Hi everyone,

As you might already know, Chronoshift was an emulation of a 2011 version of League of Legends that used files provided by Riot’s CDN to emulate a playable version of a patch from October 2011. I believe it was Xerath release patch.

I had quite a few games on Chronoshift. We’ve all played the more modern seasons of League of Legends for many years now, and it was definitely quite an experience to play the game how it was back in the day. It was a fundamentally different game.

• Roles were more clearly defined and had certain functions.

This was a lot of fun for me. There were fewer ‘jack of all trades’ champions. The carriers, generally the ADC and the AP carry mid, were the team’s damage machines. These positions empowered teams to win fights, capture objectives, and so on. Supports, tanks, and bruisers were responsible for either enabling your team’s carries or disabling the opponent team’s carries.

Now this might sound like something where only ADC and AP mid mattered, but that is not true at all. I played lots of games in the more supportive roles and if you did your job well you could really impact the fights.

You don’t come up at level 6 or 7 as Jarvan or Lee Sin and 100-0 some unlucky guy with red smite in Chronoshift. Instead, use ganks and vision to secure map dominance for your team. Getting a huge lead on a bruiser jungler or a mage jungler like Fiddlesticks still allowed you to carry the game. Especially when being ahead as a jungler often benefits your laners. Junglers were not as strong individually (particularly in terms of EXP), but they played an important role in the game and served as the glue that held teams together. Supports famously had almost no gold income in the old days. However, personally I actually didn’t mind it too much. Your job is exactly to do a lot with next to no resources. You rely on your champions kit instead of the items you buy. I personally enjoyed this aspect

• Misconception: Burst damage was lower in early LoL. It was actually quite high for specific champions and itw was totally fine.

This is a misconception. Damage from carry champions was very high because this is their purpose. Dealing damage is what they do.

What is very different is that non-carry champions don’t do as much damage. You don’t get oneshot by a jungler without a lot of damage items for example. This goes back to the point of more clearly defined roles.

Supportive champions are generally more busy with disruption than bursting enemies. Not that they can’t kill carries, they absolutely can in many cases, but not as easily as today.

Please remember that this point is not made without considering balance. Some things make burst ridiculous like DFG, but this is a balance problem. The item is just OP as fuck.

• Balance was often dumb

The champion balance did not really hold up. All of us are much better players now, and in 2011 champions like Lee Sin were greatly undervalued. It isn’t really a competition because he is that much ahead of every other jungler.

Gangplank, Lee Sin, and Urgot were, in my opinion, the top three runners.

Some of these were also well-known in the past, but I don’t think anyone appreciated how incredibly busted they truly were. Other degenerate builds included the Tryndamere W max, which reduced AD by -100. Anyway, because of these issues, the developers and community were talking about changing the light balance.

Other things:

• DFG and Oracle’s are just OP and need big nerfs.

• Towers are too weak.

• Baron buff is too hard to end with which makes comebacks a bit too easy.

Closing thoughts:

Chronoshift had its fair share of problems but it was still some of the most fun I’ve had on a game in the last 5 years.

I honestly thought that the novelty would wear off after a few games, but I just kept on having more and more fun with it. So much so that I wish one day Riot would make an official version of this version of the game. My ideal scenario would be a version with light balance changes. Especially because I think a lot of newer players would love to try it. Early LoL is an important part of gaming history in my opinion.

In the end, I was honestly really shocked just how much League of Legends has changed over the years. Chronoshift really is a totally fundamentally different experience. However, I still think it holds up today even with how much we all improved and learned since. It still plays pretty well!

Let me state something clearly: Classic LoL/Chronoshift is obviously not for everyone and it does not need to be. The main game will obviously always be more popular and that’s completely fine. My post is not about “new LoL sucks and old LoL good”. It’s more like: They are very different and good for different reasons even if old LoL is obviously flawed with modern skills.

Classic LoL and modern LoL do not need to be enemies. Just like with Classic WoW and retail WoW. They can co exist. They give different experiences and it’s amazing that both exist. It’s a shame that for LoL we cannot get the experience that old LoL provides. The more classic MOBA feel with all the great things that LoL has over other MOBAs.

Thanks for reading :)