Results of the Shadow Isles AMA on Reddit

Continue reading for a recap of the more interesting responses to come out of that AMA, including a ton of lore related goodies!


On the possibility of more awesome lore events like this, Kitae said:

"We do want to do more major lore events in the future.

We want to tie our maps more closely to our world, so when we get the chance we will work with the art team to solidify the connection between maps and areas of our world like we did with Shadow Isles and Twisted Treeline.

However we want to be able to tell stories about areas of our world even if there isn't a themed map associated with it. For example, probably not going to do a Bandle City themed map any time soon, but we still want to develop more lore for Bandle City.

But yeah long term my hope is we tie Dominion, Summoner's Rift, closer to our world. The Crystal Scar is cool for example, but no champions really come from there except for Skarner."

Kitae revealed a little more about the two mysterious voices players here whenever they capture an altar:

"The altars are an experimental way of integrating more lore into the game. Glad you are interested in them, and we are watching player reaction carefully to see if we should do more interactions like this in the future.

We have developed an epic and comprehensive story for the shadow isles that we hope to fully explore in the future. The interactions at the altar are giving hints at this storyline. I am glad you are curious as to why the spirit is telling Hecarim he should not trust Mord, I am not going to reveal that today but it will become more clear over time.

However I want to give you something so let me tell you a bit more about these two characters.

The man and the women are husband and wife. They died thousands of years ago and their spirits are forever bound to the place of their death. Over time they have forgotten much of what they knew of their life.

The husband has almost completely forgotten his life, and his wife, to the point where he has become a zealot for the shadow isles. He literally doesn't remember he was ever alive, except in rare moments of lucidity. He is proud and eager to serve those who represent the interests of the shadow isles.

His wife still remembers fragments of her life, and her humanity. She is tormented by her undead state, and longs to be free. She misses her husband, wants to be with him, and also wants him to be set free. Though she is a tragic character, she is also a vengeful one. She judges the champions of the shadow isles for their actions both in death, and in their former lives.

We hope to do more interactions with more characters in the future. However, we want to make sure that any such vocal interjections into gameplay are neither repetitive nor disruptive."

Regarding these altars, someone inquired whether it was always Riot's intention to include them oozing with lore or if it was a ltea addition. Kitae fielded this question, saying:

"The mechanics came first. Initially the altars were just capture points that gave a buff. We saw an opportunity to make them more meaningful by adding personality (the two specters) and lore (the lines they say to individual characters).

Game design involves sometimes seizing opportunities like this and running with them! If we hadn't done the specters at the altars we would have found another way to integrate lore into the map in a way that enhances mood, without disrupting gameplay."

Kitae also spoke a little about the mysterious king the Altar spirits mention in their special dialogues.

"Yes there is a King figure in the Shadow Isles in fact there is an item named after him - Blade of the Ruined King.

There are definite hints as to who he is, and what his relationship is with some of our shadow isles champions. We will release more information about him over time. He is a central figure in the Shadow Isles who is tied to it's creation and it's curse."

Speaking of altars, a few of you may be wondering why Evelynn, a champion hailing from the Shadow Isles, didn't receive her own set of unique dialog with the altar spirits. Kitae responded to this concern by saying:

"So I will confirm that Eve's story involves the Shadow Isles.

We did not want to release specter lines for her because we don't want to give away the story. We are open to recording specter lines for her if players remain positive about the experience of capturing altars on Twisted Treeline. We wouldn't want to record until we were ready to release more information on her lore."

Along the same lines, Kitae also mentioned that Maokai's lore will be updated in the near future, seeing as how he originated from the old Twisted Treeline map

"We are planning on doing a lore update for Maoki in the future.

As a preview, Maoki will not become an undead tree. He will retain a connection to TT as a connection to the Shadow Isles, but he will not be a Shadow Isles champion. As a proponent of nature, he will see the shadow isles as an abomination."

Finally, Morello had a few things to say.
He reminded players that the TTL update is still very much a beta and players should expect changes, saying:

"There's lots of data to look at including death times (when are people fighting), game lengths, gold earned, champs used, etc.

You'll definitely see some changes to TT as we continue to make sure it's smoothed out on the rough edges (Level 1 teamfight snowballing is a concern) so it has deep replayability like SR."

He then talked a bit about how they are going to approach balancing the map by saying:

"We're really looking at all the same things we'd looked at when making SR work over time, but with those lessons in mind. How is the map flow working? Are champion roles balanced? Are there diverse strategies?"

 Morello also commented on Elise's kit and balance, saying:

"Elise is not only a bit different of a classification (AP Bruiser transformer), but also was really down to the wire, to be frank. Since she's also a more complicated character to understand everything about in real high-skill games, we had a hard time getting her exactly where we wanted before launch.

The good news is we're talking about how to help this out;
There's some issues with the human E being lackluster. This is an easy place to improve.
We're going to look and evaluate the stats and ratios.

We're gonna start light and watch her as people do play more - we wanna make sure we're not buffing Jayce, essentially :D"