Thread:Willbachbakal/@comment-26815373-20161225053323/@comment-26815373-20170128222628

I recieved your message on the LoL Client. I'm still working on this infographic. I've mostly been doing research so far, and interestingly...

You know I want to emphasize stealth and invisibility as being two distinct things, related but not synonymous. In my research about stealth and invisibility in the history of RTSs I discovered that WoW, back in 2004, had the rogue spell 'Stealth ' which made the user functionally invisible. Fortunately, all units seemed to have a 'perception' attribute that seemed to influence at what distance the 'stealthed' unit became visible.

I believe this was the beginning of creating the confusion between the two terms as WoW was huge back in the day and a number of League's creators and designers played WoW. Oddly, Warcraft 1, 2, & 3, all had 'Invisibility' as a spell that made the target, well, invisible. 'Stealth' as a term doesn't appear in the Warcraft trilogy. DotA 1 & 2, as you know, emerged from Warcraft 3, BUT they actually kept the terminology accurate: 'stealth' doesn't seem to be part of DotA 1 & 2's game vocabulary - stealth gameplay is possible, but invisibility is the mechanic (untargetability, can't be seen on screen or via the minimap) that players use to achieve stealth gameplay.

Before that, the only other instances of calling (what amounts to functional) invisibility 'stealth' was Command & Conquerer's 'Stealth Tank' unit. (The unit being invisible until it attacked.)