I haven’t touched League since last fall. Towards the end I had forsaken 5’s as too sour, toxic and dull an experience, and was strictly playing ARAM on Murder Bridge. And even that became serious business to people and lost it’s fun value. Eventually I stopped watching the tournaments, and that was it for me and League. Haven’t really looked back since.

Until the other day, anyway. It seems Summoner’s Rift is receiving one hell of a makeover later this year. Riot has been overhauling some of their graphically outdated champions over the last couple of years, and the Rift even got a texture improvement at one point, but this is a complete rework of all the art assets. I have to admit, it looks pretty sexy.

It’s almost enough to get me to reinstall. I’m a sucker for pretty graphics. Even WoW’s announced character model revamps had me turning my eyes back to Azeroth last year. But with League, it hasn’t been long enough for me to forget the type of people that frequent those matches. Pretty facade or no, the community remains the same.