Hey folks, I'm Andrei, also known as Meddler.
And I'm Jeremy, a.k.a. Riot Brightmoon.
Today we'll be joined by two guests.
Lexi “Riot Lexical” Gao,
our champions team lead, is going to talk more about champions.
And Laura "Poisonpixxi" DeYoung, the Head of IP Strategy.
Who is going to talk a bit about our approach to the lore of Runeterra as a whole.
Then we'll be back to talk about language select, Quickplay,
and a few other things.
All right, let's hand things over to Riot Lexical for an update on champions.
Hi everyone. I’m Lexi "Riot Lexical" Gao,
the Champions Team lead. Since we last talked
both Naafiri and Briar
have joined the Rift with vicious bites and a hangry attitude.
Next up, we'll be releasing our new artistic midlaner, Hwei.
Hwei’s mastery of his craft gives him
the tools needed to bring his artistic visions to life.
He owes much of his skills to his previous masters, but after time and exploration,
he has transcended their skill and created his own unique style.
While Hwei comes prepared with what he wants to paint, his extensive
palette of possibilities leaves room to learn,
experiment, and master.
After Hwei paints a masterpiece on the Rift,
we'll be turning to a new creature champion.
Though this one's a bit cuter than Naafiri.
Our new creature, though cute and smol, is smoldering with power.
And he'll be sauntering onto the Rift with all the pomp
and circumstance that befit a royal of his status.
Further out, we have a Vastayan solo laner from a forest village
with the ability to see what others easily overlook.
Okay, that's it for new champions.
Now onto everyone's favorite scorpion.
The Skarner team has been hard at work on the Ixtali defender.
They've been thinking about everything from how many legs Skarner
should have, the answer six, to how he would look scuttling around a wall,
and even how his tail can pick up and throw a massive boulder.
You know, the usual stuff.
The Team wrote a lot in today's Champion Roadmap
that cover his new gameplay and how it has impacted other areas of the design.
That's it from the Champion's team for now.
We'll be back in January with more to share about 2024.
Okay, it’s been a little while since we spoke about League's lore.
For a long time,
League and associated experiences like short stories
were our only way to tell stories in Runeterra.
Nowadays, though, that's no longer the case.
So we want to talk a bit about how we're updating our approach to the lore
and then talk through some upcoming
examples of how that will be reflected in League and in other places.
To start with, we're going to pass things over to Laura Deyoung.
Hi y’all, it’s been a while.
For some background, I'm Laura, a former Art Director on League.
And nowadays I'm working as the Head of IP Creative,
which is a group planning
how we evolve the League universes across all of our experiences.
As Andrei talked about earlier this year, over the years, we've
introduced inconsistencies that have woven their way
into the storytelling and the worldbuilding of Runeterra.
Some good examples are how Hextech was invented and Yorick feeling just M.I.A.
during the Sentinels of Light event.
Going forward, we don't believe that's the right approach
because that kind of fragmentation makes the world feel less believable
and it just undercuts meaningful character development.
And frankly, it makes it hard for all of you
to feel like you can really invest deeply in a story
knowing it might not be honored in future storytelling.
So going forward from today, all new storytelling
is going to be part of one shared canon. Rather than a jumble
of different experiences that are similar but inconsistent.
And our goal is to ensure that major events and our stories,
as well as the essence of what makes a champion who they are,
will be reflected across everything that Riot makes.
Getting to that consistent state is not going to be
a sudden flip of a switch, but a gradual process.
This doesn't mean we're going to go back to retcon every champion or story we’ve told.
but every time we touch a part of a League universe, we're going to take a beat
to ask ourselves where the inconsistent threads are
and work towards weaving them together so the world makes sense.
This is going to take time, and we believe the payoff
for getting this right will be absolutely worth it.
Okay, I'm going to hand things back to Andrei
and Jeremy so they can talk about what this specifically means for league.
We're really excited to pull all the different threads
of storytelling across Runeterra together over time
so that we've got one shared, consistent canon.
So let's talk about some examples of that.
The moments shown in past Season Start cinematics, like Awaken, for example.
Those have often felt like they should be canon, and some of them
are fully consistent with the wider world, but some of them aren't.
Going forwards, including the upcoming cinematic in just a few months.
We're going to be making sure
that they're an integrated part of our world and storytelling.
Skarner’s update early next year is another good example.
Skarner’s old lore, and that of a few other associated champions
doesn't mesh with the creation of Hextech revealed in Arcane,
which is the origin for Hextech in the unified canon going forwards.
So we're going to be making updates over time as a result to make sure
that champions like Skarner, Seraphine, and Camille
are well integrated and well connected to the rest of Runeterra.
So they can be part of that larger, wider shared storytelling.
The upcoming Forge game, Song of Nunu, is worth highlighting as well.
It's canon, offering some insight into part of the Freljord.
Particularly Nunu, Willump, and Braum.
Now, some of you might also
be wondering about some of the ways we used to tell stories previously.
Short stories in particular are something we've deliberately moved away from.
Short stories were an effective way to dig into character backgrounds more deeply
when we didn't have other ways of doing so.
But they've also always
been a very niche experience that most players just never engaged with.
So we're focusing instead on storytelling through other mediums,
you know, ones that also let us flesh out characters and the world,
but do so while resonating with more of the wider playerbase.
Switching gears a bit, earlier this year we announced we’d be adding an option
to choose the language you play League in. It's taken us a little bit longer
than we initially estimated, but I'm happy to share that the current plan
is for this feature to go live in November.
Our main goal with this is to help League players play in their preferred language
that wasn't included in their regional download.
That means you'll be able to choose from one of the 21 languages we support
in the Riot client, and that will change both your in-game and around game text.
After you select your language,
you'll download the language pack for each language you choose.
These are around two gigabytes of space with all the voice files,
so just be mindful of your hard drive space.
We also want to talk a bit about the Blue Essence Emporium.
On the positive side of things, it came back recently
after a bit of a hiatus.
But on the negative side of things, we had some issues with it, both
its technical functionality and with what was available
being more limited than past Emporiums.
So we're going to be bringing it back in December
with the full range of Emporium eligible chromas, not just the half year version
and other content will also be returning, specifically mystery icons, mystery
wards, mystery gifting, and 50% off rune pages.
Now, it's been also a while since we've talked about Quickplay
and we've got a dev blog going live alongside this video with a lot of details.
But the short version is we're replacing Blind Pick with Quickplay.
It's a qeue designed to get players into game faster
and as much as possible on their desired champion and role.
How it works is you select champions and roles in the lobby and you skip champ
select entirely to get straight into the game.
Quickplay is going to go to PBE around the end of October and we'll test it there
for multiple patch cycles before rolling it out more broadly.
Now, that wraps things up for today.
Don't forget to check out the dev blogs, including the Champion Roadmap.
And thank you all so much for listening.
Best of luck in your Worlds Pick 'Ems. And we'll see you all on the rift.
Thanks, folks. Thanks.