Three years after announcing the retcon, it's still not complete.
Runeterra is still an awful, jumbled mess.
This is your yearly reminder.
I must confess that this should have gone up on Monday if it were being true to the anniversary.
Well, technically the in game is not canon... and that includes the in game lore.
The only true lore is from the Universe Page
Then leave
I actually liked the Institute of War.
[zombie-nunu-bummed]
Welp. It is very rare that I leave a comment in the Leauge of Legends forum, but here I go.
The old lore was decent. I adored the Judgements, the character biographies, and how they were all connected by the Institute of War. It had an okay backstory with why the Institute was formed. However, the old lore wasn't great. There was a lot of room for improvement plot wise. There was no overreaching "big bad" to drive conflict, character growth, or realm expansion. The majority of the conflict was purely political among the city states. eyeballs Noxus and Demacia Thus, when the Institute of War was formed, it effectively killed the primary conflict driver in place. While various champions still had unsolved conflicts, such as Caitlyn searching for the mysterious trouble maker C, Fizz's people just disappearing overnight, among other examples, those weren't enough to drive a story.
Therefore, without a solid source of conflict, it was very hard to expand the world. Story telling wise, a lot of heroes or champions are born in conflict, need conflict to be forged into a hero, or just need difficult trial to make them shine. Or, in some cases, fall into darkness for the anti-hero. In order for Runeterra to grow in a story telling sense, it needed change. Plot wise, the Institute of War, killed all new heroes by removing the primary source of overreaching conflict. Almost all of the older champions were forged into heroes by the very conflict that the Institue of War of ended. The Blood Brothers, for example, were made great by the political conflict between the City States. Riot figured that a retcon and fresh start would fix this. I personally don't see it fixed, instead, I see what the OP mentioned... a jumbled mess.
What we have is a several "Big Bads" to drive conflict. Their purpose and stories are sewn into the story of Runeterra like a badly sewn patchwork quilt. Each piece is valuable and pretty... but when badly put together, it's not very worthwhile. While the old lore was okay, I felt a greater connection with the champions forged in that original lore. While there is a lot of the new lore I personally like, there is such a disconnection that I don't really like very many of the newer champions. While some are interesting, they lack the hook they first few had. I suspect it to be because the story they're in isn't very well constructed overall. If League of Legends lore was a book, the new lore I wouldn't read past chapter three. If the old lore were a book, I would read it through till the end and say "This was okay. I liked it." Then... not read it again because it was okay, not great.
So where is it still a mess exactly?
I'm always fascinated by where or what someone has issue with- however quite typically in threads like this the OP is extremely vague about their point. This could be because the OP has no constructive argument beyond simply whinging, other times it's because the OP has very limited comprehension of the very thing they're attacking and sometimes, although more often then not, the **OP is just a wildly cynical d-bag who refuses to even humor the optimistic perspective. **
I am not assuming you ARE one of those, but one cannot make an favorable argument for or against anything without detailed clarification and simply saying "still awful, jumbled mess" doesn't strengthen the opinion. Because there is nothing significant to give the reader insight into your particular logic.
Also if you do respond, how about a small mention on what you do like about this lore, assuming you've attempted to give it a go.
I do agree that the lore is a mess. But it has less to do with things like the LoL still existing in whatever lore it still exists in (which is a problem that should be corrected), and more that the world they've created now has technologies, economies, and social structures that make no sense and everywhere seems to have their own ancient magic evil they have to deal with. Some places have 2 separate ancient magic evils. That timeline is what makes it a pretty strange mess.
The Institute of War does not exist anymore, the Summoners do exist but we don't know what they are in the new lore probably just common sorcerers who summon stuff. If you are talking about the ingame maps you can never really compare pvp gameplay with the lore in any type of game, its 2 different things although the maps do exist lore-wise. The Summoner's Rift is probably just the place where the sorcerers live.
I've had this nagging suspicion that the retconned the league just to reintroduce it revamped at some point. Idk why but i just have this feeling that once theyve fleshed out all the champions and back stories, theyll have the league come in just in time to stop a void invasion and establish its dominance while being able to force the world to submit to their judgements.
