FWIW, our goal with techmaturgy/hextech is not to duplicate steampunk. We're trying to explore how technology might evolve in a fantasy-based setting; if we wanted to purely duplicate the themes and concepts of steampunk, we'd just do that. Of course techmaturgy is inspired by steampunk. Several of us here are crazy about it (myself included).

It's always been mind boggling how a fantasy world, so rich in magic, would also feel so backward at times. I think the goal in developing Runeterra as a world is to provide a number of modern real world concepts to it to actually help make it a more believable and accessible society. It certainly makes it more fun and interesting.

Well to be frank, WOW seems to pull off very well a world that is well versed in magic...but still technological advanced for its setting. (At least Alliance wise).

Runeterra always reminded me of the Jak and Daxter world mixed with the world of Lost Odyssey i doubt either of these games had any influence on the general design but coincidentally both of them seem similar...just an observation though

Final Fantasy 6 (American 3) is an amazing blend of tech and magic (even going so far as to have technology that replicates magic). It was one of my first forays into such. Chrono trigger gets special mention here as there was ONE timeframe where both existed together naturally, but FF6 still did it best, IMO.

One thing I would like to see in Runeterra is a waaay technologically influenced race. We have Ionia which is, as I see it, a martial arts ninja kinda place. Zaun which is hextech central and things like that. So I think that it might be possible to bring in a place that discourages the use of magic. It goes with my theory that a world with magic will progress much less technologically because they have hundreds of different fields and therefore certain subjects will be less developed than others.

Say there are two worlds paralleling each other. They start out the same but if one were to discover magic and the other did not they would progress in two different ways. Because the one did not discover magic it might continue like our world today, but the one with magic would IMO treat that as say a seperate field of science and therefore progress a lot there but not as much as the other world in science. One book I liked that kind of explains this is David Weber's and Linda Evan's Multiverse books. Its long but a good read.

So if there were a place or people that didn't use or study magic they would be further in a technological viewpoint. I guess Yordles like Heimdinger could fit the bill but they have always felt like more hextech to me. Anyway just going to put the idea out there. If I get motivated enough I might try and design a city and champion to describe what I mean.

And to fit the balance between magic and tech criteria, I think LoL does quite well. Hextech is probably what most technology would develope into because Magic seems like the easier power source to harness. Personally I like and would use tech over magic but I'm not sure if I could see the difference if they were both brought up at the same time.

This reminds me so much of the game Rise of Legends. It's an rts game where magic and steampunk tech exist side by side. Its and awesome but rather rare concept. All the more reasons to love the league