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<\/figure>\nFor starters, with how many iterations of League there are, the team had to carefully consider what would resonate with both new and returning players. Strictly adhering to the oldest version of League wouldn’t work; the Classic public betas showcased how today\u2019s fans have a better understanding of both League of Legends and MOBAs in general, making the oldest version feel limited to the point of near-obsolescence.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you give characters who multiplicatively scale, and their damage goes exponential with getting more items, and players are better at getting more items, those characters [become] much better than they were historically,\u201d Feeney said.<\/p>\n
Turley suggested, then, that the team should start with some variation of the game\u2019s original 40 champions, but wasn\u2019t sure of which versions to include. \u201cI think in all but one case we chose right, and like during our public beta, we quickly pivoted,\u201d he said. Eventually, they landed on 60 starting champions, made up of both original and hand-picked characters. The idea was to have a decent sized roster that felt balanced despite the skill level of a given player. <\/p>\n Following these initial decisions, the team focused on ridding the game of elements that didn’t age well. However, too big of changes would mean sacrificing the “Classic” part of League Classic. Turley mentioned this when he talked about how newer features found their way into League Classic.<\/p>\n \u201cIn a lot of cases, the game is identical or [so] close that no one\u2019s going to be able to discern [the difference], but there are just better ways of doing things now.\u201d Turley used the purchasing of wards as an example. Since newer players didn\u2019t like using money that could be spent on upgrading their builds to buy wards, he gave them a free, yet weaker option. \u201cOne thing I added in 2014 was trinkets. Everyone had their own little durable item that would drop a ward for a little bit of time,\u201d he said. Turley felt adding this sort of thing to League Classic was a boon, despite being a newer mechanic.<\/p>\n Yet the most difficult part of League Classic’s development was the process of retrieving the assets needed to resurrect this version of League. The task was so difficult, in fact, that Langfjord joked about feeling more like an archeologist than a senior animator. <\/p>\n \u201cYou just go to old files and you hope that nobody deleted them. You go in and see, ‘What did they actually leave? How clean were people when they were backing up a character?’\u201d Langfjord then elaborated on how, even if a character wasn\u2019t lost, it might not have met the standards for the game. \u201cWe [couldn’t] bring back old Scion and plop them in the game. We [had] to rebuild him.\u201d<\/p>\n This process sometimes meant finding old animation files to serve as a foundation. Other times, Langfjord would have to make a legendary skin to mimic a character\u2019s gameplay, making it look the way it did years ago. In the cases where character files were completely deleted–due to changes in code or improper storage practices–he\u2019d try using Riot\u2019s file-management system to go through the game\u2019s development timeline. The goal was to find the point where a character existed, and pull whatever he could to copy as a reference. Yet in the “worst cases where there was nothing to pull from,” Langfjord explained, he simply had to “eyeball and fake it.” Langfjord stated that he had to do this for minions, jungle creeps, and even some aspects of the map as well. <\/p>\n \u201cOne thing we didn\u2019t take into account was the position of the sun on the map,\u201d he explained. \u201cApparently, it had been changed to more of an orange hue now in the modern game, because we were going to simulate actual sunlight. We weren\u2019t really thinking of the light as much when we initially started [Classic]. So, a lot of people felt like the map looked very different initially.\u201d The team had to eventually go back and change the game\u2019s lighting so that the map visually felt like it did back in the day.<\/p>\n It\u2019s apparent that a lot of work went into getting League Classic up and running, not to mention balanced. Towards the end of our chat, the devs mentioned how they were using fan feedback to help determine where the game would go in the future. Everyone was passionate about bringing to life the MOBA they initially fell in love with. Unfortunately, that passion wasn’t enough to convince fans to stick around. <\/p>\n League Classic was largely seen as a cool retro option to visit here and there, but nothing that would replace the current iteration of the MOBA. This was especially true for players who weren’t pleased with the starting champions; though folks on Reddit argued about what exactly went wrong during the game’s development, nearly everyone agreed that it would’ve benefited from having the entire Classic roster at launch. <\/p>\n There was also the notion that Riot just wasn’t doing enough. Despite the frequent updates that introduced “new” champions, addressed balancing issues, and fixed bugs, the team was unable to appease its players. The absence of options like a ranked mode–something players had been asking for since launch–reinforced this. Even after Riot introduced the council vote system, which gave players another means of shaping the game, Classic still struggled to resonate with fans. The prevailing sentiment? The game was always missing something important. <\/p>\n It’s hard to nail down exactly what went wrong with League Classic. While Riot certainly did a lot to make the game work, their efforts didn’t translate into more queued matches. The smaller roster, missing features, and other issues pushed too many fans away. That said, it would’ve been great if the team were given more time to cook–especially considering how meaningful the project was for them. <\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve been working on League now for eight years,” Langfjord told me. “One of the things that was really cool when I joined [League Classic] early on was [that] I recognized this feeling of the game. I didn\u2019t even know I\u2019d been missing it.\u201d<\/p>\n I could say the same. Though I didn\u2019t spend as much time in League Classic as I thought I would, I did enjoy playing with friends when I could. Thankfully, despite not being a permanent option anymore, it’ll return as an event mode sometime in the future. Its current iteration, however, will cease to exist come January 2027.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.gamespot.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/League-Classic-screen-4.jpg?w=636\")
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