League of Legends producer reveals how Classic came to life

League of Legends originally launched on October 27, 2009, and is approaching its 17th anniversary later this year. As it's grown and evolved for nearly two decades, players have longed to relive the past. So much so that there have been a few fan-made projects, such as Chronoshift, that sent League back to its early era.

Unfortunately, these projects never saw the light of day, as they were shut down by Riot Games. But the community's —and the developer's — nostalgia never waned. Ahead of League Classic's launch on July 29, I spoke with Paul Bellezza, executive producer of League of Legends, on how Classic came to fruition in a video call.

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Polygon: What is League of Legends Classic?

Paul Bellezza: League Classic is our take on the greatest hits of League's eras. It's something that players have been asking for for a really long time. But, when you get into the conversation, people go, "When would that be?" What patch? What era? How would you even do that? What would you even want in it?" and that debate has also happened on League at Riot for a long time as we've said, "That would be cool, but what does that even mean?"

What happened for us to realize we should pursue something like this was we actually did a Thunderdome project. … Thunderdome's our internal hackathon, and it's basically a week where teams can build whatever they want. Some team members were passionate about resurrecting a version of League from around the 2013-era, around season 3. They put together a prototype that they created last summer. It had about nine, 10 champions, pretty small roster, but it was a lot of fun.

It kind of proved that, one, it's technically feasible, because we weren't even sure. The League engine and software has evolved so many times over the years. Could we even access some of the older assets and older code? And then, two, is it fun? And they were both true.

So ultimately, what we came to after putting a team together, is we're gonna use season 3 as a framework. That era laid a lot of groundwork for what League would eventually evolve into, but still had some of the older designs of some of our champions like Sion, Akali, and Katarina. Just earlier versions that were fun, but different.

When I tried to think of League Classic, it would have to be either season 1 or season 3. Why did you select season 3 as the framework?

One thing is League launched around the world at different points in time. It launched in 2009 in North America and then in Europe around late 2009 or early 2010. It didn't hit Korea until the end of 2011. It didn't reach China until around that time. When you ask someone, "When did you start playing League?" that's variable by where you are in the world. I'd say season 3 was kind of a good mix of most regions as they were onboarding onto League.

And then the second one is, that's kind of when the game was coalescing. I think Alex Ich when he was on Moscow Five… they showed jungle pathing as a valuable role. Back then it was two top, two bottom, one mid, right? It was different, so that's why we kind of went back to [season 3]. … When you talk to people around the world, that's kind of a common reference point, and so that's the right place to start and see what we can pull.

But, there will be some stuff from even like 2015, like we're gonna have Zz'Rot Portal in the game. And then there's some funnier stuff like Heart of Gold. So really a greatest hits, and then, of course, we'll have some of the looks from that era.

What has the development process been like? Is there a League Classic specific dev team that'll be working on balance patches separate from regular League?

Yes, so what happened was we did the Thunderdome project prototype and it was actually quite a large team. It was 45 people because that just showed you the excitement. It consisted of a lot of veteran League designers, like CertainlyT, who did Thresh, and FeralPony, who did Hecarim, and MLH, Matthew Leung-Harrison, who does a lot for the game. A really cracked team of designers, engineers, and technical artists from the era. People who really, really know where to look. So they did the prototype, learned a lot, and we realized we want to bring this out next year in 2026, because we think it would be an incredible experience and a really fun moment for everybody.

Around September, we were able to assemble a dedicated team to this because Thunderdome takes people from all over Riot. Those people weren't necessarily on League, so we were able to assemble a team on League Classic of veterans from that era, as well as some more recent League developers and focus them full-time on the project.

It started real small, like 10 people, and now it's about 25, 30. The intent is that the team, while we launch it, will be there to do balance updates, to live-service it, and to create opportunities for it to continue to expand. One example is we're only gonna launch with 60 champions. Then, as people progress through the Classic Pass and progress together as a group, the more you play and the more you have played League Classic, you get to put a vote on which champions we should bring in next. We have a roster from around that era that we can then allow the community to steer who should come to the game next, so we really wanna see where it goes and make it the fun part of the experience.

Everything will revert back, but should players expect a more modern UI?

A lot of the quality of life that we have in today's UI will be there, but we also didn't want to just have the modern UI slapped onto it. We actually reskinned the UI to look like the classic one, the iconography, some of the visual design of that era, but rebuilt it in our current one. We've made improvements of pathing and networking, so all the modern trappings of what helps run League smoothly today should be available in Classic.

We actually had to recreate the map using our modern tools. We had all the art assets and we basically kind of rebuilt everything, reassembled it, and played it to make sure the feeling was there. In some cases, some of the designs were just so degraded in the code or the art assets were just not there … that we had to recreate them.

We found the old Sion model, but when you load him up in game he's like a tiny, 10 pixels. We actually had to extract him, kind of rebuild his skeleton for his rig and then recode his original design, which wasn't difficult because a lot of those things were simpler in design. Our designers have a lot more tooling that allowed them to get Sion up in like a day.

In a lot of ways, there wasn't any one major thing we had to do. It was more a thousand little things that we had to do, and the team's been doing a good job on that. All that's to say though, modern quality of life will be there in terms of UI experience.

So should players expect to see jungle timers or anything like that as well in the UI or will they have to start timing on their own?

When we played the prototype in earlier play tests, we did not have the jungle timers. They aren't on currently, though this could change.

League Classic will bring back a lot of older players, and it will split the player base a bit. How will Riot work in retaining players in both regular League and League Classic?

I think what we built it around was making sure that people who haven't played in a long time can come back home and have good familiar feelings. So we're actively going, "Hey, we intend for this to be something good for people who haven't played in a while." But for people who are currently playing, we wanna make sure they have fun too, so if they wanna go check it out, it's fine, but we're still in the middle of our year with Summoner's Rift and normal building into MSI and Worlds and stuff. You can continue to enjoy some of the current Summoner's Rift side by side.

Then for newer players, two things. One, maybe they're interested in coming back and trying this version of League from elder years because they weren't around for it. … Not everyone's been playing since 2010 like yourself, right? So just to try it out, I think, will create a lot of fun for people. And then, of course, we have Classic Mayhem if people are like, "I just wanna vibe," or play regular Mayhem. So I think there's something for everybody this time, it's really gonna be a celebration. Our hope is that just providing a lot of pathways for people to play the way that feels right for them and hopefully that resonates with them.

As League turns 17, why is Riot making League Classic now?

Players have really asked for it, and I think the passion of that inspired us to try it. Part of it is just pure passion. We're going to go and make this as compelling an experience as we can, and create those memories, because it's just as meaningful to us as it is to the playerbase. We've all been in it together, so in a way it's kind of emblematic of the journey that we've been on together. And there's something interesting about visiting the past before we go into the future. We've already talked about what we want to do in 2027 with League, and I think this is a way to acknowledge the journey.

League of Legends Classic will be released on July 29.