I think it’s safe to say that the League of Legends community is as restless as it has ever been. It has been more than half a year since the last major feature release, and promised feature updates remain unreleased months after their announcements. Several high profile players have made long forum posts with titles like, “@Riot why I’m losing interest in your game,” and, “Riot’s downward spiral.”

The thing is, I still have a lot of fun with League of Legends. My personal beef with Riot is that a game that once had as active a development cycle as I’ve seen has grown stagnant, relying on bi-weekly champion releases to keep the game fresh. I started playing the game in December of 2009. Just three months later there was a new map, not just in development, but in the matchmaking rotation. Somewhere along the way there was a client revision. Four months after the Twisted Treeline release came Season One, complete with ranked matches and a new client experience.

It has been more than six months since Season One launched. In that time, there has not been one major feature release to the game (sorry, tutorial modes don’t count). Magma Chamber was announced in September, as was an upcoming graphical overhaul. Both features remain unreleased. There is still no team/clan support. We still don’t have normal stats available, despite the fact that they’re being recorded. The achievements pane, which was introduced last July along with the Season One release, remains unused.

In short, it’s time. In fact, it’s past time. A major content update is long overdue for the game. Riot has had a lot of opportunity to expand the game and stay at the forefront of MOBA design. Without a serious release in the near future, I think we can reasonably expect the game to start bleeding players, either to other MOBA franchises or to different games altogether.

Back in September, Riot teased a new map known as Magma Chamber. Since that teaser, which was basically just a name leak with a little concept art, we’ve heard next to nothing about the map’s release. Players have been getting restless recently, wondering when we’d see the new map, or any new feature for that matter. Just look at the forums. There are seemingly countless threads detailing some manner of unrest with the game.

Even high-tier players feel the game growing stagnant. Elementz made a thread asking for information on Magma Chamber and other upcoming features. Here’s the response he got from Phreak:

Because we’re doing other things that are awesome aside from just Magma Chamber. And when you’re kinda the biggest deal in a genre, people want to steal your ideas, kinda like how HoN 2 has “casual mode” with deny removed. I wonder where they got that idea from?

We don’t want to give free ideas to our competitors if we have the chance. This doesn’t change our release plans for releasing awesome features for you guys, but it does mean you get left in the dark a bit longer than we’d like. We’re sorry for that, because we’d love to be “Here’s these awesome things we’re working on and here’s how they’re progressing.” But as tired as this refrain gets, trust me, it’s going to be freaking awesome and some of it’s coming really soon. I want so badly to tell you just how soon it is and what it is, but… oh man it’s really cool and you should be hearing about some if it shortly.

Gah I hate having to use vague terms with you guys. Please just trust me <3

Obviously, there’s not much to glean from that. Phreak is being intentionally vague and also intentionally personal – “Gah…<3" - presumably in the hope that it won't spark more controversy. I wouldn't count on it.