Hello everyone! I am pretty new around here, and I am massive lore nerd. In any fantasy game that I play, I really try to immerse myself in the world and learn as much as I can. However, lore in LoL has been rather bland in my opinion. To top that off, I have heard about something called Retcon a few times. I am not really sure what it is, and I was hoping that someone could offer a brief explanation? Thanks a lot!
Basically, once upon a time, there was a hamburger food chain. This chain has been open for five years and has become very successful.
Then, one day and completely without warning, one department in said food chain went and made a post on their online blog.
"So yeah, we wondered about how you tell you this and we're actually a pizzeria now. In fact, we've been a pizzeria for the last two years. What you've been buying all this time was pizza all along."
You look at the menu and realize it still doesn't have a single pizza, only good old hamburgers that are now renamed after pizzas. You point that out to the department and they say that no, all of that is actually pizza, it's just that you don't realize that it's pizza you've been desiring all of your life because you're too used to thinking of it as hamburgers.
That is exactly how the retcon has been working out so far.
Retcon, or ret-con, is short for "retroactive continuity." In essence, it's taking an known intellectual property, changing something important about the backstory, then declaring "that's how it's always been."
As an example, let's pretend a new writer is redoing Superman and says that he was a mutant from Atlantis instead of an alien from Krypton. Or that Spiderman's Uncle Ben was killed by a cop instead of a common thief.
Depending on the circumstances, be it a "What If" comic from Marvel or an Elseworlds graphic novel from DC Comics, retcons can be interesting speculation. The problem comes when the main storyline that people love is changed, for reasons that are vague and/or arrogant, like in the many cases with comic writer John Byrne, who has always had a general attitude of "I know what makes better stories more than the creators of the property I'm working with."
#Where this applies to League of Legends
In September 2014, a giant retcon was introduced to League of Legends, basically removing the Institute of War from the game and limiting the role of Summoners (that's us) in the game world itself. The team in charge of the rework claims that when the work is done, the story changes will allow for better stories released more frequently.
However, this drastic change has caused multiple problems, not the least of which is that we're currently dealing with an incomplete mess of a story, a puzzle with missing pieces as well as pieces from previous puzzles mixed in. Then, there's the tech issues about new content not being able to be released onto the website because... reasons. Also, Narrative does not seem to want to talk to fans at all, going back into their ivory towers and giving us their arrogant and contemptuous silence.
In other words, Narrative has a lot of work to do to fix but they're under no pressure to do that work as quickly as possible. They're more interested in tweeting about their D&D and WH40K games than producing content and fixing their long-standing communication issues.
I hope this helps.
There is no Institute of War, Summoners, or League of Legends lore wise. Champions exists in the world with their own separate storylines. Gameplay-wise it's like Super Smash where the 5v5 battles have no lore explanation. It's just there to be cool.
Some people think the retcon is okay and have high hopes. Others feel the retcon is the devil, or at least poorly conceived.
To me, it's been 4 months since the retcon and little has been brought out to show for it. Several champ pages are still un-updated to account for it and the narrative department is virtually non-existent in terms of communication and visibility. There's no time table, or idea of what the department's goals are.
They seem reliant on shock reveals that coincide with major holiday events or champion releases so you can probably expect the next lore-push in February during the Chinese New Years or Lunar Revel event. Ao Shin release then maybe?
The League Of Legends was part of the Institute of War, an organization formed to prevent all out destructive magical war. Champions would fight in regulated mock battles where no one actually dies to decide political disputes. The champions in these battles were partially controlled/advised by Summoners, powerful mages (and the player characters). Some champions are war heroes, some are various heroic/villainous figures, and some are imprisoned monsters.
The retcon removed all these elements from the story. This isn't reflected in most of the character bios yet, because it's still being rewritten. Opinions vary pretty greatly on it. Some people think the Narrative team hasn't provided enough explanation, others point to their attempts to explain being met with a lot of hostility, and in at least 2 cases death or rape threats. Some people say the Summoners helped immerse them into the story, others think it was mostly pointless fluff. Some people say the IoW was unnecessary, so the Retcon is a good thing that helps declutter the story, others compare it to taking out the heart of the story, where everything takes place.
Personally, I think the retcon was a terrible idea and eliminates a lot of the interesting and unique parts of Lore. I also think that the community reaction has been pretty terrible, and that we've gotten a lot of Narrative posts that are ignored because they aren't saying "Yes we are bringing back the IoW". As far as I'm concerned, it's sort of a mess on both ends and split the fanbase pretty terribly.
There was once a League of Legends. And now there is no League of Legends.
As to how that actually affected things, its a grab bag. On one hand, it makes some things like the name of the game itself a little wonky, not to mention a few of the champion are basically homeless now. On the other hand, it lets them broaden their game world, because now everything doesn't need to have that forced central tie-in, they can exist on their own.
Before the retcon, all Champ lores were forced to end with "and he/she/it joined the League and there was sunshine and rainbows and everyone was content." Galio, after joining, just sits in his room waiting for the next match, because there really isn't much else he could do as a sentient rock. Nami, on a quest to ensure HER RACE DOES NOT DIE, is busy throwing bubbles at Vayne, who could be outside in the fresh air, destroying black magics. Riot figured that removing the Institute (for the time being or permanently), would allow for follow up stories, however they had nothing at the moment to replace it, so they looked rather silly. Fiddles, Jax, and others are now left in an odd limbo, while the community now had a rather foul idea of all lore riot now outputs, no matter how good.
Basically anyone who was in the league or created by the league doesn't exist but does because rito
I only read Fiddles lore and he sits in a room bcuz he is scary.
Thanks for all of the great explanations. All of the posts have helped me understand a bit better.
Probably the most common retconn in comic books involves readjusting a character's age. This is why Bruce Wayne is still a fit adult, Spiderman is still viewed as late teens-twenties, etc.
In League, on of the retconns happened during the Twisted Treeline remake: Originally, it was a section of forest near Zaum and warped by the overuse of magic in that region. Moakai was a tree that was awakened by that magic and hates what it did to him and his home. After the retconn, Twisted Treeline was set on the Shadow Isles and Maokai's background lore altered to fit the new location.
Overall they said that for now the retcon leaves most things intact that are not directly connected to the league,so most character bios are still considered canon even if they mention the league(just remove the "and so they joined the league"-part)
Champs whose lores are completely broken because of the retcon include:
and to some extent 
so you can pretty much expect retcons for those
