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Riot Rebooting 'League of Legends' Lore Through 'Various Mediums'

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It may be the most popular game in the world, but League of Legends still sometimes struggles to find its identity, particularly as it searches for a grand story to tell about its enormous roster of champions. League of Legends has always had lore to some extent, and originally told a tale about godlike entities (the players) pulling the strings of champions on the Fields of Justice. Characters had biographies, and relationships and rivalries with one another, but in-depth lore was often sacrificed in the name of perfecting gameplay itself, and keeping the game fresh by introducing champion after champion.

That's all about to change as Riot has announced a massive shake-up of League of Legends lore which essentially says they're starting over. In a lengthy blog post, Riot explains the problems of being constrained within existing lore:

"After a while, these early choices began to create unexpected problems. Every new champion needed a reason to join and remain in the League, and as their number grew, the net result was that over time the world started to feel, well, small, and eventually less interesting. The institutions we’d designed fostered creative stagnation, limiting the ways that champions, factions and Runeterra itself could grow and change. Furthermore, the very idea of all-powerful Summoners made Champions little more than puppets manipulated by godlike powers. The background we’d created to explain in-game action was ultimately restricting the potential narrative development of the game’s defining characters."

Fans have been asking for the world of League of Legends to become more fleshed out, wanting deeper interactions between characters other than simply "these two are brothers," or "this guy killed this guy's father," and now it seems like Riot is taking those requests seriously. They're light on specifics on exactly how they'll be overhauling lore, but in the long blog entry, it's clear it's a pretty big priority.

I think there's more behind this than simply listening to fan demands however. I have a hunch that Riot is gearing up to expand League past the game itself, at long last. It's hinted at in the post:

"We’ll continue to explore Runeterra through various mediums, in chunks both large and small, and we hope you’ll come along for the ride and continue to share your ideas and feedback."

When your game has 69 million monthly players and a cast of 100+ memorable and colorful characters, it's the obvious move to try and expand into areas other than a single game. I've written about this extensively in the past, how League could easily expand into other game genres, animated TV shows, movies and so on. But to do that? It needs a more coherent story, and that's where this lore reboot comes in.

With announcements like this, you can begin to see what seems to be the makings of a larger plan to expand League into a multimedia franchise. They're not saying that outright, but I would hope that all this work into crafting new lore isn't simply to create more interest character bios or new Journals of Justice blog entries chronicling events of the land. I'm hoping it sets the stage for a much larger storyline that will span the game itself, but also spill into other forms of media.

I just hope Riot is moving quickly enough. League of Legends is still for all intents and purposes on top of the world right now, but staying culturally relevant is far from a sure thing in the constantly shifting games industry. While some kings reign forever in some form or another (World of Warcraft) other megahits can fade quickly from the public's mind (Angry Birds). With League not some app-of-the-month mobile title, I think it has more staying power than most, but  hopefully it can capitalize on its popularity at its apex.

This is sort of long walk for an announcement that didn't reveal much, but I have a feeling there will be much larger League-related news items to come as Riot's master plans begin to take shape.

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