Why Ionia

MorganaIsMyWife·Jan 26, 2020·4 votes·3,994 views

Why does Riot love Ionia? It’s honestly the most generic area in runeterra yet they keep getting all this lore, characters, and cinematics and honestly I’m just tired. We get it. Akali is sassy. Irelia is STRONK. Yasuo is Yasuo. If we had more Jhin stuff then I’m fine with it but nope. You had to shove in Akali and Kayn in the comic. Bad enough we barely get any Noxus or Void stuff(actual void stuff, not just Kaisa) Remember the conflict with Kass and Malz? Hell do you guys even remember that you have champs like Yi who gets no love in anything? Wasn’t he your star character years ago? That Darius comic was great! Why stop there? “Alright guys we added in one Noxus character. That’s our quota so let’s make skins for Akali and make another Ionian champ” Hell even Ekko and the Shadow Isles will get their own game!

Remember The Black Rose? What’s going on with Morde and Noxus? Remember General DuCouteau? Talon just stopped looking for him right? Is he dead? Oh no that’s not important. Garen and Kat making love jokes is important! You still haven’t made that official btw. The teasing is annoying. None of the Ionian champs have any personality besides Jhin and the ones who live in the damn jungle like Rakan. Says a lot about Ionia. Can’t wait for the 20th Akali skin.

20 Comments

Ebonmaw DragonJan 26, 20204 votes

{quoted}

If we had more Jhin stuff then I’m fine with it but nope. You had to shove in Akali and Kayn in the comic.

Even if i agree with the rest of the post... i dont agree with this part in particular. It makes perfect sense to add Akali and Kayn in a comic featuring Shen and Zed, in fact Kennen SHOULD be there as well, but Riot keeps ignoring the yordles.

GreenLoreJan 26, 20201 votes

I feel like Riot tries to avoid Kennen until they get around to giving him a VU/VGU.

Ebonmaw DragonJan 26, 20201 votes

{quoted}

I feel like Riot tries to avoid Kennen until they get around to giving him a VU/VGU.

I would agree with you... except that they added him in the Awaken Video.

GreenLoreJan 26, 20201 votes

Yeah but the awaken video just shows a bunch of cool stuff that might be related to the lore, but is ultimately not to be considered canon(at least for now). Meanwhile the comics are considered canon, so an appearance of Kennen in the comics would be a much bigger deal than it is in the cinematic.

Also it is possible that Riot doesn't have a plan for Kennen yet and if they do plan to wait until he gets a visual update, then it'd make sense that they wait with integrating him into the story until then.

Disco SwissJan 27, 20202 votes

I agree Ionia and most of their champs are lame. Even in-game Ionian champs just so happen to be annoying to fight.

Ill even go as far to say... People that like Ionia are big dum dum stupid heads.

GreenLoreJan 26, 20201 votes

I agree that Ionia needs to take a backseat, however I can understand why Ionia is getting so much focus. I mean:

Ionia is the faction who has probably the most subfactions and a lot of them are still unexplored.
Ionia is probably the faction with the most meaningful history for it, the nouxs invasion changed a lot and there are tons of people being affected by it in different ways in ionia, other factions have their history too, but its usually one big event that lies way back in the past.
The vastaya are of ionian origin, so it makes sense for any vastaya champ or vastaya related champ to be ionian.
Ionia doesn't just take inspiriation from japanese culture, but most asian cultures in general, meaning there is a wide variety of themes to draw from. Most other factions themes are mostly based on one countrys culture or have to share their theme with others(There are tons of european medieval themes, but Noxus and Demacia both draw from them).

Not to mention that the asian market is also pretty big, so ionia likely relates to that the most.

Chembaron YamadaJan 26, 20205 votes

The thing about Ionia having the most factions is a direct consequence of Riot's behaviour to keep developing Ionia while neglecting other regions of their world.

All the other regions could easily have as many factions as Ionia or even more, if Riot simply would put in the effort to develop these regions further by champion releases correlated with new factions.

Riot clearly has an Ionia bias when it comes to champion releases, that is obvious. Maybe it has to do with the market, maybe the designers in their teams are simply more excited about investigating Ionian themes, I don't know. But it can't really be denied that the bias is there if Ionia already has 19 champions in total while over half of the regions in game can't even break the 10 champion threshold.

Also they kinda have shown that Ionia gets alot of special treatment. When we got Urgot and Warwick as VGUs from Zaun, Riot told us that they are taking a break now from Zaunite thematics because they have released these 2 so close to one another.

Which I thought is fine back then. Then the same happens with Ionia, Akali and Irelia get reworked close to each other. Such statement that they will take a break from Ionia has never been made. Other regions have to wait up to 6 years for a new champion release, Ionia never had a waiting time even close to that one. And Ionia can still claim to be the only region which got 3 champion releases back to back with Kayn, Xayah, and Rakan.

It just feels really discouraging as a fan of other regions of the game to see that Ionia is getting so much more love than any other part of their world.

GreenLoreJan 27, 20201 votes

Ionia lends itself a bit more towards having tons of subfactions though, because all the other factions either have either a central city(or are just one city). The only exception outside of Ionia(and Bandle and the void, who are more like places of origin) is the freljord, but even there you've got 3 main tribes. But Ionia doesn't have that, its very base structure is made up of small subfactions.

With that being said, I do think that they could start to put more focus on some of the subfactions of the other factions(like Buhru in Bilgewater, the fighters pit in Noxus, or heck any of the noxian/demacian territories that aren't the main city). It will likely not be as many as Ionia has, but there can certainly be done more with them.

And I agree that ultimately Riot is biased. The most egregious thing about that statement, about taking a break from Zaun due to it getting 2 reworks in a row, was that it was made after ionia got 3 new champions in a row and was followed up by ionia getting 2 VGUs in the next year.

sigh at least Ionia didn't get anything big in 2019....

Chembaron YamadaJan 27, 20201 votes

I don't really get why you think that having a capital (or as a region be a city like Zaun and Piltover) necessarily means that there is less potential for subfactions.

For example, if you consider the 3 tribes of Freljord as own subfactions, then literally every big clan of Piltover and every Chembaron of Zaun can be considered an own subfaction. They are constantly rivaling each other, fighting for power in the city, sabotaging each other, killing.... It just happens that Riot simply did not go into that route yet. We still don't have a single Chembaron champion in the game.

The only Piltovan clan that is represented in the game is Ferros since the introduction of Camille.

That's what I mean. There definitely is potential for tons of subfactions in other regions. It just happened that Riot has chosen to develop Ionia further, giving us details about many subfactions, while they simply did not do the same for other regions.

GreenLoreJan 27, 20201 votes

The capital means that the majority of the champs are designed to be champs of the governing force. For example most demacia-champs work for the crown and the ones that don't tend to be independent champs that don't belong to a subfaction. Sure there are different orders within Demacias military, but those still belong to the Demacian military as a whole(they'd be like a subfaction within a subfaction).

You are right about Zaun and Piltover, I honestly didn't think too much about it since Riot has for now ignored the actual subfactions within those cities and instead tends to give us champs from there that aren't part of an important clan or organization. Anyway my point is that Ionia is easily among the factions with the most potential for subfactions, since it is made out of dozens of them. There might be other factions who have just as much potential, but there are certainly factions with less potential for them.

RyzeTheSmurfMageJan 27, 20201 votes

{quoted}

I agree that Ionia needs to take a backseat, however I can understand why Ionia is getting so much focus. I mean:

Ionia is the faction who has probably the most subfactions and a lot of them are still unexplored.

That's due to Riot focusing on just Ionia. Other regions could have more factions but we don't know about them yet

Ionia is probably the faction with the most meaningful history for it, the nouxs invasion changed a lot and there are tons of people being affected by it in different ways in ionia, other factions have their history too, but its usually one big event that lies way back in the past.

Most meaningful history? Pls. The only thing they had in their history that isn't Noxus invasion was some titan war thing that happened 10.000 years ago. Meanwhile: Noxus with the whole Mordekaiser thingy, then the Rune Wars, then their whole expansion Demacia with the whole Kayle and Morgana thingy Freljord with the fucking Watchers being imprisoned there, a war betwen the 3 sisters, a now gone Iceborn empire, the demigods And most of all Shurima. The Void War in Icathia, them genociding their spirit gods with Ascended, their whole expansion, their whole backstory actually, the fall of the empire, the Darkins, all the shit that happened after the Darkins including the Rune Wars, Azir's return now and the current god war betwen him and Xerath

The vastaya are of ionian origin, so it makes sense for any vastaya champ or vastaya related champ to be ionian.

Vastayas are in more places than Ionia. Rengar is from the Ixtal jungles for example

Ionia doesn't just take inspiriation from japanese culture, but most asian cultures in general, meaning there is a wide variety of themes to draw from. Most other factions themes are mostly based on one countrys culture or have to share their theme with others(There are tons of european medieval themes, but Noxus and Demacia both draw from them).

Yet they still fail to make Ionians more than just fodder to be killed or saved by its champions. Sad.

GreenLoreJan 27, 20201 votes

{quoted}

That's due to Riot focusing on just Ionia. Other regions could have more factions but we don't know about them yet

Ionia is pretty much made of subfactions though. Pretty much all other factions have one big city(or in the case of the freljord 3 big tribes) that more or less unite most of the champs.

So while other factions could have more subfactions, they are harder to work into them than it is for ionia. For example riot could easily introduce a noxian subfaction that lies outside of the capital, but it'd end up looking kinda isolated from the rest of the noxian narrative that largely focuses on Noxus Prime. I'm not saying Ionia is the only faction with a lot of potential subfactions, just that it is pretty much designed around this.

Most meaningful history? Pls. The only thing they had in their history that isn't Noxus invasion was some titan war thing that happened 10.000 years ago. Meanwhile: Noxus with the whole Mordekaiser thingy, then the Rune Wars, then their whole expansion Demacia with the whole Kayle and Morgana thingy Freljord with the fucking Watchers being imprisoned there, a war betwen the 3 sisters, a now gone Iceborn empire, the demigods And most of all Shurima. The Void War in Icathia, them genociding their spirit gods with Ascended, their whole expansion, their whole backstory actually, the fall of the empire, the Darkins, all the shit that happened after the Darkins including the Rune Wars, Azir's return now and the current god war betwen him and Xerath

My point is that their history affects most of their current population, beause it is a recent event. Kayle and Morgana may have shaped the culture of Demacia, but their conflict doesn't have a direct impact on anyone. And the same could be said about pretty much everything else you mentioned. I mean what does 99% of Noxus care for Mordekaiser as long as he doesn't attack?

Granted there are some factions that have a more recent event like this too, like Azirs rise, Demacias mage rebellion and Miss Fortune taking control over Bilgewater, but in these cases these events might have been too recent to affect the lives of many in a meaningful way. The ionia invasion landed on that sweet spot, where it affected the lifes of individuals directly AND had an impact on the culture as a whole.

Vastayas are in more places than Ionia. Rengar is from the Ixtal jungles for example

It still makes sense for Ionia to have more vastaya than other factions, due to Ionia being their place of origin and being a fairly magical land(which is something that vastaya need for survival). So almost every time riot plans on doing a vastaya champ, they'll likely consider making them ionian at some point simply because that is the faction where vastaya make the most sense.

Yet they still fail to make Ionians more than just fodder to be killed or saved by its champions. Sad.

Not really sure how that relates to my point that ionia draws inspiration from several asian cultures at once....

RyzeTheSmurfMageJan 27, 20201 votes

{quoted}

Ionia is pretty much made of subfactions though. Pretty much all other factions have one big city(or in the case of the freljord 3 big tribes) that more or less unite most of the champs.

So while other factions could have more subfactions, they are harder to work into them than it is for ionia. For example riot could easily introduce a noxian subfaction that lies outside of the capital, but it'd end up looking kinda isolated from the rest of the noxian narrative that largely focuses on Noxus Prime. I'm not saying Ionia is the only faction with a lot of potential subfactions, just that it is pretty much designed around this.

And Freljord somehow isn't?

My point is that their history affects most of their current population, beause it is a recent event. Kayle and Morgana may have shaped the culture of Demacia, but their conflict doesn't have a direct impact on anyone. And the same could be said about pretty much everything else you mentioned. I mean what does 99% of Noxus care for Mordekaiser as long as he doesn't attack?

Granted there are some factions that have a more recent event like this too, like Azirs rise, Demacias mage rebellion and Miss Fortune taking control over Bilgewater, but in these cases these events might have been too recent to affect the lives of many in a meaningful way. The ionia invasion landed on that sweet spot, where it affected the lifes of individuals directly AND had an impact on the culture as a whole.

Azir's rise was 7 years ago in timeline. That's more than enough time to affect the lives of individuals and have an impact on the culture. And also his goddamn war with Xerath which is still not presented at all because let's have even more Ionia instead. Yey.

It still makes sense for Ionia to have more vastaya than other factions, due to Ionia being their place of origin and being a fairly magical land(which is something that vastaya need for survival). So almost every time riot plans on doing a vastaya champ, they'll likely consider making them ionian at some point simply because that is the faction where vastaya make the most sense.

Ixtal literally has that too tho

Not really sure how that relates to my point that ionia draws inspiration from several asian cultures at once....

My point is Ionia was actually a bad region design even if it had a lot of potential and it's so popular just because of all the popular and dare I say annoying asf champs like Yasuo coming from it

GreenLoreJan 27, 20201 votes

{quoted}

And Freljord somehow isn't?

The freljord is mainly made up of 3 major subfactions though Ionia is basically made up of dozens of them. Sure there are also independent tribes within the freljord, but their importance pales compared to the rest. Ionia on the other hand has no real major subfactions, there are instead lots of smaller groups.

Azir's rise was 7 years ago in timeline. That's more than enough time to affect the lives of individuals and have an impact on the culture. And also his goddamn war with Xerath which is still not presented at all because let's have even more Ionia instead. Yey.

Uhm where was it said that that Azir rised 7 years ago? Unless Necrit has made a mistake then the official timeline lists the creation lists Swains rise to power in 989 and then jumps towards the current events without any information about how much time has passed since then. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiCIKcIO-iM And we know from Cassios bio that Azirs revival happened after Swain disposed of Boram, so there is literally no information about how much time has passed in-universe.

Ixtal literally has that too tho

Ixtal might have a lot of natural magic, but it still isn't the origin place of the vastaya. So Ixtal makes the most sense as the faction with the 2nd most vastaya, not the most.

My point is Ionia was actually a bad region design even if it had a lot of potential and it's so popular just because of all the popular and dare I say annoying asf champs like Yasuo coming from it

Sounds more like you are simply salty about loosing to ionian champs.

RyzeTheSmurfMageJan 27, 20201 votes

{quoted}

The freljord is mainly made up of 3 major subfactions though Ionia is basically made up of dozens of them. Sure there are also independent tribes within the freljord, but their importance pales compared to the rest. Ionia on the other hand has no real major subfactions, there are instead lots of smaller groups.

Soooo your point is that a couple of non-major factions should get more development than actually major factions?

Uhm where was it said that that Azir rised 7 years ago? Unless Necrit has made a mistake then the official timeline lists the creation lists Swains rise to power in 989 and then jumps towards the current events without any information about how much time has passed since then. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiCIKcIO-iM And we know from Cassios bio that Azirs revival happened after Swain disposed of Boram, so there is literally no information about how much time has passed in-universe.

https://twitter.com/LaurieGoulding/status/1204445861108801537 https://twitter.com/LaurieGoulding/status/1133881500624023552 https://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/story-art/c0EG5ztG?comment=0014000200000000000200000000 https://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/story-art/yGuE7i8u?comment=00020001 https://twitter.com/LaurieGoulding/status/1145741861832626185

On short, Swain took power 7 years ago and ended the war, which caused the BR to send Cass to Shurima, which triggered the whole resurection and Ascension of Azir. Bloodline was 5 years ago timeline wise.

Ixtal might have a lot of natural magic, but it still isn't the origin place of the vastaya. So Ixtal makes the most sense as the faction with the 2nd most vastaya, not the most.

Sounds more like you are simply salty about loosing to ionian champs.

I'm actually not, it's just that I feel Ionia has a lot of potential as a region but instead it is constantly made into being just the popular champ's playfield instead which is dissapointing

GreenLoreJan 27, 20201 votes

Not saying that introducing a new subfaction in ionia is more important than fleshing out the major factions in other regions, just that there is plenty of opportunity in ionia to flesh out subfactions and introduce new ones. Meaning that there are a lot of potential concepts for ionian characters and a lot of hooks to flesh out ionia as a whole or individual factions. The fact that there aren't any major subfactions means that even a smaller subfaction in ionia can have a big influence.

And thx for the links I actually didn't know that Swains rise to power was 7 years ago. In that case I fully agree that they should add more champs that react to this(the only one we had so far was Taliyah).

Posui GartJan 26, 20201 votes

You had to shove in Akali and Kayn in the comic

Well, its the fucking ZED comic, so I guess having his student(Kayn), friend/rival/enemy(Shen) and that friend/rival/enemy partner(Akali) to appear is pretty logical

Remember the conflict with Kass and Malz?

Yes. We had a whole champion(Kaisa) made out of that conflict. It ended with Kassadin bying some expensive artifacts and attempting to solo the whole Void or die trying, while Malz keeps doing his prophet things, pretty much resolved conflict

you have champs like Yi who gets no love in anything?

He is Ionian too, you know?

“Alright guys we added in one Noxus character. That’s our quota so let’s make skins for Akali and make another Ionian champ”

Sett is half-Noxian. In recent mecha skin line we had a Draven(he is from Noxus btw) skin and the only Ionian champion with recent skin is Sett, because, you know, every champion is supposed to get a release skin

Hell even Ekko and the Shadow Isles will get their own game!

Is that a problem?

Remember The Black Rose?

Yeah. And what of it? Just a bunch of nobles, with LB somewhat controlling them with false/real promises and fear. Its a big deal in-universe, not as much for us

What’s going on with Morde and Noxus?

A tribe of useless barbarians had enough of Morde's rule and killed him. With some help from LB and Vlad(who already had some experience in having enough of some evil lord's rule and killing that lord). Now he is back and wants his Immortal Bastion back, and the remaining world as a bonus. Sure, this isn't resolved really, but you cant expect Riot to show us how Mordekaiser solo clears the whole Noxus, or how united powers of Swain, Vlad, LB and Noxian armies managed to kill him again. They are a champions of the actual game and can't just die in lore.

Remember General DuCouteau? Talon just stopped looking for him right? Is he dead?

Yes, I do. No, Talon didn't stop, he just haven't found him yet. We don't know, perhaps he will appear later as a champion or in some other champion's lore

Garen and Kat making love jokes is important! You still haven’t made that official btw. The teasing is annoying

The teasing and "not making it official" is why this is so popular discussion topic. Nobody cares about Xayah/Rakan making love jokes, there isn't much to discuss

None of the Ionian champs have any personality besides Jhin and the ones who live in the damn jungle like Rakan

I would say most of them DO have a personality. Irelia, Zed, Shen, Yasuo, even Akali. And those who don't really have much just didnt have a way to show it, being somewhat old and outdated, like Lee or Wukong

Can’t wait for the 20th Akali skin.

Skins don't give money just because they are made on a certain champion. If a skin was sold a million times, this means that a million players now have a bit more fun playing League, which is not bad by itself.

RyzeTheSmurfMageJan 27, 20201 votes

[{quoted}](name=Posui Gart,realm=EUW,application-id=6kFXY1kR,discussion-id=jEzwbEzN,comment-id=0002,timestamp=2020-01-26T23:17:22.830+0000)

Well, its the fucking ZED comic, so I guess having his student(Kayn), friend/rival/enemy(Shen) and that friend/rival/enemy partner(Akali) to appear is pretty logical

Yes. We had a whole champion(Kaisa) made out of that conflict. It ended with Kassadin bying some expensive artifacts and attempting to solo the whole Void or die trying, while Malz keeps doing his prophet things, pretty much resolved conflict

He is Ionian too, you know?

Sett is half-Noxian. In recent mecha skin line we had a Draven(he is from Noxus btw) skin and the only Ionian champion with recent skin is Sett, because, you know, every champion is supposed to get a release skin

Is that a problem?

Yeah. And what of it? Just a bunch of nobles, with LB somewhat controlling them with false/real promises and fear. Its a big deal in-universe, not as much for us

A tribe of useless barbarians had enough of Morde's rule and killed him. With some help from LB and Vlad(who already had some experience in having enough of some evil lord's rule and killing that lord). Now he is back and wants his Immortal Bastion back, and the remaining world as a bonus. Sure, this isn't resolved really, but you cant expect Riot to show us how Mordekaiser solo clears the whole Noxus, or how united powers of Swain, Vlad, LB and Noxian armies managed to kill him again. They are a champions of the actual game and can't just die in lore.

Yes, I do. No, Talon didn't stop, he just haven't found him yet. We don't know, perhaps he will appear later as a champion or in some other champion's lore

The teasing and "not making it official" is why this is so popular discussion topic. Nobody cares about Xayah/Rakan making love jokes, there isn't much to discuss

I would say most of them DO have a personality. Irelia, Zed, Shen, Yasuo, even Akali. And those who don't really have much just didnt have a way to show it, being somewhat old and outdated, like Lee or Wukong

Skins don't give money just because they are made on a certain champion. If a skin was sold a million times, this means that a million players now have a bit more fun playing League, which is not bad by itself.

Actually about Morde, they said they will kill champions in the future. That doesn't mean they won't still exist in the game however

Camille FerrøsJan 27, 20201 votes

It's not only annoying that one region is getting this much but the others getting neglected is bad. It's becoming the one hat thing. Pitlover everyone is about progress order Zaun is this damned Piltover, Demacia... let's not go there. Noxus is all about us strong you weak you die. Noxus especially has a lot of potential to be developed into something more than that quickly but... Oh yeah and there is Ixtal... lol