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Thanks for the response, Jaredan, but I'm now completely destroyed as a fan of League.

TerraRising·3/1/2015, 2:43:37 AM·214 votes·13,676 views

Thanks for the response, Jaredan, but one paragraph of yours basically confirmed my biggest fear, that I've been wasting over three years trying to have a conversation with Narrative in the first place.

{quoted}

There are just certain things we can respond to and other things we can't. It's not as much the topic as it is the way we engage about it. I know Ant in Oz riled some folks when saying that we can't read fan-fiction. I can understand how that might appear, but it's just a truth of being a professional writer. It's partly due to the legality of it, but also because using other people's ideas, even accidentally, is stomach churning to a creative writer. Talking about already created stories and characters, talking about the essences of people and places of Runeterra, it's all good. Pitching an idea for a story you want us to tell? Not so much.

If you (as a department as well as an individual) don't want us to help you with story ideas or possible story avenues you can pursue, then the absolute point of having a meaningful relationship with Narrative is completely lost. If all we're supposed to do is comment on stuff already written and set in stone, then you want passive fans and that's not me. Not anymore.

So, I apologize for three years of anger, frustration and vitriol I've spent and spewed towards the various Narrative teams, leaders and members. You lot didn't treat us with silence because you had contempt for us. You simply didn't want to talk to us at all.

I also apologize to all the non-Narrative Rioters I've jumped on over the past few years as well. Your intentions were good, but there wasn't a point to your efforts.

I'm now going to try to fill the void I've been left with. Be careful what you wish for, eh?

This is, without a doubt, the worst day of my life as a fan of League of Legends.

166 Comments

KING OF MASKS3/1/2015, 6:16:35 AM80 votes

Using other people's ideas is stomach-churning to creative writers, huh?

I'm sorry, but what kind of universe are these people living in? Using other people's ideas is the name of the game when it comes to storytelling. I might be reading too much into this offhand comment, but Christ, how delusional are you as a writer if the idea of borrowing an idea from another source literally sickens you?

Oh, as an extra bonus: go ahead and compare the story of Azir and Xerath to Father and Hohenheim from the Fullmetal Alchemist manga. Is your stomach churning yet, Jaredan?

Credit to DG Ashabel for the FMA comparison.

Digitality3/1/2015, 8:10:28 AM57 votes

The lore team are essentially B-grade fan fic writers themselves anyway. The "we couldn't tell the stories we wanted to within the existing setting" is a fan-fic writer's excuse. Especially in a setting as vague, full of untapped plot hooks, and nigh limitless as Runeterra, where summoners could pull entities from across worlds/universes.

Dotintheparadox3/1/2015, 6:03:03 AM51 votes

Guys, let me show you why this is BULL. SHIT. This "fan-fiction" http://forums.na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=3174110 is the whole reason Veigar and Lulu are friends, an old narrative team member, made it canon, because they liked it. If this shit could happen, then Jaredan is just speaking out of his ass now.

And if our feedback can't be listened to, then why the F.U.C.K! Do we have a lore board huh? The whole reason for these things is supposed to be for showing Riot what the community finds really important via an upvote system (It works because not everyone wants to write a full post, and actually encourages participation, however slight.) And of course you can't boycott the department who doesn't make any money for the company.

Zmuecat3/1/2015, 5:20:32 AM45 votes

Talking about already created stories and characters, talking about the essences of people and places of Runeterra, it's all good. Pitching an idea for a story you want us to tell? Not so much.

While I understand this, I do have a question that someone could answer for me.

If you want us to talk about created stories and characters, don't you need to have something for us to actually comment on?

Dotintheparadox3/1/2015, 6:47:57 AM34 votes

I would like to say, Legality is a scape-goat, the company owns the character and world licensing, they are allowed to use fan created content for that world under fair use, unless it's for monetary gain, however let's look at the fact that the narrative for Runeterra has never been used for financial gain.

Now, either Narrative is turning greedy, and going to monetize on their new stories as to avoid creative license issues with the older writers, who technically have credited license for their original ideas. Or these guys are just arrogant to an extreme about their writing, which is just so stupid what they have presented us with so far, it's nothing impressive at all. Also, with how community driven this game is, it's just kind of selfish.

So, if new narrative wants to monetize, don't let them, they don't deserve it.

IS1d51f7fd0f8e2764617b03/1/2015, 6:13:41 PM29 votes

As a beta player who remembers the old JOJ all the shipping, the PAGES and PAGES of Jarv/Shyv lore etc. who mods then loved i sincerely .... hate ... the lew lore department.

Yes HATE is a strong word, but it is the ONLY thing that describes my feelings right now.

I have no mutual respect for them anymore, since they are compulsive selfish liars with a god complex completely disregarding any feedback they get.

No you are not that good

And no im not qualified to judge, but the COMMUNITY is! And i have seen very very few posts that actually praise you for the glorified chess game you have developed instead of the thriving and unique world we started with.

What you are doing is spitting in the face of the lore people working before you, and even worse you are spitting in the face of the COMMUNITY that pays your goddamn salary. The only thing keeping me right now is that the game finally seems to be going somewhere balance wise, but you alone have almost scared me away.

So yeah, i know you wont care, but i hate you.

Simple and awful as that, you have currently ruined everything i once loved about the lore, the only thing left is that you transform the tragic antihero Viktor like you did with Trundle and im done.

So here' a short list of what i despise:

The Rammus/Cassiopea/Trundle/Udyr/Vladimir/Skarner lores The REMOVAL of full text lore which happened MONTHS ago with hte promsie of being back up soon(tm) you liars The entire goddamn retcon destroying the work people had been doing for YEARS (and here you lie again as it has been 6 months, you promised us that the new lore would be up soon (tm) Jaredans latest horrific response where he pretty much says he doesnt give a flying teemos ass about our opinions...

LeeDark3/1/2015, 11:32:36 AM23 votes

It's a load of crap anyway. Riot owns all intellectual property rights to the characters and stories involving the characters and locales in the game. Period. Fanfic-type stuff, whether it be short stories, or songs, or novels, or Factions, are only allowed to exist because Riot is okay with it. They can take any of that they desire, co-opt, change what they want, and nobody would really have a legal leg to stand on because they were using Riot's IP from the beginning.

Far as I can tell, they are worse lawyers than they are writers, and they don't seem like very good writers.

As for "cringing" at the idea of using someone else's work, they could fix that by simply contacting the League fan, asking them about using the story, and giving credit where credit is due. Hell, it would probably make that fan's day... no, it would make that fan's fucking YEAR to to be credited for a story idea in a community spotlight or whatever in the game they love enough to be writing stories about it. Would it really make them cringe to make a fan happy?

Narrative is either lying to us, or they are downright stupid.

LANWhale3/1/2015, 5:44:57 AM22 votes

Hm, this quote underlies everything about the Story Boards.

But the biggest one, as you said it your self, the community.

What is the point of the community if we can not engage with the Rioters? What is the point of the boards of Rioters never answer anything or post anything? Why have you been even looking at the boards if all we say is just sucked into an endless void? Why put on a mask and act as if you truly care about us when in reality, you don't.

These come off rude but these are the things i'm wondering right now as i type. Many boards have a much better relationship than the Story&Art Boards, so why not us? Are we the black sheep, the runt of the litter, the kid that is never invited to the party? Honestly my view on Narrative team has affected my view on Riot as a whole. I seriously feel like a stain that Narrative just wants to keep wiping off only to see it come back but smaller and smaller.

To all those non-Rioters, thank you. Thank you for taking the responsibility the others wouldn't want to. We were happy to have some nice communications with you, but sadly you were a temporary band aid. You offered us some tranquility in the storm and made us feel like we where not alone.

I can't anymore.

Every time I type these sentences and look back at them I keep getting the terrible feeling in my chest, the feeling you get when no matter how hard you try there is nothing you can do.

sigh I guess that's it really...thanks Narrative, you helped me see that you really don't care about us anymore.

Major Sparkles3/1/2015, 4:15:03 AM18 votes

Jaredan makes a very very very very very good point. I understand it's frustrating but it makes sense.

SEKAI3/1/2015, 2:56:38 PM16 votes

Ignoring the obvious truck of references that MADE the game (in champ looks, skins, spells, name etc), and just talk about champion STORY alone being a DIRECT reference to other literatures/medias we still get:

Kayle vs Morgana - Paradise Lost. Ahri - Korean version of Nine Tail Fox folklore. Shen vs Zed - Generic ninja trope. Aatrox - Ares, Greek mythology. Volibear - His Dark Materials, or The Golden Compass for the film title. Vayne - Batman, Dracula. Lissandra - Final Fantasy VIII, Dragon Age. And more I couldn't be bothered to go specific atm.

Then for other references, you get League of Legends. Yes, taking ideas from somewhere is no sin but what they do when they borrow the ideas is no where original, most of them just kinda get copy pasted in without much patching up.

We get references to 7 deadly sins, 4 horseman of the Apocalypse, the journey to the west, reference to Musashi Miyamoto, Norse legends, Greek mythology, Egyptian gods etc.

Also there is one dude who says that Xerath vs Azir is very similar to the story between "Father" and Hohenheim from the Fullmetal Alchemist series which I can definitely see that too.

using other people's ideas, even accidentally, is stomach churning to a creative writer

Classic.

As long as you take someone's ideas and give credits to where it's due there is no plagiarism in this, hence it's okay to do so and there is no shame in that. Not sure why taking ideas from community is a different case when it should be more or less, the same problem. I would gladly take and start from the community's idea if I was Riot today anyway, since clearly, after all this time we know either the lore team is too slow in producing any content or they are completely incompetent.

Killer of Poros3/1/2015, 7:03:33 PM15 votes

I'm surprised no one has mentioned this guy yet Pantheon. They blatantly made an entire champion dedicated to a movie through quotes and character and they're worried about borrowing someone's fanfiction.

Budupops3/1/2015, 3:23:41 AM14 votes

join runescape old school is now f2p

2pudge1cup3/1/2015, 2:06:33 PM13 votes

I was always under the impression that things posted on a forum were Riot's property, including fan-fic.

I don't see the problem of borrowing a few ideas from players as long as it isn't complete plagiarism. Any writer knows the difference between the two.

Vellich0r3/1/2015, 9:28:13 AM11 votes

cannot upvote this enough dude. That is really disappointing to hear from a rioter, I myself know that what he said is entirely false. As a creative writer you WANT to take inspiration from others. If someone gives you an idea and WANTS you to take from it, then use it as inspiration, i mean obviously you can't copy it word for word, but as inspiration it is valid. I mean just look at void fizz, the community wanted it and made concepts and all that, but riot went in and looked at those concepts and then MADE the skin. Why can't riot also look at story concepts? i mean even the champion update team is taking community inspiration. Look at the taric discussion posts. They asked us what WE felt like was core to tarics theme and to the best of my knowledge they intend to take inspiration from that even though it is made by the community.

TL;DR Inspiration CAN come from others without destroying your integrity as a writer and jaerdan knows that, he just wants an excuse to ignore the community.

Tsaalyo3/1/2015, 11:43:09 PM10 votes

As long as we're talking about lore, I have a qualm. That's right, a qualm. And it's not even about the retconning.

My problem is that you Rioters refuse to stop depicting Demacia and Noxus as cartoonishly good or evil.

I always liken it to Garen and Katarina's quotes, "Fear not, I'm coming!" and "BLOOD FOR NOXUS." That really says it all. But it goes so much deeper than that. Throughout Noxus's lore, you guys have Noxus chemical bombing civilians (or at least, outsourcing it to Singed, and even allowing their OWN troops to be killed in the process). You guys have Riven's old orders to kill any civilians they come across, even ones on their knees pleading for mercy. You guys have "anti Yordle sentiment rising in Noxus" in a JoJ, because, you know, yay for racism. And EVEN IF you want to say "well we ended the JoJ and retconned everything so none of that happened now", you need look only to your Sion rework to see that, if anything, you guys are worse than ever. Not only did you turn him into a complete psychopath, but his quote "IT'S MURDERIN' TIME" is just... are you kidding? You couldn't even have him say butcherin' or sluaghterin', as bad as those would be. You had to have him say murderin', as in, fully acknowledging the pure and simple criminality, pure and simple evil, pure and simple I'M THE BAD GUY-ness of Sion's current actions and goals.

I get that all fantasy stories need an antagonistic side, but your inability to write anything but comedic caricatures of good and evil really kill the whole lore for me. There is NO evil man or evil faction to ever exist who thought their actions were wrong. Real evil thinks it's doing good. What YOU guys are doing is just... remember Dark Helmet in Spaceballs? "So, Lone Star, now you see that evil will always triumph, because good is dumb." That's basically what you guys are writing, only you seem like you're trying to be serious about it. Sorry if this is overly hurtful, but IT'S MURDERIN' TIME just put it over the top. Noxus is a city built around a giant skull, who practices open racism, and practices the butchering of crying civilians as they use chemical warfare on their own troops in order to kill the enemy. I can say this without exaggerating - this is worse than what the Nazis did.

If you want to stick to retconning everything, fine. But at the very least, flip on Legend of Korra and learn to write antagonists who are actually believable, and not something out of a Saturday morning cartoon.

It's murderin' time. Come on.

Want the easiest suggestion, while we're on this? Garen and Katarina need to become an official couple, either openly or in secret. Having them find love in each other would show that they are more than just mindless zealots for their respective cartoonish citystates, and would show the larger narrative that the PEOPLE of Demacia and Noxus are actual human beings with their own opinions and thoughts, not mindless automatons.

Auryiel3/1/2015, 6:14:40 PM10 votes

Honestly, just completely forget about Narrative.

At this point, all I want lore-wise from Riot is the tools to better communicate and connect with other players, share stories and ideas.

I want absolutely nothing to do with the lore they have giving us. It is simply bad and I'm done with it.

Maybe they could make a pre-recton sub-forum and a post-recton sub-forum and people could discuss their interests in the story there.

OuttaControl563/2/2015, 1:45:15 AM9 votes

This is the first comment I'm making in months.

I'm appalled.

Take the Harrowing, take the story of Shurima. Sorry Creative writers, I bet you somewhere out there in FF.net, there is some story that has that pitch. It may have crummy vocab, horrible grammar, but don't act that writing about a evil misty cloud or a catastrophic fall of an empire is some tour de force of content that has never been seen before. You're worried about stealing ideas? What the heck is the trope where the person who is telling the story actually the main character of said tale? Even more frustrating, they aren't even finished. They're more like "writing prompts" than actual stories.

And its not like what you write is bad. What you write is great....

But creativity is creativity, it is taking ideas and mixing, mashing, interpreting, and creating. Don't act like reading fanfictions and contemplating them and their creative interpretations of the LoL universe is somehow toxic to your work. Thats like being afraid at looking at other MOBA's and their balance design and comparing it to your own for pointers/inspiration/experience.

Like.

Come on.

Expand your horizons. Don't think inside the box. That sort of thing.

I feel bad now. I used to be confident and excited for the changes in the lore. Now..... Not anymore.

OhOkYeah3/1/2015, 6:04:22 AM9 votes

It's not unfair to say what Jaredan said

using other people's ideas, even accidentally

It's the truth. LoL is not a lore heavy game. It's not an RPG where you can fully immerse yourself into the story line and actually have a completely different experience from someone just playing the same RPG to pwn noobs in PvP.

Mirage Night3/1/2015, 9:02:58 AM9 votes

I have to agree, there is no point if they simply going to ignore our input. Frankly this narrative team has been the worst yet. There has been little done with the since the retcon,

  1. I have not seen a single thing release for any champion that was IoW reliant.
  2. Eve has been sitting there for 2 year now waiting for some one to give Art some sort of direction of a character, so she can have a proper VU

They should swallow their pride and actually work with the community actually produce something.

Blam Blam3/1/2015, 7:08:48 PM8 votes

Basically, he's saying: If it can't boost our ego, it's trash.

GenoXx3/1/2015, 3:30:34 PM8 votes

But, Uhhhhhhh they got ideas about the Ruined King from the community... O___O

Lol wtf, the only reason why they even made anything about the shadow isles king was becasue it was a hot topic from the community over the years. Jaredan just contradicted himself.

Squarefighter3/1/2015, 5:36:53 AM8 votes

It's not that they don't want to. It's that they legally can not. Get your facts straight before you blame.

Rinky Dinky3/1/2015, 8:42:02 PM8 votes

I'm still riding with the institute of war.

You can't recon something and then not provide any lore at all -_-

Azir joined the league in order to show Shurima's power. Renekton came to the league hunting for his brother. Xerath came with Renekton, for reasons I actually havent come up with yet xD. Kalista came to the league to bring justice to the many "Betrayers". Rek'Sai was a captured void monster. Basic summaries without going into much detail :P

Nasus has been around for a while, so I just made a narrative that he came to the league, searching for a purpose after losing his home, Shurima.

Bard, I'll think of something :P

Until we have actual lore, we should ALL assume nothing has changed.

Criomhthann3/1/2015, 7:31:58 PM7 votes

Using other peoples ideas is stomach churning to a writer...

Having a lot of experience with Literature, I have to ask... what the fuck are you smoking?

Who the fuck is T.S. Eliot?

Xulsigae3/2/2015, 9:51:56 AM7 votes

In the Journal of Justice we as Summoners were allowed to ask questions of champions and other members of the Institute of War. These were published in the Journal of Justice for all to see. Often the writing staff couldn't give exact details on some things, but they were all to happy to give us some details and what champions thought. I got a reply from Amumu! We influenced the the writing of the lore a little through our questions. As the Journal was canon, our questions were too I think.

This is even more precedent for lore writers getting ideas and interacting with the fans. It certainly made me happy to be published in the Journal, even if it was just a short question. Even if we weren't creating massive lore changes, we still felt part of the lore.

Glescoron3/2/2015, 6:01:08 AM1 votes

Alright, I'm on board with most of this thread, I'm even on the band-wagon against the narrative team, not for what they've done to the lore, but because they need to give us something of substance and fast. The only lore we've gotten was for new champs, what about old ones left homeless after the League was purged? But anyways, I'm getting off topic.

My only problem is this sense of ownership people have over the story of LoL. I'm all for having us input some ideas into the story to an extent, but when you say that it's pointless unless we can help them right THEIR story? That's going a little overboard.

Think about it for a second, who are they writing for. Us, that's right. They want to give us good stories. Cool. The snag is that if they gave us a big public announcement saying "here's the plot of the next lore development, any ideas?" not only do they still look lazy, theres no point to having the story anymore. If we have the story spoiled every time because we want to help them write it, who are we writing for? Us? Well that's going to be a problem since we've already read it by the time it comes out. Other fandoms? Who else but LoL fans will care what the LoL lore is?

Right on for hating on the narrative team, guys need to get their shit together, but c'mon man, I don't want the story spoiled for me just so I can write it myself.