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Where the hell is the updated lore?

Matezoide··15 votes·1,361 views

The League has been removed MONTHS ago. You seriously expect me to believe that making new lore for champions that were connected to the Insititute of War is that hard when you have an entire team?

Seriously, where the hell is Fiddlesticks, Cho, Brand, Kog, Jax, Orianna, etc's new lores? How could you people delete the League without even thinking such a simple thing through?

And wheres the rest of the lore for ''updated'' champions? Cassiopeia, Kalista, Mordekaiser, Ezreal, etc got patheticaly short lores on the client.

Ok, fine, fixing a network code on your site takes 2 months. And clearly, posting the complete version on the game client while you fix that is impossible, so at least post the damn thing on your forums.

I can not understand how any of this could be possibly justificable. The complete lack of planning when the Institute was removed, the Lore Team's complete ignorance on how the client/web-site lore is connected, as well as this refusal to, at the very least, SHOW us the complete versions is amateurish at best.

14 Comments

The Archive9 votes

It's clear that they were able to update and change champions lore sections just fine when they gutted them. Apparently it's an issue to actually put things in.

Come on Lore Team, you had years of silence to work in. You could have at least made this retcon a smooth one.

CupcakeTrap6 votes

I'd like to add a rhetorical question which may come across as a critique, and to some extent is a critique, but which I've come to think of as a compliment:

Among all the new lore, which parts exactly required the removal of the League and Summoners?

(I know that they're planning to rewrite Summoners, but without a League, I find that more a negative than anything; the definition of a Summoner is someone who represents their nation in the League alongside their Champions. Creating a totally new concept and slapping the name "Summoner" on it sounds like more of a burden for the lore community than a boon: now we have to clarify we mean the actual Summoners, not the new non-League Summoners. I sometimes wonder if this is meant as a wrench to be thrown into community lore, because Riot's so desperate now that they're sabotaging their own community to try to force through this deeply unpopular retcon even into the realm of fanon.)

Okay, that was a long parenthetical. To explain my main point: they pitched the Great Retcon as necessary to allow them to write new lore. Well, absolutely nothing they've written would be a problem in the established League universe, and in fact generally becomes more interesting in that context.

But that's not really a critique! I'm glad that the lore they've put out is "backwards compatible" with the established League universe and, consequently, with years and years of community lore. (Well, not always: it does represent significant changes to many Champions, and surely there will be many more, but at least it fits with the basic idea of the League. Not trying to minimize the damage done to, say, someone who wrote a Xerath story that now requires a bunch of edits and updates to fit with the new Xerath.)

GreenLore1 votes

yeah so far there wasn't much that needed the removal of the league. The most interesting examples would be how champs like Renekton Gnar Kalista and rek'sai even joined the league. I mean it is easy to find reasons for a champ to join,but these 4 are either mad,don't really understand the world they are in,doesn't seem to be a person anymore or a wild animal respectively.

There are ways around that(Renekton and gnar could have been introduced into the league by Xerath and Lulu/heimerdinger respectively,Kalista might be still sane enough to understand that the league is a valuable source of information,but rek'sai might be hard depending on her level of intelligence)

CupcakeTrap4 votes

rek'sai might be hard

The oldest lore vaguely implied that Summoners would summon Champions from all over Runeterra to fight. That was, IMO, a really bad idea, and one that the community (and Riot) very quickly moved away from, but I think it might actually work for Rek'sai. Maybe Summoners really do just summon her over from the sands of Shurima for matches, then send her back. (Maybe it's not really possible to keep her away from Shurima for very long; even if they wanted to, they couldn't hold her. She's too bound up in the energy of Shurima.)

Wolf with laces5 votes

I hate most of the new lores, esspecially they are changing lores on the characters, that already had great and deep lores, take a look at skarner. He was in cryo sleep to protect the most important crystal to his kind, which gaved them their energy, but when he woke up he got to know, that his kind died to rune war and he got mad, really mad that he made kalamanda into crystal scar, where he comes from, his league judgment is the longest so far and when i was reading it i could almost feel the pain that poor creature has been through. You really envy this champ and......his lore is getting an update, WHAT THE ACTUAL......i'm not gonna be vulgar this time. Another example is Renekton. When i read about his lore i LOVED that character i really loved him. He got angry at his brother for getting more respect than he's getting and he felt like nothing, even though he was a great guardian of the library. He got mad at his brother so much he lost himself in anger and wanted to kill him, that was his goal and a reason why he joined the league. And now, he believes that it's brothers fault that he's mad now, ok it would have been his fault anyways in the old lore but now he's angry at him because he got mad on it's own and how did he got mad, i wonder? Ow of course, he sacrificed himself to lock down Xerath. Ok i can understand that, i like describing how they were legend, that's good but now i see Renekton as an idiot since it's not brothers fault locking him down, but his fault he wanted it, he asked for it, and if he lost his mind there like for real....then you killed the character now he's just dumb metal blade swinger, at least in the old lore he was still himself just really really pissed and full of anger. Riot please, when you are making a new champion, the champion HAS to FIT into the CURRENT lore not otherwise. Just because of some desert birdy king 5 champions got their role changed.... seriously.....seriously?

GreenLore3 votes

uhm they actually posted kalistas full lore on the forums.

and well they put a lot more thought into the direction they want to take the lore. When they originally created kayle and morgana they probably didn't have much more of an idea than "ok we have this angel world with some kind of government,we have kayle who is like supporting the government,to preserve the peace,but who is overall a good person and then theres morgana who is against it,but who does some questionable stuff to change it.The end"

Now they do consider more things like: -Where do Morgana and kayle truly lie on the morality scale? -How opressive is this government? -Where do these 2 even come from?Simply some other world?Noxus/Demacia?A new nation?Or even a new continent? -If the 2 come from their own nation,then what is the relationship between this nation and the others?what sets it apart from the others? etc.

I am disappointed too that they retconned the league before they even prepared all this stuff(as well as the fact that they already include short lores before they fixed the tech issues),but I can understand why it takes so long,because now they are trying to get it right once and for all instead of some vague characterisation.

Matezoide7 votes

uhm they actually posted kalistas full lore on the forums.

and well they put a lot more thought into the direction they want to take the lore. When they originally created kayle and morgana they probably didn't have much more of an idea than "ok we have this angel world with some kind of government,we have kayle who is like supporting the government,to preserve the peace,but who is overall a good person and then theres morgana who is against it,but who does some questionable stuff to change it.The end"

Now they do consider more things like: -Where do Morgana and kayle truly lie on the morality scale? -How opressive is this government? -Where do these 2 even come from?Simply some other world?Noxus/Demacia?A new nation?Or even a new continent? -If the 2 come from their own nation,then what is the relationship between this nation and the others?what sets it apart from the others? etc.

I am disappointed too that they retconned the league before they even prepared all this stuff(as well as the fact that they already include short lores before they fixed the tech issues),but I can understand why it takes so long,because now they are trying to get it right once and for all instead of some vague characterisation.

So you are telling me, in all the time they have been planning on removing the League, they waited to think of the new lore right now? Instead of planning everything before they did it?

Planning new lore takes long? Sure, i can accept that.

The problem is that, after several months since the retcon, plus all the months they spent considering if they should get rid of the League, the vast majority of champions that need new lores didnt get crap. That is not amateurish. It is downright incompetence and shows a huge lack of planning on the team's part. Dont you pretend they didnt have the time to prepare everything by the day they made that huge ass blog-post, because they did.

I am talking about the client/actual web-site. Kalista's ''lore'' is barely her's anyway. We learned more about the sword-wife than Kalista herself. Actually getting info on her outside of ''Spooky spirit of vengeance'' would be nice.

Characterization? Please. The new lore is incredibly vague and barely shows any hints of personality for the champions. Most of the new lore tells us absolutely nothing about the characters, Twitch's lore is completely unfitting to his actual character, Gnar's lore teaches us nothing about him.

Kalista, Azir, Gnar, Yasuo, etc, are far more unidimensional than literally every single champion that had a League Judgement.

GreenLore4 votes

Yeah I also think they should have prepared some stuff in advance before telling us,I mean looking at all the lores that didn't mention the IoW they probably planned all this for quite some time(and other-world champs were on the retcon list for quite some time anyway),so it is really glaring to hear that they actually haven't preprard anything for these champs.

However I disagree with you about some stuff of characterisation,I mean Twitchs lore is unfitting?Is it really so off to think that if someone stole twitchs stuff,that he would follow them and get it back?You forget that twitch had always been quite crazy.

Azir and Yasuo do have quite some characterisation,Yasuo was once an arrogant and battle searching samurai,but that caused him to fail his mission,he accepted that he did a mistake,but wasn't ok with being blamed for something he didn't do.Hearing his VO it has become clear that he isn't as arrogant as he was before(sure he's still a bit cocky,but thats about it),he feels genuine remorse for his actions.

And when Azir was announced almost everyone thought he'd be evil,because of his vanity and obsession with shurima,it was not off to see him as some mad conqueror.But in the end he was more like a noble dictator.He was naive in that he didn't realise Xeraths growing hatred for him,he couldn't understand how it was for Xerath to be a slave,but that didn't make him a bad person(as seen when he gives Xerath and all the slaves their freedom).His whole family died and his nation is in utter chaos,all because his best friend betrayed him,he is completely broken on the inside because of this.

I can see your point about Kalista and gnar,riot wants to tell stories step by step and well these lores are nice and fitting introductions. But the problem is just that we don't want introductions,we want the main parts,the important stuff that gives us a deeper insight into these characters and with riot failing to deliver some lore recently(and generally slow releases of lore) it simply is a bad move to give us just these small tidbits.

However people tend to generalize "new lore"=must be worse than anything of the old lore. I mean seriously the old lore also had fails like these(just look at hecarims lore which consists of hecarim running to the league and joining it,what does it tell us about him?He is an evil guy from the shadow isles duh.Same goes for Mordekaisers,Evelynns or even Garens lores).So I don't understand why it is suddenly such a big deal.Both new and old lore have their highs and downs,but at least in the new lore it becomes clear that riot thought a bit ahead and leaves some stuff in the unknown on purpose(unlike in the old lore where it became evident over time that they simply didn't think some things through)

Athenes Lulu3 votes

Does not exist.

Rito gave up on trying to make actual lore.

Anidan2 votes

I may have had a small tear try to form when I just now read Ezreal's new "lore." Ouch. They establish he's an explorer and found a magical pendant and that it amplified his power and that's all they did in the new lore. No real character development, no background on him beyond "being an explorer" or anything. That is... what are they doing in the lore department? His old lore was fine.

Matezoide1 votes

I may have had a small tear try to form when I just now read Ezreal's new "lore." Ouch. They establish he's an explorer and found a magical pendant and that it amplified his power and that's all they did in the new lore. No real character development, no background on him beyond "being an explorer" or anything. That is... what are they doing in the lore department? His old lore was fine.

Much to his embarasement.

Legacy of Xion1 votes

Ezreal is some little embarrassed ttwat is one of the problems though...

Melancholy Exile2 votes

"The stories for the Champions you outline are at various stages of completion. Some are done, some are in final revision stages (mostly heading into tech edits), some are being rewritten. All of them have had initial treatments that have either moved forward or haven't yet met targets for quality. "

not a starburst3 votes

This link. That link contains more or less the summation of my problems with the rewrite.

Riot's new lore is like someone throwing a pie in your face and then acting confused when you get angry. "But I thought you liked pie," they say. "Heck, we know you like pie. " "You threw the pie at me. You didn't ask me, you didn't give it to me properly or warn me ahead of time, and you didn't even let me actually enjoy it." "But don't you like pie?" "Yes, but you're delivering it wrong and not even warning me. If you really want to make me happy, ask for my feedback, and if you don't take it, tell me why." "No can do. Sorry."

I recognize rewriting most of a backstory as large as League's is a tremendous task. But Singed's backstory was a giant plot hole for 26 months, and nobody fixed it. But Cho'gath's backstory was problematic because Kog'maw had almost the same motives as him for 3 and a half years, but nobody fixed it. Gragas' lore was ham and cheese from beginning to end, but nobody even mentioned making him something other than 'fat drunk guy who gets in brawls lel'. The Great Retcon was in the works for a long, long while, but nobody bothered to fix any of this before unilaterally declaring most of the lore was now not actually true. And now Riot continually ignores demands for transparency even as the most highly rated threads in the forums continue to be requests for some kind of answer." What's so disheartening about all of this is that other than this Riot has been an exemplary company that seems genuinely interested in its customers and committed to enriching the League experience. Narrative seems to have fallen through the cracks, however.

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