like Magic a lot."
Melancholy Exile6 votesSee, I would actually frame this very differently:
Xerath's original lore put him in a fairly recognisable niche of being the scientist/researcher/mage who becomes utterly obsessed with a goal, pushes all those around them away, and eventually heads towards an experiment where everything goes catastrophically wrong/right and leaves them as something monstrous - it's a well-trodden road in comic books and adaptations thereof. Were he in another story or medium he might well have been trying to raise the dead, create super-soldiers, develop some sort of super-weapon or synthesise human DNA with that from an animal. He's essentially the guy who tried to build a magitech Large Hadron Collider that went horribly wrong.
New Xerath (Please note that my own biases may be in effect here) is a man who became so obsessed with the perceived corruption and unfairness of an empire, along with his own lack of true freedom, that he resolved to kill everyone in the kingdom and betray his supposed friend to steal an assorted package of superpowers for himself. He's not put forward as someone who plotted a rebellion or even in the Jafar-esque role where he sought to rule in Azir's place, but instead Xerath is a man who apparently found genocide more palatable than actually trying to change Shurima and make it something better - even if "better" meant that he was the one giving the orders.
And that, for me, is one of the biggest problems with new Xerath: Previously he was a man who sought knowledge that humans simply could not possess, eventually transcending humanity to bring himself closer to the achieving that understanding, and brought about the ruin of Shurima because he tampered with such dangerous forces and ultimately remade himself into a being who had no regard for human life or morals. In stark contrast, the man we see in Xerath's new piece is someone who is so inhuman that he values his own freedom above the lives of countless people, willingly playing everyone around him for fools and plotting the destruction of an empire that freely gave him everything in the world except his freedom ... and it even gave him that at the last moment. He doesn't even desire Ascension for the power or to become the essential God of a new kingdom, it just comes across as being a means to an end and way of spiting Azir and his line by turning their hubris against them.
Xerath used to be a man who eventually abandoned his humanity only because the pursuit of knowledge was all he had left. The new lore has made him someone who was perfectly comfortable committing genocide to secure his freedom alone ... and this is before he becomes the lightbulb with a God Complex.
Shokah2 votesXerath is a man who apparently found genocide more palatable than actually trying to change Shurima
And that, for me, is one of the biggest problems with new Xerath: Previously he was a man who sought knowledge that humans simply could not possess, eventually transcending humanity to bring himself closer to the achieving that understanding, and brought about the ruin of Shurima because he tampered with such dangerous forces and ultimately remade himself into a being who had no regard for human life or morals. In stark contrast, the man we see in Xerath's new piece is someone who is so inhuman that he values his own freedom above the lives of countless people, willingly playing everyone around him for fools and plotting the destruction of an empire that freely gave him everything in the world except his freedom ... and it even gave him that at the last moment. He doesn't even desire Ascension for the power or to become the essential God of a new kingdom, it just comes across as being a means to an end and way of spiting Azir and his line by turning their hubris against them.
Xerath used to be a man who eventually abandoned his humanity only because the pursuit of knowledge was all he had left. The new lore has made him someone who was perfectly comfortable committing genocide to secure his freedom alone ... and this is before he becomes the lightbulb with a God Complex.
THIS
There is a fundamental difference between MURDER and NEGLIGENT (Homicide). What drives a man to do anything? His motivation. New Xerath is NOT the same.
Diahane5 votesI stand with this point of view. I think that the new Xerath just goes for a whole different theme than the original and this shouldn't be the case if Riot really wants to mantain the core of their champions when they rework them.
We can argue with semantics and abstract concepts how much we want that the two things could be thought of as two different specific version of some more vast trope, but the underlying problem of being a pretty much different implementation of the general "wanted x, took y with a vein of regret" remains. If it was not freedom but, say, ponies that he sought (Azir promised him one for his birthday but it never came), it would still be "wanted x, got obsessed by it, destroyed an empire and got godlike", but it would make a huge difference. The same goes with the difference between being an obsessed researcher of the arcane and being a slave hell-bent on getting his freedom and vengeance through not simply any mean, but the very one which would spite the most the entire civilization of the one who wronged you. Similar structure, completely different story. They deliver on different fantasies and I think Xerath was supposed to deliver on the Magus Ascendant one, not the Vengeful Ascended Slave one.
(Besides, I personally think want of freedom is an overrated thing, so it doesn't really strike any chord to me.)
I do understand why people can like the new story even more than the old, because it's subjective and it's a good story. But I don't agree at all with anyone saying Xerath is the same character in his core nor that he delivers the same experience as before. One could look at this as a problem or as a feature, that's up to his/her own judgment and tastes. My opinion is that this is an issue that has been overlooked and that sets yet another precedent.
PerchancetoGame1 votes(Besides, I personally think want of freedom is an overrated thing, so it doesn't really strike any chord to me.)
That's why I posted here - freedom is a pretty abstract concept. It's one of those things one probably won't fully understand until they don't have it anymore. Or never did.
Though out of curiosity - do you mean the desire for freedom is overrated or freedom itself?
Diahane1 votes(Besides, I personally think want of freedom is an overrated thing, so it doesn't really strike any chord to me.)
That's why I posted here - freedom is a pretty abstract concept. It's one of those things one probably won't fully understand until they don't have it anymore. Or never did.
Though out of curiosity - do you mean the desire for freedom is overrated or freedom itself?
Both, actually. Since you said (wrote) you were curious, here there comes my philosophical point of view. I have a pretty arid opinion of life and the universe. I reject all eschatologic perspective and think we lead vacuous lives in a non-finalistic universe, with no absolute "goals" to reach, but only our own ones, which we set because living is literally the only thing we can do. Death is no alternative, when death is, we are no more and when we are death is not, so we can't actually experience death nor take any action after it. We can still kill ourselves and choose willingly death, but that just amounts to ending life and stating we don't find it a good time killer any more. In all this, we aren't actually free. Freedom is but a delusion of our minds unable to grasp the complex dynamics of our lives. We are programmed, coded by genetics and the environment around us - thus the complex non-linear dynamics, we are affected by something which we affect. Thus chaotic patterns ensue and we interpret the difficulties in seeing cause and effects by the notion of "free will". Actually, I think it could be a good research field to analyse this notion and to verify if it's a thing in our world or not. So I do think freedom is highly overrated, there's been a lot of debate about free will throughout all of history and a lot of people have judged and judge the lack of it as a most dreaded scenario, but it's not actually that despairing: if it were true it still wouldn't change anything about our lives on a practical level, only on a conceptual one.
On a more social and less fundamental point of view, desiring freedom is inane because it cannot be attained. If you live in a society of whatever the kind, you can't be free, because you have to deal with the limitations interacting and coexisting with other people impose. Every interaction with every object or animal or person breaks your freedom, because interactions have their laws and are not fully in your control. Only a single particle in the absolute void could be free. Unless it self-interacts. So freedom is an abstraction and the desire for it just a quest for a reduction of restrictions one feels, but on a fundamental level you can't be free. Of course wanting a better condition is legit within certain circumstances, but in the case of Xerath, whom from the looks of it was not mistreated and held great influence and wealth, it's a desire for an ill-defined concept in my eyes. That's why I am not emotionally moved by it. By this I don't mean of course it's a bad thing.
Shokah2 votesThat's true LordHippoman, but should narrative really be shooting for Lowest Common Denominator, when they have 114+ champs to do stories for? It's bad enough some of the champs have kits that aren't hugely different. We've already got LoL tropes beginning... ADC ladies are all secretly princesses and the men are somehow tragic gunslingers.
Trylobyte2 votesThat's true LordHippoman, but should narrative really be shooting for Lowest Common Denominator, when they have 114+ champs to do stories for? It's bad enough some of the champs have kits that aren't hugely different. We've already got LoL tropes beginning... ADC ladies are all secretly princesses and the men are somehow tragic gunslingers.
PerchancetoGame2 votesBefore I address the change itself, I want to respond to how some people's attitudes towards 
's motivations, which I think is oversimplifying - whatever you may think of the ret-con - best characterized by OP:
a bitter nobody.
He's a slave - it means he doesn't even belong to himself, whatever else he has. Consider that for a moment. No amount of comfort, friendship, elevation or education will change the fact that he is someone's property. I doubt that any of us would be happy with the knowledge that people would view our lives as inherently worth less than that of others, and whatever value we did have was ascribed to us by someone else.
From both stories, we can see that in 's case, 
valued him a great deal - which is great. However, there's a difference between being someone's trusted friend and confidant and being a trusted friend and confidant that they own. After a while, Xerath would begin to see Azir as either powerless to change what was a deeply engrained institution or viewing Xerath like any other slave, albeit one who he cared about a great deal - someone who's place was and always would be, at his master's beck and call. From what we can see of Xerath's character, he clearly moved towards the second conclusion - that Azir was more unwilling than unable to free him. Realizing that someone you considered your brother for most of your life doesn't believe you're worth the effort to help become your own person would likely feel like an immense betrayal.
Sure, he's the emperor's best bud which counts for a lot but that is essentially all he has. Whatever status he has comes from being the emperor's slave - as far as society is concerned he will never be a real person or the equal of a free man in his own right. Clearly, this argument can be flipped around to say that he only had all the advantages he did because he belonged to - education, comfort, etc - which he more than likely wouldn't have had if he had been a free, but presumably common, man.
That brings us to the second point though. We can see from his story that he had begun to question the stratified nature of his society - an elite few at the top given all the opportunities while the rest of the population is stuck on square one until they die. He was in a unique position, being raised among the nobles but certainly not one of them, and able to see both ends of the spectrum. This perspective on the system would (and did) lead him to wonder why the system was the way it was, which would in turn lead him to seek not just his own freedom, but to topple the entire social order and put himself in a position to rebuild it how he believed it should be.
Yes, what he did was morally wrong - causing massive collateral damage and killing likely thousands of people. That's a given. However, my point is he had fairly good reason for being extremely bitter, and that is bound to eat away at a person in general, let alone their moral framework.
And that was a bigger post than I planned - I'll have to come back later to explain my thoughts on the ret-con proper.