Events and Lore: Linked No Longer!

Sharjo··3 votes·487 views
A note about The Harrowing

So recently, like a couple of hours ago, an announcement was made that things are going to be de-synced when it comes to events in the future, in particular seasonal events like the Harrowing, Snowdown and Lunar Revel. The component parts are getting disconnected.

This means that when the Harrowing comes around next year, it will still be the Harrowing, but instead of having skins, game modes, lore and whatever else tied together, they'll be separate. There will still be holiday content, like skins and what have you, but they'll be made for the season, and not necessarily linked to a huge event.

For lore this is kind of a big deal, because lore is getting broken away from its event tie-ins. No longer will lore be constrained to events and holidays; it can be put out at whatever time Riot wants, as its own separate thing. Ant in Oz explains in the linked thread that Harrowings can happen at any time in universe, so while we ARE getting lore for this Harrowing at Halloween time, future Harrowings won't necessarily be like that, and could be in November. Or March. Or June.

I figured it'd be best to bring this to attention, even if it isn't super crazy "OMG SHIT'S GOING DOWN" news, because I feel like the whole "lore is bound to events" thing has been a concern for many, and now Riot's come out and said "this won't be a problem anymore". So take of this what you will lore fans!

EDIT: As an additional note; this doesn't mean these things won't be tied together ever again, but instead that they don't have to be, so now if Narrative's doing a lore thing about say...Demacia, the skins team can go "Hey, we wanna join in! Guys, let's concept some Demacia skins!" and the map team can go "Oh come on we want in too! Guys, we're making a Demacian Murder Bridge!". This is in contrast to before, where these things were sorta forced to be together. Now they're free!

5 Comments

LANWhale2 votes

This pleases me greatly.

It will feel odd however though getting use to the thought that Snowdown may NOT happen in December. As well scares the pants of me thinking that the Harrowing can literally happen at any time. But over all nice to see them understanding one of the key problems we felt lore had.

Sharjo1 votes

Oh there will be Snowdown stuff, but not necessarily the stuff we've seen in the past. By that I mean with Snowdown, last year we got Skins, Summoner Icons, Christmas music and a Featured Game Mode. These were likely part of a criteria, as in they planned from the start that those three things would be needed for the Snowdown. Now content won't be tied in that way, so different departments are free to do what they want when those holidays come around.

So while skins are probably gonna keep coming for holiday's regardless, one year we might get a huge lore dump about what Snowdown is actually like in Runeterra, and another year we might get a featured game mode.

Also as an aside, this might actually help out with the content drought that typically comes at the beginning of a year; we get a blow out of stuff at year's end for Harrowing, Snowdown and Lunar Revel in the beginning, and then Riot's kinda reeling from the Holiday work and the New Year break, so things slow down considerably. With these changes in mind the teams have a great deal more flexibility to just do whatever projects they want, whenever they want.

LANWhale1 votes

Agreed.Ezreal

Sneak Dog1 votes

Another disappointment for me.


Certain events being tied to certains times of the year seemed like a great thing to me. Gives at least some regularity, gives something to anticipate and gets you in the mood.

Now the harrowing isn't special anymore. It isn't an annual event of doom that you need to attempt to survive. It's just the shadow isles going to war like any other faction. It takes the dread out of the event by making it just another war, instead of a flood that can't be stopped, only delayed until the shadow isles have to stop for the year.

Weren't there enough options for events outside these planned ones? Or was the pressure of having this many events per year too great? What is the reasoning here?

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