Am I just a Nostalgic Grump?

I have to agree, and I really dislike how this Xerath is more like your typical saturday morning cartoon villain. What I don't like is how Xerath's lore seems to have been written solely for Azir's sake. Renekton is a mixed bag. His lore started great, but quickly fell off after he Ascended with Nasus when they removed that key element of him slowly being corrupted by the hearts of the common people. Nasus? Dude's an example of an older champion adapted and updated correctly. I don't think it would have been too difficult to give Xerath a proper adaptation.

All it would have taken would be for Xerath to retain his fascination with magic, and being able and aware of things people were not. Hell, if you want to involve Azir? Maybe he willingly went down the path of Slavery, simply for the chance to access magic he might have only obtained in that manner? From there, one can largely follow the arc in his original lore.

Despite what Riot had, at one point mentioning that the Champion's character arcs were 'complete' by the time they became playable, I would have to disagree. Xerath, a being who had achieved what amounts to godhood in the process of inadvertently destroying what had tied him to the mortal world, who still needs to free himself from the shackles of his past, both literally and metaphorically?

No. Instead let's make a bad Azir fanfic where Xerath isn't Xerath.

The heck? Ghostcrawler has no influence on League's lore what so ever.

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As a fellow former WoW player, I label what you describe as "The Ghostcrawler Effect" The guy took over as lead design for WoW as it was going toward Wrath of the Lich King. Undeniably the peak of that games popularity, and he was the architect of its slide. All throughout the ongoing releases of Wrath, from godawful "door bosses" from new instances not given enough server power to support the demand, to class power imbalances, to poor writing and character storytelling, an unsatisfying Cata and even worse Pandaria release...ultimately he guided it all. And he has been lead on LoL since 2014.

While the overall amount and effort of reworked and new lore is appreciable, the tone and changes to so many characters from what they once were that people fell in love with is very comparable to how much of the WoW storytelling soured fans of that series.

My issues with League predated Greg Street coming onto the team as Lead Game Designer, and when he announced he was coming onto the project I chuckled to myself because I knew people would conflate his presence with the decline I had already been seeing.

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I prefer Grognard to nostalgic grump. But both descriptions work.

And you're not alone, I have been very vocal about how I think some of Riot's decisions have been detrimental and some of their writing have been straight up bad.

You'll probably be downvoted to hell and back, but whatever. It's not like downvotes or upvotes actually mean anything.

But if you're willing to risk it, I'd like to see if we can find what was the trigger that started to turn you against the game. What do you think was the heyday of league champion creation? What personalities did you find yourself drawn to?

Zac was the first champion I can remember being completely unimpressed with from a creative viewpoint. Some before him like Jayce had flat characters but were interesting enough thematically to get a pass. The Freljord event where all of the champions were rewritten and pigeon holed into one of the three tribal factions would have left a bad taste in my mouth if not for Lissandra fronting the whole thing. Trundle, Nunu, Gragas, Volibear, Olaf, and Udyr all felt lesser after those reworks. Tryndamere I never thought much of to begin with and Anivia honestly came out a little bit stronger.

Jinx was released and was superbly done. Her story and relations with other champions were very open to interpretation and captivating to imagine. Not to mention the music video that accompanied her release just blew everyone away. You could tell that she was a project of passion for many people within the company. That may have been when I was most impressed with Riot as a team of creators.

And looking at the champion release list after Jinx I'm reminded of when I first started to lose faith. They weren't bad but they didn't have that captivating element, which made sense when Riot announced the removal of the Institute of War as a lore element and that they'd been working on that decision since before the Freljord event. What I believe happened was that Jinx was close to the end of what they had in the pipeline from before the shift in approach towards the game's lore.

My thoughts for now.