Well, it's /ff from Narrative (Champion Lore "updates" on website).

TerraRising·10/3/2014, 4:27:25 AM·88 votes·36,980 views

Riot just updated the champion pages to include Azir. Here is his champion page. As you can see, there isn't a long form to his lore, as promised by Narrative, only the short form. Additionally, every other short lore posted on the client (from Skarner and Amumu to Renekton and Xerath) has replaced their previous long form stories.

I wouldn't expect a response from Narrative, since they're not going to say anything and do as little as possible without a leader.

So, I'll accept this as a surrender from the Lore team as far as anything promised in last month's Dev Blog. No direct communication, no new content, no anything that the previous leader promised (but never attempted to deliver on).

316 Comments

RiotRiotNarsil10/3/2014, 7:59:27 PM32 votes

I'll wade in a little bit here. Please trust me, we have not forgotten lore. We really are retooling, paying attention and doing what we feel is best for champion stories moving forward.

We're always trying to figure out when to communicate, when it's too early and what the potential risks may be. But we generally feel it's best to keep you in the loop, even if it risks some unease, even if the strategies are "in the works". That's because our relationship with players is really important to us and the feedback we get from you is critical.

I don't have all the answers you are looking for. I actually don't post on the forums as often as I want to. I'll poke some of the team on narrative and see if they can address your question.

I do want you to know, we're not leaderless. We're actually more excited about lore now than we have been in a long time. We're making significant strides, the team is rapidly evolving, but sometimes changes take a bit of time to get to you.

Thank you for pushing. Thank you for caring. Thank you for staying tuned. We are listening.

RiotRiotJaredan10/4/2014, 3:25:26 AM25 votes

Hi Terra and all,

First up, I just want to talk about the thinking behind the use of shorter character intros in the client, for those who may not have seen previous conversations.

The current in-client champion page is not ideal for longer stories. One of its core purposes is quickly introducing players to a champion, and we've run into format and character limits that further constrain our ability to tell rich stories. Our plan for this space is to have a short, thematic introduction to the character, for players who want to quickly understand who and what they are, and then a longer story on the website that can be fully dedicated to being entertaining and showing the champions within our story world. Long-term, this will allow us to actually explore more story for each champion than was previously possible. We don't want to take story away, we want to do more.

That said, I get that this means nothing to you until we've actually delivered it. To be perfectly honest, we've run into a couple issues that have temporarily set us back. Firstly, the champion info pages on the web and in-client both pull from the same database, and the tech change required to implement the plan I described above is taking a bit longer than expected.

More importantly, when we knew we couldn't put the stories out to you in the way we wanted - and after listening to some of the concerns you expressed during the Shurima event - we took a long hard look at the prepared stories we had and, frankly, decided we could do better. Azir and Xerath's stories are being rewritten and we are already pursuing other opportunities with Shurima-related champions.

Essentially, we're currently out of sync on a couple of fronts: 1) having the content ready for you, and 2) the tech issue we're working hard to solve.

Right now you might be thinking to yourself, "Surely, you should have had this all ready to go in advance?"

The only answer I can give is this: you're absolutely right.

We've made mistakes and seen the unease it has caused, particularly at a time when so much change has happened in recent months and in light of the promises we've made.

As I've said recently on these boards, we care tremendously about you, the players, as well as the story of Runeterra. I also know promises that we're working to get you much more story are meaningless until you see results.

As I mentioned, we're currently hard at work on some Shurima-related stories (not to mention future content), and we want to get the first of them out to you just as soon as we can properly finalize them. If we cannot solve the tech issue within the necessary timeframe, we will get the stories to you in analternative way, perhaps even through this board.

We're making a lot of changes to improve how Narrative gets story to you and how we engage in a dialogue about it - we fully understand that we need to do better.

Thunder Dreamss10/3/2014, 5:59:10 AM17 votes

I love how the lore teaser at the top of the page hides all of 3 words of the full lore.

RiotRiotNarsil10/4/2014, 2:16:46 PM12 votes

Yo!

I think if you get a closer look at how our engagements start, you’ll understand Riot a little better.

Yesterday a concerned Rioter forwarded me this thread and said, “Hey man, our players are asking some questions and we’re ignoring them. I want you to be aware”.

My response is, oh damn, I know that’s been a problem. I’ll jump in! Pew, pew, pew…

As I look at the thread, I know that I don’t have all the answers. I walk over to Jaredan and say, “Bro, there’s a question on the forums I don’t know the answer to. Can you jump in there”?

His response, “Totally”. We fist bump. It's that simple. I may not know all the answers. But I still want to engage.

Also at Riot, we like, sit together in many cases. Riot is an interesting place to make games. People here are not seeking approvals or unable to chat about topics. That's not what keeps me from talking about them. I want you all to have the legit responses from people really close to your question, such as Jaredan. That gets you the info you need. If I talked about it, I'd be making stuff up.

Also about fishing. Keep in mind this is the first time I've asked questions like this. So I’m genuinely interested in your response. You have thought about this a lot and commented a lot, heard it from other Rioters, etc. But my perspective is new.

Who can you talk to? You can talk to me. You can talk to Jaredan. Next week there will be another person who I think you will find very interesting as well. These are really knowledgeable folks.

Sometimes we’ll be able to give you the context. I want to be honest, sometimes we won’t. We don’t want to ruin the surprises coming down the pipe and we don’t want to promise something that doesn't manifest itself. Production has its up’s and downs (MC where?). Think of all the other content we create such as splash art, SRU, champion updates, etc. At some point player's see the work and we talk about it, but it's not always before we start the work. We learn over time as we release content.