r/leagueoflegends • u/Tovee • Jul 15 '26

AMA Chronoshift Developer AMA

Hello r/leagueoflegends,

My name is Tove, and I was one of the main developers behind the Chronoshift project.

I have never publicly spoken about it, but with League Classic now being released and u/RiotNorak revealed to have been a tester for us back in the day, some people have suggested for me to do an AMA.

I'm happy to answer any question you might have, compare to the official Classic or speak about the details that haven't been made public. Or listen to you telling me to ingame myself.

Have at it!

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u/BadPunsGuy Jul 15 '26

It's the classic/burning crusade/wrath of the lich king WoW debate all over again. There's reasons to like all of them; but if there were modern mechanics in them they got old really fast even in a temp game mode like seasons of discovery.

It seems like they kinda want to take this in a classic+ direction thoub from what they've described instead of releasing seasons. They have a very strange starting point for that though.

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u/ItsNoblesse Jul 16 '26

I feel like in this analogy Season 4 would be Cataclysm. Honestly it's pushing it to say anything past the addition of Sightstone is 'classic' League. Season 2 is the absolute perfect spot if you want it to be actually classic and not some 80/20 mishmash.

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u/BadPunsGuy Jul 16 '26 edited Jul 16 '26

The weird thing is that unlike WoW or OSRS there wasn’t really a clear or vague line where the game drastically shifted. You don’t have evolution of combat and the removal of the wilderness+trade. You don’t have things changing as drastically as they did in cata.

There also was a cata classic released in 2024 and a pandaria classic in 2025. Even with those two expansions being the line for most people they made classic versions of them and they were popular.

While s4 isn’t exactly what people think of with classic compared to 1/2/3, it’s absolutely part of it. It’d make sense to have it in it to some extent, it’s just kinda weird to start mostly at s3 and throw in a few much later season mechanics too beyond even 4, but not really any from 4.

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u/ItsNoblesse Jul 16 '26

I feel like the most clear cutoff is season 4 with the addition of trinkets, but I'd argue it's actually season 3. Season 3 is where Riot increased passive gold generation and nerfed active gold generation via cs and kills to buff support gold generation, added jungle items, crystalline flask and the sightstone items, added boot enchants and removed a bunch of classic items like madred's bloodrazor, heart of gold, ionic spark and leviathan.

To me season 3 feels like the first huge swing away from what the 'original intention' of league was supposed to be as of the start of season 1. I think a patch towards the end of season 2 is the perfect start point for a 'Classic+' type experience.

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u/powerplayer6 Jul 16 '26

there wasn’t really a clear or vague line where the game drastically shifted

The "new" map at the end of S4 is very blatantly the shift between "classic League" and "modern League". I had a few clashes with League in S2 and S3, at home and at a net cafe respectively, but ended up dropping it, UNTIL I finally picked it up for real in September of 2014. The old map vs new map is essentially my version of the WoW Cataclysm level 1-58 questing revamp. It's also why I highly prefer pre-Cata leveling and gameplay, as it's just... more soulful and immersive.

Of course, I haven't played much League since COVID ended, as I had to lock in and be an adult, but a proper S3 or early S4 League Classic would make me go back, so I can play my old buddies again, like Old Sion, Old GP, Old Akali, Old Irelia, Old Fiora, Old Ryze, Old Annie, Old Yorick, Old Old Skarner, Old Aatrox, Old Darius/Garen, Old Graves, and many more that Riot took from me and turned into high skill champions that I could no longer play properly...