Hey Riot, how do you feel about maps? I always hear that Riot is never going to make one because "maps might look different depending on who's making them." However, can we ever have some generalization of where each faction is on Runeterra? Or even what Runeterra LOOKS like?!? I feel like the appearance of the world is a KEY feature to worldbuilding, and helps give us insight to the scale of conflicts and the factions.
Hello! Someone said maps, so here I am :)
To answer your first question, I feel very strongly about maps. Love them, love poring over them, examining them, making them, finding them referenced elsewhere, imagining myself travelling their ways, etc.
I think you may have misinterpreted (or been misinformed) on our current stance on maps, however - we are looking to make and release more maps in the future (as fast as I can get them to you - which is frustratingly slowly).
What you may have heard was that it was unlikely we were going to drop a full, scientifically-accurate, world map in the near future. That's still true, but the success of the Medarda Heirloom has meant that internally Riot is getting a better understanding of how important maps are to players like us. There are quite a few map fans in the office, but without data, it's hard to prove that it's not just a few dozen nerdy Rioters who love maps ;)
I agree that a map is a fantastic tool for conveying world information and relationships, and every time I do a search for "Runeterra map" and I see the old, non-canon, map, I feel sad. Working on having something else pop up in those search results instead, but it may be quite a while. :/
League of Legends home > Universe > Regions > Piltover > The Medarda Heirloom (it's a trade map from Piltover)
http://na.leagueoflegends.com/en/featured/piltover/medarda-heirloom
I like how for now the maps, the choice of geographical landmarks and locations all fit in describing the history of every faction we know of as of now.
Most probably we will never have a full-rendition map of Runeterra, it would kill all the innovation.
The World of warcraft development team once did a zone where there were these globes that showed up all the world, but actually only showed up the regions that were visitable at that moment. They regretted that a lot.
I literally ran across this thread and found it interesting;
So let me put all the hubub arguing to rest here and sum it up for everyone (including Riot):
From what I understand some of the posters' issues with this map / lore stuff, is that
Riot seems to be developing 'fluff' lore stuff without meaningful and emotionally impactful story substance.
Personally, when I get involved with an awesome fantasy novel or even with a movie/tv show for example, sometimes I'll want to research and explore all the lore and pore through the minute details on everything relating to their worlds, cultures, peoples, individual characters, et al.
As someone who has played League for a few years, to be blunt, I don't give a twitch's behind about the "lore" of League. It's unfortunate and somewhat sad, because I really really like playing so many champions and have a shit ton of skins because of their cool looks, the VFX, VO lines and whatnot; but their background and story? Never even once crossed my mind to take a look.
For example I absolutely love Jhin and his obsession with '4'; sometimes when I'm feeling spicy in-game playing Jhin, I'll "cosplay" his lines and adopt his "character" while playing. But his background story? Never felt compelled or drawn to it because Riot hasn't really put emphasis on drawing in the playerbase with their game and champions' storyline.
Now, I'm sure you folks at Riot adore your characters to death, and I'm sure you really, really, really want to have us, the community, share in the romance, adventure and unique, tiny details of the world of Runeterra.
The sad fact is, either your art/story department is understaffed/underpaid, or you guys haven't really fleshed out a solid path toward building an all-encompassing world that both looks cool and has substantive details.
What do I mean by substantive details? Well, to take one of the posters' examples... you all released a map of Piltover or whatever, with some names of small cities/towns splattered throughout. And I get the intent, according to the Rioter responses in this thread, their notion is to release visual content first, then build up the world from there.
The problem is that method is not only shortsighted, but prone to never becoming complete. You simply cannot release new champions, new "visual lore" like maps, names of cities and places and people -- without first creating the entirety of each piece's backstory first.
Xayah and Rakan -- all I know about them is they're a couple, they're something called "Vastayah" or however it's pronounced, and some other champions like Rengar come from their homeland. Oh, and there's something about them fighting for their home freedom or whatever. That's it.
Besides that, when they were released, there was absolutely nothing that I noticed either on the forums, the website, or in the client itself that compelled me to learn more about them. And if I had decided to, would I even get anything more than cursory, superficial stuff like "Xayah loves Rakan! Sometimes they fight, but they really love each other! Their home was destroyed in a fire/whatever and now seek vengeance for some atrocities committed against them/their people! Bird feathers! Whew!"
What these other posters mean with their arguments is simple: build the fucking world first from the ground up. That means cross all your T's, dot all your I's, and flesh out the existing champions, their backstory, their homeland's backstories, their culture, everything.
This is Basic Fantasy Novel Writing 101 (Trust me, I have a library of how to write novels because I'm a writer, myself). You can start with the general, superficial stuff such as character names, places, et al; but at the end of the day in order to build a realistic, detailed and COMPELLING world for others to really dig into, you must flesh out all the minor details as completely as possible. Once you do this, then everything else is easycakes.
And if you have already done all this to the level of detail necessary; then why is it not being used already?
So, I asked this question a while back myself https://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/story-art/10xoTGxJ-possible-updated-map-of-runeterra and @BioLuminescence answered the exact same way she had on this post (I was actually really happy to get a Rioter response on my post so this may cloud my judgement and sway my opinion).
Reading these comments makes me hella sad, mostly because I sympathize with Bio and how much pressure she is under not to break NDA, or reveal to much of Riot's Plans regarding lore, but also because of how upset a lot of my fellow Lore nerds and gamers are about the current state of information available to the player base regarding Lore and Maps in general. I too want a "Westeros Style" map so that I can understand Region relations, Capitol locations, sites of important events and how close they were to major cities, and stuff similar to that. That being said I completely agree with Riot's stance on not limiting the narrative or setting complete/final borders on what Runeterra and Valoran may look like; and here's why:
In a game that is ever changing and introducing more characters (each with their own back stories and lore) you have to understand that unlike Westeros and Tolkien's world where there is One Story and One Timeline (regardless of whether they are told by many points of view or have flashbacks), Runeterra is not like that at all. YES, it would be easier to have one story-line, start to finish, and get a fleshed out world that has a completed map with everything we lore nerds love, but RIOT cant do that unless they are willing and ready to limit themselves to a set guideline and narrative. This limits the diversity of characters and stories they can tell, because they can't create new towns, new regions, new races, new anything without messing up or changing the map and narrative they set in place.
Those worlds built by GRRM and JRRT can have a complete map and fleshed out world that isn't super "amateur world buildy" because the characters they introduce and the places you learn about have influences and importance to the narrative, POV/characters and story. They can have a map because the story is written (or thought out) and basically done, everything that is going to happen has been planned out.
Riot on the other hand doesn't have a complete story planned out or written down, they have many stories that over lap and tangle together, stories built from the individual characters they have in their game not from the need to move a story or contribute to the narrative. These individual characters that have relations to one another or no relations at all (some characters that haven't even been discovered or shown to other characters yet) are what makes the game interesting and fun not necessarily the lore behind the game (tho that is another reason I play this game). The characters that we would get from Riot in a "defined narrative" wouldn't be as cool as what we are currently getting when Riot has the ability to create new things like races, towns, realms and cities.
The "Medarda Heirloom" wasn't made/used to define the narrative or to show a completed world, but instead to add to the stories in Piltover, a City defined by Trade and Knowledge. It is only natural that the map shows the whereabouts of Trade locations and local cities because while those cities may not have any significance to the Narrative (that doesn't exist) it does have significance to the owner/user of that map. It creates depth in that story.
To end: I get why my fellow lore nerds are upset at the lack of information provided, but I hope you can understand why Riot is doing what they are doing. If it wasn't for them not limiting themselves on what they can create we would (arguably) be getting less interesting/enjoyable champions and stories. I also really want to thank Bio for putting up with us nerds and some less than enjoyable convos (when she didn't have to) and trying to get us to understand. You are the best Bio and Thanks <3
