None of the new projects since Riot's expansion into other genres and mediums has been as intrepid and attention-grabbing as the new MMO that was announced during late 2020. It stands to deliver on something Riot Games has set up for the last 14 years: a game that will bring Runeterra to live, in a space you can explore and live in.
Expectations were sky-high from the very beginning. This single project could be Riot Games' chance to make gaming history, for a second time.
Fast-forward 4 years later. Arcane has run through both of its seasons with incredibly financial success, and a now loyal fanbase awaiting new series like it. 2XKO is due to release the coming year, 2025, with some very promising initial feedback. And yet, we have barely learned anything about the new Riot MMORPG. Don't lose hope, though! Let's look at what we know so far, and review the likelihood of the Runeterra MMO continuing (or finishing) development.
The Runeterra MMO was announced in December 17th, 2020 by Executive Producer Greg Street, also known as Ghostcrawler. It's important to note that since the announcement, Ghostcrawler has since stepped down from Riot, in 2023. Nevertheless, he had a team built for the MMO by that year.
If we’re successful and have millions of players playing hundreds of hours with just as much time discussing story and characters with their friends and online, it will become the focus of the lore. MMOs have a way of doing that.
Ghostcrawler mentioned that the MMO will most likely become the focus of the canon lore. With Arcane's Season 2 becoming the first step in the reworked and modernized lore, giving writers express permission to ignore League of Legends when it comes to the Runeterra canon, we can guess that it's going to stay consistent to Arcane, at the very least.
Arcane, worldbuilding-wise, doesn't seem to stray super far away from what we're already used to. The ending of Season 2, however, (spoilers!) leaves the fate of Hextech as a technology relatively unclear. Given that there's already so many champions and plot points designed around Hextech, it's likely that the technology will find a way to exist regardless, even if through different means. We already saw part of this shift in the lore with the changes to both Seraphine's and Skarner's lore.
And that is.. actually all we had to go off of, for 3 and a half entire years, almost 4. The idea of an MMORPG set in the Runeterra universe was announced, and then development went completely radio silent. No updates, no leaks, no news on anything regarding the project or its development team.
In March of 2024, we finally got news on the MMO. The good news was that the project was still being actively worked on. The bad news, was that most of the progress so far would have to be scrapped, and development would be reset.
"We don’t believe you all want an MMO that you’ve played before with a Runeterra coat of paint; to truly do justice to the potential of Runeterra and to meet the incredibly high expectations of players around the world, we need to do something that truly feels like a significant evolution of the genre. [...] After a lot of reflection and discussion, we've decided to reset the direction of the project some time ago. This decision wasn't easy, but it was necessary. The initial vision just wasn’t different enough from what you can play today. "
- Marc "Tryndamere" Merrill
With this, Merrill also announced a new Executive Producer for the MMO, Fabrice Condominas, and the grim news that the MMO will remain in the dark for several years.
The game being shipped still remains tenuous. Ghostcrawler said "there is no guarantee this game will ship". By the time it’s even close to an alpha stage, it's likely that the scene around the Runeterra and LoL IP will change. Arcane brought massive changes to how Riot is approaching the canon, which means the MMO will be affected in turn.
Aside from the canon, we have a few stray facts here and there about Riot's unpublished MMO. I have to reiterate, however, any of these could change during development.
The game will use Unreal Engine, likely the newly released Unreal Engine 5, which came out around 2 years into the game's development, and 2 years before the project was reset.
From a previous job posting for Lead Game Designer, Riot was looking for designers with experience in third person action. Riot wants "immediately satisfying, compelling combat, with varied and satisfying encounters".
It's unclear what kind, but Ghostcrawler has said before that there's a high chance it'll feature some amount of PvP content, mixed in with PvE.
PvP has historically been a pretty difficult problem to tackle in MMOs, so this is probably an area where it's going to take more work to help differentiate it from other games in the genre.
Riot Games was looking for a Lead Combat design that "is experienced in developing group based combat and cooperative play". In MMORPGs, this usually comes in the form of raids, dungeons and team-based PvP.
During Necrit's interview with the MMO developers, they confidently voiced that they intend to fully map and model Runeterra for players to explore, but left it unclear on their approach to get there. This is probably by far the most intrepid goal they’ve had with the game so far.
"I'd say it's the project I'm the most invested in, and the one I spend the most time on"
- Marc "Tryndamere" Merrill
Most importantly of all, we know for a fact that Riot Games is still hiring and developing for their upcoming MMO. They are committed, but making an MMO takes a monumental amount of investment and time. It took 10 years for Riot Games to become Riot Games, plural, with the release of Teamfight Tactics. They like taking their time and ironing out details, especially with League of Legends, Valorant and Wild Rift covering their financial bases and fueling development.
Development is in a very early stage, and we have very little to go off of. With that said, it's likely that the Riot Games MMO is somewhere between the incubation and prototype stages of the Riot Games development pipeline. Riot has researched the genre and concluded that an MMO would be a good investment, but given the reset in 2024, it's clear that they're struggling to create key innovations that will set the game apart from its competitors.
As of December 2024, this is all the information we have available on Riot's unpublished and yet unnamed MMORPG. It seems still very early in development, but I'm personally quite confident on the direction the development team is taking. They're driven and passionate, and there's a lot of money being funneled into the project, judging from the salary ranges and volume of job postings.
Making an MMORPG is by far one of the biggest workloads you can undertake when it comes to developing a new game. It can often be a massive gamble, as well. Riot will be taken a bold step into unexplored territory, both for the company and for the genre as a whole. The silence surrounding its development should not be attributed to it being abandoned.
