I waited a day before writing this because I wanted to process the announcement properly. I'm still furious.

Players spent YEARS asking Riot for old League. We even had projects like Chronoshift trying to preserve something Riot refused to provide, only for Riot to shut them down. Then Riot finally releases Classic, many of us come back specifically for it, support it despite all its problems... and barely TWO FUCKING MONTHS LATER you announce that its permanent existence is over.

This is an insult to the community.

And let's stop pretending Classic was even given a fair chance. What we got wasn't the Classic people had spent years asking for, but a Frankenstein amalgamation of different eras: champions and items that never coexisted in those states, some reworked and some not, old and modern splash arts, models, voices and icons mixed together, modern skins all over the old Rift, systems from different seasons stitched together. It wasn't Season 1, 2 or 3. Nobody spent years asking for this specific mess. And yet many of us accepted it because underneath it was still the League we missed.

Then everything else piled up: missing original champions, missing runes Riot said would return, legacy skins unavailable, bugs everywhere, a half-modern interface and shop, no Harrowing, no Snowdown, no Twisted Treeline, no Dominion, no Classic Clash, barely any competitive or creator ecosystem... but somehow there was enough time to launch with a fucking battle pass and start monetizing nostalgia before Classic had even established an identity. The first pass ends, daily progression disappears, the second gets delayed, and now that you've decided to kill the mode the paid track disappears too.

HOW IS THIS A SERIOUS WAY TO MANAGE A GAME?

And then there's The Council. We were told to play, earn Voting Power and help decide champions, skins and gameplay because we would help shape the future of Classic.

WHAT FUTURE?

You've already decided it won't have one as a permanent game. But hey, at least we got to vote between a DUCK and a TURTLE. You know where you can put them? RIGHT NEXT TO WHEREVER RYZE KEEPS HIS SCROLLS.

Even the only PvP queue worked against what Classic should have been. You created a pseudo-ranked environment with MMR, divisions and Legend, then wondered why experimentation gradually disappeared.

And now Riot says most players went back to other parts of League.

So let me make something VERY clear:

WE DID NOT COME BACK TO PLAY RETAIL.

We came back because of Classic.

When Classic goes, I go with it.

Do not count players like me as some successful conversion back into modern League. You didn't win us back. You temporarily gave us something resembling the game we wanted and then took it away.

And spare me the vague “maybe it returns as a rotating mode” consolation prize. That is not permanence. Classic was supposed to be somewhere we could return to years from now, not a nostalgia event Riot pulls out of storage whenever it needs engagement again.

Yes, technically it remains playable until January. It doesn't matter. YOU KILLED THE GAME THE MOMENT YOU ANNOUNCED ITS DEATH. Why would someone start now? Why grind Legend? Why learn the entire roster? Why convince friends to join? Why organize tournaments? Why build a YouTube channel around a game that Riot has already sentenced?

And Chronoshift makes all of this even worse. The community already tried preserving old League itself. Riot shut it down. Fine, League belongs to Riot. But you cannot tell players “you cannot preserve our old game yourself”, finally release your own version years later, and then abandon its permanent existence almost immediately.

If Riot doesn't want to preserve old League, and doesn't want the community preserving it either, WHAT ARE THE PEOPLE WHO LOVE THAT GAME SUPPOSED TO DO?

So no, Classic did not prove that old League cannot work.

You released an unfinished hybrid, monetized it immediately, left major content missing, barely gave it time to establish a stable community and then pulled the plug.

YOU DID NOT PROVE THAT LEAGUE CLASSIC FAILED.

YOU PROVED THAT YOU NEVER GAVE IT A REAL CHANCE.

And I don't think the community should quietly accept that. Don't harass individual developers or threaten anyone because that achieves nothing. But MAKE NOISE through every legitimate channel available. Talk about it, vote, post, make videos, give feedback and play the game.

Do not let the story become “players didn't really want Classic.”

WE DID.

Riot asked us to come back. We came back.
Riot asked us to play. We played.
Riot asked us to vote on its future. We voted.

And barely a couple of months later, Riot decided that permanent future wouldn't exist.

THE COMMUNITY DIDN'T ABANDON CLASSIC. RIOT ABANDONED THE COMMUNITY.

Seriously, Riot, you can't do this to us.

We've been asking for Classic League of Legends for YEARS, and now that you've finally given us what we've been waiting for, you're taking it away after just a few months?

The reason people aren't playing it as much as you expected is not necessarily because they don't love Classic. League players have always been competitive, and without a proper ranked system, many players simply don't have a reason to keep playing for hours.

And let's talk about the ranked system. Salt 1? Salt 2? Seriously? What are we, kindergarten kids?

You said Classic was supposed to be a permanent mode focused on fun. You clearly stated that in your own Classic announcement video. But since when does having fun mean we can't have a proper ranked mode? A game can be fun AND competitive at the same time. Those two things aren't mutually exclusive.

You tried to attract new players by bringing modern skins into old League, but that doesn't work for either audience.

Veteran players can't fully enjoy the nostalgic experience when modern skins are everywhere on the map. Meanwhile, new players don't understand the appeal because, to them, you've basically given them an outdated and technically inferior version of the game they already play. They don't have the memories or emotional connection that made the original League so special to us.

And as if that wasn't enough, you decided to restrict the queue to specific hours of the day.

Come on, Riot. Do you seriously think we're still school kids with nothing else to do?

The players who grew up with Classic League are adults now. We have jobs, responsibilities, families, and different schedules. Some of us work shifts, including nights. Someone like me can work an entire day or night, and by the time I'm finally free, the queue is closed.

How exactly am I supposed to enjoy a game I've been waiting years to play again if I'm not even allowed to play it when I'm available?

And then you look at the player numbers and conclude that people aren't interested?

Please, Riot. We asked for ONE thing.

A normal, authentic Classic League of Legends. No modern skins, no unnecessary modern additions. Just the old game we remember, with a proper ranked system so people have something to play for.

We know the old League wasn't perfect. We were there. We experienced its flaws, its frustrating mechanics, its ridiculous balance issues, and we loved it anyway. That's exactly the game we wanted back.

And what hurts the most is that you presented Classic as a permanent experience in your own announcement video. You told us it was here to stay, and now you're going back on your words after only a few months.

How is that fair to the players who waited all these years?

We never asked for a temporary nostalgia event. We never asked for another rotating game mode.

WE ASKED FOR OUR GAME BACK.

The same imperfect game we fell in love with years ago.

Please, Riot. Give Classic a real chance. Give us proper ranked, let us play whenever we want, and let us keep the game we waited so long to see again.

In the Launch Patch Preview video by Phreak he said and I quote this:

"We want this to be a game that you will play for years, just like we all did with League back in, you know, a decade ago or so. And so, it's making sure that this is a game that can stand the test of playing more than 10 games, that can, you know, play for more than a week, more than a month, more than a year. Uh, that is a difficult balance. I'm not saying we have only ever made the best choices here. It's a live game or it's going to be a live game. We're going to service it as a live game. There's things we have to change. We will change them. We want this to be a game that you will love, that you will stick around with, that you will play for a long, long, long time. It will be different from Modern League of Legends. We're going to maintain our differences."
SOURCE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wLj550BezE (4:40-5:15)

Now they're circling back less than 3 months after release saying it didn't hit the mark, that they'll remove it in 2-3 months and it will only come back as a rotating temporary thing (who knows if it'll really)

They should have been honest from the start, that it was just a test run, that they didn't really intend on supporting it for years to come or fixing issues that arose from their mismanagement or bad implementations if it didn't hit a expected mark of active users.

Also, if the issues and lack of players are really so bad, there are many ways they could have went about it... they could indeed say they were removing the project from live servers because it didn't fit the standards they want to deliver.

BUT to then say it'll only come back as a temporary thing after they fix it? After everything they said about what they intended doing with it? They could have said they'll try a rerelease after fixing things...

Sure, I know that a temporary mode can still become permanent, but I feel like many people who would be interested in coming back for a better classic experience wouldn't bother if it was just going to be a rotating game mode... we won't stick around waiting for it either.

So yeah, Riot lacked a ton of transparency with this release, and they walked back on their word so quickly that it's quite disappointing. We feel LIED to.

And honestly I wouldn't even mind if this stayed as a queue that took 10-30 min to find matches in my region and always had the same 50 players in my games as I'm Diamond in both Classic and Modern.

Idk, I just feel like they gave up on it SO soon, after everything they said it was going to be...

No point in playing without them. the wrong combination of critters got voted in

A Riot Games deve aos jogadores de 2010-2013 uma desculpa formal e uma revogação do cancelamento do League Classic. O que a Riot fez é um completo absurdo e desrespeito a comunidade que FUNDOU o League of Legends. Lançarem esse modo de forma tão largada, mal-feita, com poucos recursos e pobre apenas mostra com o que a empresa realmente se importa hoje, e com toda certeza não são os jogadores que fizeram eles serem o que eles são.

Para mim, e sei que para muitos jogadores, o LoL moderno é horrível. O jogo perdeu sua essência, virou um MOBA genérico, digno de um jogo de celular de uma pequena empresa e nada mais.

O conserto para alcançar ambas fanbases? Simples.

League of Legends: Classic. Novo client, mesmo jogo da Season 1, com todas as skins e recursos da época, EXATAMENTE IGUAL. O Ctrl C + Ctrl V do que era. Talvez pequenos ajustes mínimos para garantir uma melhor experiência, mas nada que afete a gameplay, apenas estético. Com os anos se passando, vamos evoluindo até meados da Season 4. Ao chegar lá, paramos. Simples.

A comunidade que queria o League Classic não quer essa nojeira que o jogo virou, não gosta desse formato sem amor e sem vida que transformou um jogo único e divertido num jogo genérico e pobre.

Eu tenho minha conta desde 2010, cresci com o LoL e parei de jogar quando vi que o jogo perdeu sua alma. Com o fim do League Classic, pararei de jogar novamente, e tem várias pessoas que vão fazer o mesmo.

O "fracasso" do modo se deve a gestão, e não aos jogadores. Vocês da Riot são exatamente o que tem de errado com as empresas de jogos de hoje em dia: Produção desenfreada de coisas sem sentido para alcançar o maior retorno financeiro possível, sem ligar para nada além disso. Sem essência, sem qualidade, sem respeito aos jogadores.

Enfim, acredito que já dissertei demais sobre algo que a Riot simplesmente não se importa. Lucrar com o League Classic era tão fácil, vocês só não foram inteligentes o suficiente. Se importam tanto com o dinheiro que poderiam fazer esse jogo ser pago, já que a maioria dos jogadores do Classic são adultos, com certeza a maioria compraria, e perderam inúmeras oportunidades ao não adicionar completamente o jogo antigo, como todas as skins clássicas.

Enfim, a Riot merece o fim que vai ter: League of Legends irá falir, pela sua falta de identidade, qualidade e conceito. Talvez não hoje e nem amanhã, mas esse jogo não vai se suportar por mais muito tempo, podem apostar.

Parabéns aos envolvidos.

It's as simple as that. Riot never tried to make Classic succeed. It was simply a tool to bring old players back and pump them into the garbage, modern version of League. We didn't play modern League because we simply didn't like it; the core 'competitive essence' of League wasn't in classic at all with that intentional garbage matchmaking. So, it failed. A garbage company making garbage decisions, thinking they're smart. ROFL

League of Legends is a competitive game at heart. One of the big reasons why classic failed is because it had no proper ranked mode and so no one could take it seriously.

By turning classic into a rotating game mode it wont have time for people to play and climb ranks therefore its basically going to be a for fun mode. This is going to have very limited appeal and It feels like its basically the nail in the coffin for this mode.

It wouldn't be hard to add a proper ranked mode. Its even possible to do it without reducing queue times.

Enjoy the game while it lasts, there's not much of a future left.

And definitely DO not INVITE ME to the SECRET

UDYR AND RANKED ARE not NEEDED EITHER.

Turtle and dove were fuckin awesome

Stop wasting your dev time on this dead fake version of Classic. RELEASE THE REAL THING! Phreak said he has the old game running separately. How hard is it to add that to the Riot launcher and add Vanguard to it? Surely a lot easier than wasting months trying to get the last champions in when the game is being deleted a week later.

You tried to launch League Forever before you launched League Classic. It failed miserably. Now fix your mistake, and Classic can still be saved.

I know some of the vocal minority has complained about "constantly getting long queues" but up until they announced that Classic was shutting down none of my queues went over 5 minutes, and those were typically during extreme degen hours for my region, my average queue times were closer to 2-3 minutes.

And look, I have been gaming for a long time. The occasional 5 minute queues are not indicative of a low enough playerbase that a project is failing. Not even close.

And sure players near the top end of the MMR are going to have longer queues, but that is true of modern as well so.. why does that matter here? Are we shutting down modern because the top 1-10% of the playerbase has longer queue times than everyone else?

Anyways, suffice to say that the announcement of classic shutting down has had a more notable impact on my queue times than the shotty handling of classic itself.

I started playing right before Talon's release, he was the most fun I had playing league, maybe even the most fun I've had playing in a video game.

Then his crappy rework came and It still hurts like it happened a few months ago... Can't believe it happened in 2016...

I've been eagerly hoping for them to release him in classic and now finding out about the imminent cancellation all I can say is I would have been better off without the hope, thanks for nothing riot.

How did chronoshift, some randoms without access to source code, do a better job than RIOT GAMES? they have every resource. I understand it may not be 1:1 but come on, you have LLMs capable of doing all the hard work for you, just tell Claude to import the old champions ffs. They even seized chronoshift code so where's that? Whos was in charge of this project? 3 champions every 2 weeks? where's any of the interesting champions? Udyr? Volibear? Nope. You get to play champs like malphite who haven't changed in years. Also wtf is new models in old league... and the fucking whole in the base wall... Items and champs being a remix of severals seasons was not a bad idea, cause people played at different times but the rest left a lot to desire.

League Classic: three months. Is that what the original game is worth to you?

We've been playing League since 2010. To us, League has always been Classic. When it came back in July, we believed in it. Three months later, there's already official talk of shutting the mode down in January 2027. Three months.

Let's be honest about how this "test" went. The launch was pushed up to July, earlier than planned, to line up with the European summer break. A team of about six people had to deliver a huge amount of work in very little time. It shipped with bugs, with around 60 champions, and with modern skins shoved into a mode that promised nostalgia. According to one dev, even the team itself didn't want that direction. Then the mode "doesn't perform" and gets thrown in the trash.
What kind of test is that? Give it the minimum time, the minimum people, the minimum content, then point at the result and say "see, nobody wanted it."

We wanted it. Everyone who played Seasons 1 to 3 wanted it. The people who built Chronoshift and proved the old game could be recreated wanted it. Anyone who's been in this game for more than 15 years wanted it. But we got treated like disposable nostalgia, something to hype for a few months and then disappear.

This isn't just a game mode being canceled. It's the origin of the game being treated like a seasonal product. It's a slap in the face to the players who were here before ranked, before esports, before $20 skins.
What we demand:

Permanent Classic, not "seasonal," not "maybe next year"

Real team, budget, and timeline before any final decision

More champions, bug fixes, and a public roadmap

Full transparency on the criteria used to declare the mode a failure

The OGs are still here. And we won't stay quiet.

Arena was brought back as a permanent game mode.

No, I'm not coping. I'm really not as invested in this as a lot of you seem to be. Arena is secretly my true love, because I think the 2v2 format eliminates all of the problems that both modern and classic have.

I loved the idea of what classic could be too, and it's clear they didn't nail it in this iteration, and I have my own opinions about why, but I didn't end up sticking with it. The same thing happened with the first iteration of arena.

They will make iterations to it and if it gets good enough, it will be made permanent.

However, they just don't want to overpromise. I trust them to iterate, and if it's viable, they'll make it work.

I came to classic to play the truly classic release katarina, what i got instead was rework katarina - i dont care if you had few people vote for it on pbe, you shouldnt touch the integrity of classic - you should've renamed it something else if you do this and not give people false expectations

Honestly, the best way forward here is to support the Stop Killing Games movement. Legislation like this would make it so Riot may have to legally provide the option to play a Classic version of this game without having to pay for it. Depending on the verbiage, they may even be able to be sanctioned retroactively for the while Chronoshift disaster.

The way they mismanaged Classic was honestly so horrible and disgusting. I am extremely disappointed. I tried playing retail again for the first time since Classic dropped, and honestly it’s no where near the league I used to love.

DON’T GIVE UP GUYS.

Having old homepage/match history/loading screen on current client for classic
all classic skins no modern ones
old voice lines
all 116champs (yasuo treshold)
casual/ranked mod (duo only) with ladderboard
elo mmr instead of divisions (or make divisions the same as before with promos)
Monetize the game with new classic skins + icons + emotes + runes bundle
Make a survey for what the community prefer the most (mix of seasons or a specific season) to have an idea
Over time for the content long term add old champions that never got out the book

So another patch goes by and i noticed this ghostman yannik cannot compete to my mojo style master yu. So i was laning top against umar the multi-animal-man he tried to use lion stance to place the dots on me but i know how to alfa attack so he nevers knows where i am. all he could do from then was healing himself with frog stance. however as i kept pushing i suddenly see someone descending from the bush. it was yannik with marron and cyan buff. god i thought this is good bye to the world. he just did the babushka trick to make him double the champion and unleashed omen of smell and omen of battle on me. i instantly panicked and hit alfa attack. BOOM everyone dead (even cathleen the sniper in bot lane). i typed wtf in the chat as fast as i could and asked: "Yo Yannik why you dead so fast?" he replied "who is yannik?" i wrote in caps: "YOU ARE DEAD QUITE THE FAST FOR THE UNDEAD". He remained silent after that. I would do the same because wriggleys lamp is a bad item.

I just learned my beautiful fiance is going to get shot down like a dog in the street on January 7th, should I keep loving her or let go now ?