I Played 26 Games of LoL Classic Mode. Here’s Why I Uninstalled It.

The login screen loaded, and the background music played. That same melody. My finger hovered over the mouse. I didn't click. Not because I was moved, but because I suddenly wasn't sure why I was here.

League of Legends' "Classic Mode" had been out for a week. I played twenty-six games, won eleven, lost fifteen. In eight of those losses, the enemy mid-laner had a full set of magic penetration runes. I ran attack speed. Because I'd only managed to grind out one complete rune page, built for jungle attack speed, and I forced it into mid lane anyway.

That wasn't a skill issue. It was a ledger issue.

First game, I picked Twisted Fate. Level 1 E, global teleport, exactly as I remembered. But after I ported in and landed my W-Q combo, the enemy lost about a third of their HP. They auto-attacked me twice. I dropped nearly half. I glanced down at my mastery page: 0/9/21, a support setup. I'd forgotten to switch.

The enemy had stacked twenty-one points in offense. I'd stacked biscuits and gold.

After that match, I stared at the post-game screen for a long time. The gold difference read 2,300. Damage dealt was 12,000 apart. It wasn't that my mechanics failed me—the outcome had been written before we even loaded in.

Next, I switched to Evelynn jungle. Started Blue, kited the camp, auto-attacked while moving, following my modern muscle memory. Came out of Blue at 70% HP. Walked to the wraith camp. The second small wraith was still alive when my screen went gray.

I got solo-killed by a jungle camp.

While waiting to respawn at the fountain, I opened the shop. No Hunter's Machete. No Refillable Potion. Just three health pots. If you don't learn how to manage your HP in this version, the jungle will teach you—with your corpse.

But that wasn't the worst part. The worst part came fifteen minutes in.

The enemy jungler ganked bot three times. Each time, he recalled, healed up, and walked back out. The pace was as slow as an old man crossing the street. But once he had two kills, the game was over. No bounties. No objective points. No Dragon Soul to flip the game. He was up a B.F. Sword, and you couldn't even farm under tower without getting dove. The remaining twenty minutes weren't a match. They were an execution.

All you could do was watch from the fountain as the enemy pushed. They pushed slowly, because everyone's items were weak and towers took forever. In that dead air, no one talked. No one surrendered. The mouse cursor traced idle circles on the desktop.

The forums were on fire.

One camp said: "What trash mode is this? Terrible balance, clunky feel."

Another replied: "You don't get it. We're not here for balance. We're here for our youth."

I checked the match histories of the second group. Most of them had played three to five games and never came back. Youth, apparently, only lasted about three rounds.

The one player I found who'd actually stuck around for a hundred games appeared in a single post. He'd uploaded a screenshot: old Irelia, a triple kill, Frozen Heart plus Trinity Force. Someone asked him why he kept playing. He said: "Because in live servers, if I pick Irelia, the enemy buys one Grievous Wounds item and I'm useless. Here, no one builds Grievous Wounds."

He didn't say "nostalgia." He didn't say "youth." He said: "Here, no one builds Grievous Wounds."

That line hit harder than any sentimental monologue.

Riot had stuffed the interface with battle passes and tokens. Want to unlock old Fiora? Complete missions first. Want the classic splash art? Pay up. I paused at the store screen for five seconds. Didn't click. I remembered Season 2, in the internet café, we never checked skins before locking in a champion. Whoever yelled "I'm going Tryndamere" just locked it. Pure volume decided the pick.

Now, before you even select your champion, you have to count your rune pages, your IP, your grind hours. You're already in debt before the game starts.

After my last match, I exited and didn't queue again. On the bottom right of my desktop, there's a folder labeled "S2 Screenshots." I opened it. Inside were all the scoreboards from our five-man premades back then, low pixel count, wrong resolution. In one shot, all five of us had negative KDA, but someone had typed in chat: "It's okay, next game."

I closed the folder. Uninstalled Classic Mode.

It wasn't that it wasn't fun. It was that after playing it, I realized the person who used to say "next game" wasn't here anymore.