RIP Old Lore Discussion Forum

Here spread this around, the wiki is still up, and it has everything http://leagueoflegends.wikia.com/wiki/Journal_of_Justice

I'm concerned that no-one sought to at least post about this on the original lore discussion first, with this move it really did feel like someone didn't want the old arguments against the new story philosophy openly available anymore. Although with the sheer number of complaints it's understandable. I also don't understand why there isn't even a link to the old forum, it still exists, it's just been redirected.

Hey everyone,

Thanks for putting your concerns on our radar. The redirect was something that we did intentionally, but not without thinking about what happens to all the awesome content you've posted in the Lore forums over the last couple of years. To be clear, nothing has been deleted, and is all still accessible with a direct link. ThorRush has already demonstrated that with a post in this discussion.

As for why we did this, let me explain! After the recent updates to the story, including all the new stuff coming out, we saw that the community was more active than anytime in recent memory. While super exciting, this also presented some real challenges with the old forums. We saw the creation of the Story & Art board as an opportunity to give the Lore community a new home, and the redirect is part of our long term desire to grow this community, and to phase out some of the old forums.

Having said that, I'd like to understand all of your concerns, so that we can reduce the pain you guys feel in this transition. What do you feel strongly about at this point?

So a few things.

1. I believe everyone was under the impression, and Riot made their stance very clear, that the old forums would remain while the CB is being developed. We were told that we could continue to use them if we decided we preferred them over the CB, and you would not force the CB on us. This may hold true for only GD, but I believe the community felt it applied to the rest of the forums too.

2. Not all of us have direct links. Some of us were lucky enough to favorite them so that now we can click and get the URL, but not all of us were that lucky.

3. Is there really a reason to NOT have a link to the old forums? Plenty of interesting sources and theories were on those boards. It seems like a waste of those resources for no reason other than promoting the CB as a place for CURRENT discussion.

4. And this is why this thread has some very emotionally charged speech. This happened without a warning to the community, so it seems like there is more to the story than there actually is. Clarity and communication are things you guys are trying to work on at Riot, and this kinda shows the lack thereof. Giving us a heads up that this was going to happen would have allowed us to favorite or save some of the links we felt we wanted to hold onto, or to at least get it reposted to the new CB. This lack of communication created a feeling of harm being dealt to the community, and honestly, it just seems like poor decision-making.

It would be nice to have the old boards put back up for a week or so, so that people can get whatever links they want to repost/save. Honestly, I can't see any reason not to and Tamat I think you'd be hard-pressed to disagree with that statement. I believe this was just Riot overlooking how important the old forums were to us, and making things right is as simple as putting them back up for a week so people can get the stuff they want/need.

The main issues, for me, are:

1. This was a change done without warning or discussion.

This has been a problem with things related to Lore and Narrative for years, starting with the removal of JoJ to Karma/Katarina/Soraka Retcons to omission of Evelynn from Shadow Isles to entirety of Freljord and silence afterwards to the recent ret-con announcement. Narrative is the only department at Riot that just does things without even the slightest hint or discussion. Not even a "How would you feel if..." question. It's as if Narrative is above interacting with their fans, as if are holier than the rest of us and just know better. That feels completely against the platitudes we hear from Riot all the time.

There wasn't the need to do the change two days after the boards' creation. A one-week warning on the old Lore forum would have been nice to give us enough time to move important discussions to the new board. As it stands, we can't really do that and the frustration with Riot and Narrative explodes once again.

2. It feels like unabashed and arrogant censorship.

Let's face facts: Narrative's years of silence and ham-fisted decisions have made many of their lore fans bitter and not trusting anything anyone from Riot says, much less the Narrative Team. So, instead of dealing with that wall and communicating with us in a healthy way, Riot removes full access to those forums and the thousands of complaints and criticisms of the story, old and new.

They also removed access to dozens of threads critical of their history, their stories and their apparent attitude [treating the community with silent contempt, shoving changes down our throats then complaining that we don't like them, making promises they have no intention of keeping (more communication from the dev blog), demanding blind faith when they KNOW they don't have the right to even ask (proof they're working on the story or will make complete changes) etc.]

Instead of addressing all that in a format that allows for direct feedback, Riot just gets rid of it all without warning or apology. It's a miracle, to be honest, that you even responded to these concerns, Tamat. We wouldn't, shouldn't or couldn't expect them from anyone at Narrative.

3. The board needs red interaction

It's not a matter of forcing them to do it, but if Solcrushed can ask questions of Poppy prior to working on her upcoming upgrade, Narrative could ask or answer a few questions and gauge how their plans would be accepted. Inconvenience or not, Narrative needs to stop making fake apologies and start keeping their promises.

Otherwise, all that Dev Blog will be is the greatest piece of fiction Riot's ever produced.

Those are the main ones, Tamat. They may not all be related to the issue at hand, but c'est la vie. :)

The activity increase you speak of regarding story updates is largely because the creative team finally broke their silence after stirring a hornet's nest with the Institute of War retcon. After which content/story telling aspects were finally brought forth again, something we haven't seen since Freljord back in early 2013.

This transition was handled with about as much care as the creative team has done with the retcon announcement.

Frustration aside, I want to be able to go into lore discussion and look at everything that's been posted there without having to dig for a redirect thread. I shouldn't have to find a direct thread link to look at a thread. I'm more concerned about how this matter is going to break the RP Community.

Personally. I'd rather the team would not force the board change on everyone. They seemed fine as two separate entities.

Another post. But considering General Discussion doesn't link to this I don't know why on Runeterra you would think this is appropriate at all to do without any warning.

I have to agree with Terra. This whole "Why don't you trust us?" or "We understand we need to earn your trust." thing you have been reciting for over a year and a half has left bitter sores festering all this time. You're NOT earning our trust by continuing to make drastic and unwarranted changes without taking the community reactions into consideration. You claim to read them (and I believe you do), however, hardly ANYTHING is modified or even so much as acknowledged when the community goes into "backlash mode" when said changes are less than desirable.

Let's name a few that had negative responses:

Everything that happened in the Freljord event. The Shurima event. Skarner / Rango / Cass reworks. Ahri not looking or behaving very "Ahri-like" in the cinematic. Features of VU's not being accepted well. The random nerfs to champions that hardly saw play to begin with. Champion creation and balancing around eSports - do NOT try to deny this. The lack of East Coast servers after 5 years. The balance team with blatant favoritism for certain champions. The random lore retcons after every update. etc...

And you want us to put blind faith into any team that constantly regurgitates variations of "Everything will be fine soon, just trust us! :)" You want to claim you're listening? You want our trust? Listen to us. Now, completely giving in to the demands of the community could be disastrous, but at least talk to us. Communicate what you want to do before you give us a surprise that might be taken as an insult to those the surprise was for. Wouldn't you want your teams working on something that you KNOW will be happily received?

I think it could be good if yall actually begin joining in on the lore discussions on these boards. There have been many popular topics discussing the lore changes that are directly aimed at getting some kind of riot response to help us understand the changes which have been, seemingly, ignored by riot.

I think you guys need to stop making sudden changes without warning or consulting the players. Repeatedly you state that you care about our opinion and mean well, and repeatedly you make decisions such as these. I honestly can't tell if Riot doesn't care, or forgets their own words. I can't understand how you fail to think your decisions out.

These are all the other forums that also redirect to this board format: Help & Support, Announcements, Lore Discussion, Art Feedback, Bug Reports, Esports Discussion, Competitive Events(to 'Report a Bug'?), Mac Client (to 'Report a Bug'), Public Beta Environment

Seems they wanted to move all active and relevant topics here first. I would personally have liked a heads up and maybe 'lock' them for a little while(week or so) as they redirected us all here first. That way it's not all 'lost' ect.

I don't think this is malicious, or really has anything to do with Creative. Riot in general wants to move everything onto the boards.

Possibly, but this is the sort of decision Narrative has been historically known to do (make a decision and take an action without getting feedback and not answering the "why" question.)

I'm really upset that Sylph's thread with links to all the Lore content is gone though. That was a fantastic resource. If we have a Red reading this, could we dredge that back up?

If you know the title of the original thread and you've visited it recently, you can type it into the address bar. Maybe you can visit it and copy/paste the info.

:: sniffle :: thanks for taking the time to remember that resource.

Don't think so, that post is still there. http://forums.na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?p=49744444#post49744444