"Most have gone back to other parts of League"
The classic mode rolled out in League of Legends earlier this year will cease to be a permanent addition once the calendar flips over into 2027, ending a fairly brief nostalgia run, devs Riot have announced. The mode, offering a version of the MOBA mirroring its early days, only debuted in July. It might come back in a different form down the line, but Riot have found that there isn't enough of a prolonged appetite for days gone by to be worth propping up something akin to the classic modes seen in games like World of Warcraft.
"We’ve seen a lot of players have fun revisiting the olden days with classic," Riot wrote an an announcement post. "At this point though, most have gone back to other parts of League. So Classic will be available through the rest of Season 3 and will then end its current run in January 2027. We’ll then put classic back in the box for now, with the goal of bringing it back, likely as an event mode with adjustments and additions.
"There’s more we’re going to share in the future about what we learned from this run. That includes where we think we got Classic right, where we could have gone more classic, and where sticking too closely to the past may have held the experience back."
They added that they're "issuing refunds on classic-specific content that will no longer be usable and shipping the Act II Classic Battle Pass in 26.21 with a free track only". Once that 26.21 patch launches next week, the game's classic store will only be home to champions, runes, and rune pages.
"We know some of you REALLY love classic, and so we’re going to bring you new (old) champions including Irelia, Karma, Quinn, Aatrox, and Caitlyn that just came out in 26.20 as well as Mordekaiser, Yorick, Hecarim, and Lucian in 26.21," Riot added. "We’ll continue to release new champions every patch through 26.23, including Volibear, Urgot, and Udyr, who all placed top 3 in our most recent Council poll."
Classic modes in games do always run the risk of dying a death once the initial novelty wears off. Rare is the case where a game can sustain both a retro version and a main modern version without one of the two suffering. In that case, I'd assume devs much prefer it to be the former that withers, as has happened here, given the main version's where the majority of the game's bread is buttered. A little nostalgia's ok, but if people end up permanently choosing an older version over the newer one, that might also be an indicator you've got problems with your current offerings.
If you're planning on jumping into a bit of LOL classic before it departs, Riot did you the solid of making their Vanguard anti-cheat optionally less invasive on certain PCs earlier this year.