Dicussion on Udyr's new lore and other Freljord tidbits

Continue reading for slew of posts concerning Udyr's recently changed lore and a handful of other Freljord related posts.


On Udyr's Lore Change
It's been less than a day and Udyr's lore change is the talk of the town over on the League of Legends general forums. kitae initially responded to summoner concern by promising that Udyr's Ionian ties have not been severed.

"Udyr has aways been a champion with deep ties to Ionia, and those tie remain.
Champions don't need to be defined by a single faction. For example, Poppy is a yordle from Bandle City, but she also has deep ties to Demacia. 

With the new lore release for Udyr, we tell the story of who he was before he became the Animal Spirit, including his journey to Ionia where he learned to harness the power of the spirits. At the same time, we reveal his origins in the Freljord, and hint at his role in dealing with an upcoming threat.

With his unique tie to both factions, Udyr is now set to be a key player in both Ionian and Freljord stories."

She followed up by explaining why the PBE sometimes isn't the best medium for revealing things such as lore changes:

"So right the worst kept secret on the general forum is that a giant Freljord patch is coming. This has included a lot of lore, and not all of that lore has been released. It's slowly coming to PBE as it is finalized and ready for testing. 

But, what has become obvious is, our PBE release process is great for testing features but it's not great for testing interconnected pieces of lore. Without the full context of all the Freljord lore at once, the lore can seem somewhat random and confusing. I apologize for that. 

When all the Freljord lore is released with the Freljord patch happens things will be more clear. Without spoling anything - something big is happening in the Freljord, and all the Freljord champions will have their part to play in the ongoing story of the Freljord. 

With that said - I understand not every Udyr player cares about this. I can say we have additional story plans for Udyr specifically in 2013 going beyond the Freljord patch."

Another concern that's been bugging summoners are that Udyr's lore now has continuity errors. kitae, however, was quick to explain that this isn't the case and gave a quick break down of Udyr's lore, specically to the Lee Sin / Udyr interactions.

"There is no continuity error, here is the timeline: 

Lee sin the not-blind monk wanders the world
Lee-sin meets Udyr takes him to temple
Noxus invades Ionia
Lee-sin protests Noxian invasion, becomes blind
Udyr and Lee Sin participate in the battle for Ionia's freedom
Udyr returns to Freljord to investigate a strange new threat

Lee sin being called "the blind monk" in Udyr's lore was an error which will be fixed."

She continuing on this topic, saying:

"Udyr spent years in Ionia. There is a lot of story to tell there. 

But you're showing a challenge we have - if we go into describe long periods of time in a champion's bio we don't have time to do it justice, so it comes off flat. This is a reason why we're tending to focus more on short periods of time for champion bios.

In the case of Udyr though we thought it was important to reference both the Frejord and Ionian aspects of his story."

She also shared her feelings that champions faction allegiance isn't communicated very well

"We currently don't make it clear what city state or faction champions belong to. One of the improvements to the web site that is in the work is clearly displaying the city-state or faction a champion belongs to.

In that case of Udyr that will be both Ionia and Freljord."

Elaborating further,

"The champion detail page doesn't do a good job of explaining who champions are, their connections to factions and other champions, and their full lore. We are working with the web team to improve that. 

Why do a Freljord patch instead of focusing more attention on the shadow isles? With the shadow isles patch we laid the foundation for future shadow isles stories, but Runeterra is a big world. We want to lay the foundation for stories throughout Runeterra, while progressing existing storylines like Shadow Isles.

More Lissandra lore is coming with the Freljord patch!"

Xelnath also stepped in to give his opinion on the concerns surrounding these lore changes, saying:

"Stepping back a moment, without context it does appear to me like a large number of champions are lumped into the Freljord ball of wax. It makes me sit here and wonder: 

"Why is Freljord the only place undergoing major changes and why are all of the changes making characters I was familiar with and loved feel different?" 

I understand that feeling. It's uncomfortable. It's valid. It's a totally reasonable response.

I'm not going to pull the "we own our lore, so we can do whatever we want" **** on you. I hope you understand that Kitae isn't doing that either. We're in a very rough time right now - League of Legends was, harshly, Blitzball with Outer Space monsters. It was kitschy. It was slapstick...and we all loved it for what it was. We accepted it, with all of its flaws, confusion and closed stories.

However, it wasn't a healthy place to leave a world if we want every champion to participate. If it helps, know that we're trying to re-evaluate a lot of things and your input contributes to help us understand what it is you love about your champion. Do you believe we simply haven't created a big enough catalyst yet to explain the change in tone of the world? Do you need a cataclysmic event to be the catalyst for the world being reset and reborn? Is it not enough to admit we were very short-term thinkers when we wrote the original league lore?

I haven't been around very long, but I think we're doing more to deliver consistently cohesive, cool lore than we have in a long time. I genuinely believe Kitae is doing her best to push the creative design through to the vision the team has created beyond this painful transition.

I can't promise anything, but I genuinely want to know what you feel would help you understand Valoran better now. Please tell me."

Other Freljord Stuff
Lastly, here is a grab bag of posts relating to other Freljord champions.