The new patcher update - Replay sooner?

"Secondly, the new Patcher represents the first stride forward on the road towards a polished replay system. Replays are processed by the game through saved command sets. With the League of Legends game engine being updated so frequently, replays would currently break every two weeks. While there is still work to be done, this new Patcher will be able to launch older versions of League of Legends, allowing successful replays regardless of how long ago the game may have taken place."


Does this mean we would get the official replay system soon? Probably not.


Riot responds with the new patcher update after being one-upped by a random group of programmers who created the first working replay function for League of Legends (leaguereplay) last week. In this announcement, Riot claims this new version of patcher will be "the first stride forward on the road towards a polished replay system." Riot included other features such as faster patching, installing, and error fixes, but they are merely dressings to the main course. Riot could have fixed these known bugs in any of the previous patches.

New League of Legends Patcher

The first stride, however, has already been taken by someone other than Riot, though the privately created replay system isn't "polished". Leaguereplay is currently buggy; the biggest problem being it isn't designed to be forward compatible with future patches -meaning every client version update would render old recorded replays obsolete. There isn't much the developers can do because official client modifications (without major bugs) can only be done by Riot. In order to instill confidence in the LoL community, Riot would likely release the replay system sooner, but not way ahead of its scheduled month just to "catch up" to Leaguereplay. Therefore, I believe that Riot is trying to bide time, taking advantage of Leaguereplay by granting the possibility of forward compatibility with replays, thereby satisfying the increasingly impatient community by allowing them to use a temporary replay system. 


What is Riot really saying? "Use Leaguereplay until we release our polished version - eventually." For those who are saying this is not Riot's intention, I ask this: why haven't Riot taken the first step in implementing the replay system since LoL release UNTIL someone else done it? I believe there is too much coincidence here. 

Original thread link:

http://www.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=506045