As someone who has written pages and pages of backstory for D&D, but who is also an obsessive optimizer.

1). While having a good backstory is not essential to an optimized character, it definitely adds a lot to that character. It's cool, and it helps you get into it more.
1). It is much easier and more reasonable to warp the story to fit the optimized character than to allow a rigid story to unoptimize the character.
2). it is absolutely, totally possible to warp (or create, from whole cloth) a story in this way, and the current LoL writers are not really doing it. Sorry, current LoL writers. I do not see a coherent Runeterra behind your champion anecdotes anymore.

I would love to have this job for Riot, for the record.

I would argue that creating such investments help psychologically immerse and involve the players, which could improve sales indirectly or also serve as a future platform for a gigantic amount of clever monitization through selling cameo appearances, guest authorships, merchandising, plot-steering votes (5rp), or any number of other embedded or external patronage options.

While contradictory results could be entertained in terms of magic or story problems or artistic misalignments if enchantments were sewn through the world as a chaotic and unknowable force, instead magic is stable and predictable, which serves as the entire basis of hextechnology, runes, or instrumental artifacts. Summoner spells or runes or hexdevices for players always do what they are meant to do every time they are cast, a champion spell or action is carried out in exactly the same form every game. Swain never accidentally morphs into a piece of furniture during a match or storyline, Brand and Volibear will likely never marry one another. Thus worldcrafting errors, when they now pop up frequently, aren't so easily explained away with some sort of "fairies must have done it" justification from the reader.

If you are suggesting that any creative mind can get around the questions I ask are you volunteering yourself to answer these questions, or are you just hypothesizing that they can be answered easily? The champion designers need not be limited in any way, but the lore that is written for these champions, to explain how their look and theme and design fit into the existing gameworld, need to be more carefully crafted by people who know what they are doing.

No they aren't. http://kotaku.com/5960965/whats-wron...ue-of-legends/

Welcome to the ______ of Legends!

Kitae has announced the champions will now have autonomy and will no longer be prisoners.

retconned

too limiting according to Kitae

I have some bad news my friend, and it comes in the form of "all-out conflict"

... in the past when the lore made sense.

While ArmySquirrel the sports guy may not have reservations about 'plastering your little brother across the field" it would seem to be out of character for the nice and reformed Vi humanitarian that the lore team created, although again this assumes the existence of a League of Legends that no longer is to exist with the soon-to-be released lore update packaged with Thresh.

Key indeed, and that key has gone missing. Will you help me find it by asking Riot to fire this lore team?

I wish this all were to remain canon, but that time is past now unless players change the course of events. If after reading my response to this point you still feel that "a creative mind can get around the questions" I invite you to try again, but I doubt that this is going to be easy for you.

MOBAs are a new genre, I dispute that they are story-irrelevant beyond rough adaptations or that it is too difficult or unprofitable to try. If (or when) LoL doesn't do a good job a new MOBA will come along eventually that can, and LoL in retrospect will look quite lame by comparison.

Thank you for your comment Datavore, I agree.

A lucid, intelligent, well thought out post.

Have a bump.

Vi is just a screwed up champion. Her voicing is idiotic and sounds are sloppy. I feel stupid when I play her. Not to mention her artwork is the only good thing about her.

Thank you!

In terms of lore-craft I see this becoming an increasingly common problem as new champions are introduced into the altered and misaligned framework, and old champion stories are rewritten with similarly poor guidelines (as has already happened with Katarina, Warwick, and Soraka).

Imaginary Xypherous: "Having reviewed your thread I thought I might bring up the point that much of the in-game elements don't correspond directly to gameplay, such as bloodmages or blood-thirsting swords working on robotic characters or normal characters wearing alternate robotic skins. We prioritize awesome designs."

Eserine: "While this dissonance in player experience is extremely unfortunate, Thresh presents a more unique and drastic case-occurence. A possible explanation for the items in the game to this point (if you had better lore writers) might be that each item purchase is actually an anointment with the numinal spirit of a legendary artifact, which would also account for duplicate objects held by one or multiple parties in exchange for a spiritual donation to the artificer for the blessing. 'Blood' can be seen in such respects to have multiple definitions relating to a being's life force (transubstantiation being a good forerunner to this concept), other powers likewise could be conferred via proxy after contact. 'Souls' however are not figuratively divisible elements in the common (or uncommon) understanding of the word. Giving a character the numinal essence of Mejai's Soulstealer and conferring such states as 'soul engorgement' upon champions or allowing them skins with which to Soul Reave works upon the premise of Decartes' singular, irreducible, and indivisible existential animus. Casting an attack spell upon Thresh with one of these objects or skins only to have him grow stronger when he is thematically tied to being an unbound soul with the properties of soul collection is an irredeemable contradiction, and potentially very confusing to new players."

Imaginary Xypherous: "Doesn't this prove that a strong lore commitment stands in the way of incorporating the designs we want in that case?"

Eserine: "No, it simply proves that you need lore writers smart and committed enough to change the names of your items and skins when necessary so that the game doesn't suck, and secondly that you do not currently have such writers."

Imaginary Xypherous: "You've got to dance with the one that brought you, as they say."

Eserine: "No you don't."

Imaginary Xypherous: "To put it another way then, your strict adherence to the ideals of meritocracy are an ideological threat to our desire for job security and a stable work environment."

Eserine: "Not if you hire people who do their jobs well..."

Imaginary Xypherous: "There will always be some small problem with the overall design, there will always be dissatisfied players, and there will always be a wide spectrum of individual talent in our company no matter how well we attempt to account for such things, we are growing too rapidly and adding too much not to make the occasional mistake."

Eserine: "... but not too rapidly to recognize and fix said mistakes when they are becoming serious issues I hope..."

Imaginary Xypherous: "Serious is a relative term. Players should be thankful that our servers aren't melting into paste each night and that trying to cast a summoner spell doesn't delete their entire hard-drive!"

Eserine: "You afford us the opportunity to see just how 'relative' this issue is, I guess. After putting forth such thoughtful attention into preventing instances of Anti-fun you surprise me with your indifference to the game's narrative."

Imaginary Xypherous: "You want narrative? I AM LUCIFER, COME TO TORMENT YOU!"

Eserine: "No!!! Celestial Fiend!!! Not again!!!!"

To put it bluntly, dude, you're splitting hairs. The issues you seem to be bringing up are all little things in the game. And yes, in a universe where magic exists, it can easily be used to explain anything that is unexplained, especially when no apparent limits on said magic are stated. We don't know the rules of magic in this context, so as far as we are concerned right now, the sky's the limit.

Granted, the lore has gone downhill sharply. But you still have to learn to accept "magic" as an explanation for everything. And any summoner can summon any champion for any conflict. They don't have free will when under a summoner's control.

How the hell does this dude have upvotes? He's a complete dolt.

This explanation relies on the existence of Summoners summoning champions, which is no longer to be part of the narrative since this is seen as "obstructively prohibitive to a champion's free will":

http://kotaku.com/5960965/whats-wron...ue-of-legends/