@Riot: Please make a real storyline already.

Tell me what the overarching story of League is.

Right now, that doesn't exist, so that's not a possible task. Every champion is its own little bubble. Sometimes the bubbles are connected. They're usually not, though. What ends up happening is that while we might know how these characters interact in a vacuum, we're lost as to what their real impact is on the world at large.

There's a bunch of reasons for this, and my personal favorite is that we have no concrete timeline of events. Yeah, Sharjo's got his own timeline linked in the Story Starter Kit, but that's ultimately still a fan creation. We need an actual, official timeline. Right now, any of these wacky events could be taking place at any point in time, which undercuts any real drama.

Let's take Burning Tides as an example. The big story. The one so big Riot had to swear off doing something like that again because of how many resources it took - mostly related to game stuff, admittedly, but still. And it's supposed to be big, since it represents a big change in Bilgewater status quo. Gangplank gets blown up and Bilgewater is thrown into disarray, while Graves and TF make up. Big stuff, right?

Except that we don't know how long Gangplank's been there. We haven't really seen Gangplank in action. We haven't built up an attachment to Gangplank as a character, either as a necessary evil that keeps Bilgewater from anarchy or as a vile villain that needed to be disposed to create a better Bilgewater. So when he and his ship explode, the gravitas of the situation is lost on your average reader.

Also, while for us it's been years since Graves was introduced with his grudge against TF, in story terms they have never shared a single scene until then. It's supposed to be this dramatic change in character where they both realize they were wrong all this time, but we don't get to see "all this time". It's all riding on the player's prior knowledge of their paltry lore for years. That's not good storytelling, that's taking your reader for granted.

To put it in a different context, let's say you're watching season 1 of Daredevil. You watch the first episode. You find out who Daredevil is, you get a clue on who Fisk is. Then you skip to the last episode of season 1. You see Daredevil in a cool costume take down Fisk. It's treated as an important moment, because it is - it's the culmination of that entire season's work. But you skipped that entire season since you went from the first to the last instead of watching everything in between. You simply can't appreciate the gravity of the situation, the various trials and tribulations Daredevil goes through just to get to that point. It's the same deal here - you show an important moment, but it jumps from the starting point (personal lores) to the endpoint (Burning Tides) with nothing in between.

My most charitable interpretation, and the one I choose to believe, is that you guys at Riot are trying to make everything perfect before moving forward. Defining every place with concrete terms, making sure all your ducks are in a row, so that when it's time to start the story, it's just one clean shot from start to finish. That makes sense. You didn't have to define the world before, back in Season 1 when no one really had an idea of where we'd be in the next 7 years. It's just an element of catch-up like everything else.

Except then you overcomplicate things and shift priorities all over the place. Instead of going for functional, you overkill the details on places. What is the player/reader going to do with the knowledge of how Targonians farm? How does that help them understand their favorite characters and their places in the world?

And you don't stop at this overcomplication. You keep adding new pieces to the puzzle. Instead of making the current batch work, you start adding champions like Kled and Ivern. They're great characters, sure, but where do they fit in this world? Now you've got to answer that question while also continuing on your path, so instead of getting the whole thing working, now you've got to stop and figure out where Ivern belongs in the grand scheme of things.

I don't have access to your survey data, so maybe I'm wildly off base here, but I've got a sinking feeling those of us who really care about the lore of League want to see an actual story out of it instead of a bunch of disconnected vignettes all over the place. I know you can count me in that group. I want to be able to tell everyone how amazing League's story is and not feel like I have to hedge their expectations. You have the talent, you have the people. Just reprioritize and make a functional base before you do anything else, so we can start to get properly attached to characters through writing instead of cheating by playing on players' in-game familiarity, because that doesn't always work. As anecdotal evidence, I'm an Ashe main, but I can't really care for Ashe as a character. I'm not that great with Aurelion Sol, but he's easily the best character you've made in my opinion, and I want to see more from him and how he fits into the story.

Please start with that timeline. The Noxian-Ionian War would be a great thing to clarify, for starters.