At this point your guess is likely as good as mine. While I would love to tell you that they started in 2020 and “an average MMO” takes six years I simply cannot. First, this couldn’t be any further than your average MMO. It currently has a massive team of industry vets whom all have experience shipping AAA MMORPG products. Second, we cannot even say with 100% certainty when the game was started. All we know is that they officially announced the product back in December of 2020.
The Riot Games MMORPG was officially announced back in December 2020 with the singular tweet from Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street. Do keep in mind, though, that this was simply a confirmation that they were in fact working on an MMORPG and does not say in what capacity or for how long they have been working on it prior.
It is an MMO
— Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) December 18, 2020
I have seen many names get thrown around but at the end of the day we still do not know the name of the project. What I can tell you is what it is not called. While being just a direct rip-off of World of Warcraft, I think we can pretty confidently say that the game will NOT be called World of Runeterra.
What is DirectStorage?
— Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) March 29, 2022
BTW, WoR is almost certainly not the name of this game.
Most likely the project is still incredibly early in development. We do know that the game was officially being worked on and experience a massive round of new hires in Q1 of 2021 based on LinkedIn profiles and job postings on the official Riot Games Careers page. That said they teased the idea of an MMORPG as far back as 2018, which to me confirms that, at the very least they had an idea for the project.
Should we build a MMO? Yay or nay? https://t.co/doZs8zkLNX
— Tryndamere (@MarcMerrill) July 25, 2018
Unfortunately at the end of the day we dont know for sure how far along or not they are but what we do know is that they are trying to do it right.
It's a long road for the MMO project, trying to do it right so we build something worthy of expectations.
— Mark Yetter (@MarkYetter) April 6, 2022
Sorry you aren't getting a ton of updates from us quite yet but we're hard a work making strides every day. This team has a lotta heart, grateful as hell for them.
When asked in his interview with the MMORPG content creator Kanon, Greg Street had this to say about the classes that would be available in the Riot Games MMORPG…
“If you want to see what the classes are in this MMO look at League of Legends.”
Greg Street
Knowing this I think we can take a pretty educated guess by looking at League’s classes and sub-classes…
Controller
Subclass: Enchanter & Catcher
Controllers assist their allies with potent utility and keep enemies at bay with crowd control.
Fighter
Subclass: Juggernaut & Diver
Fighters are a diverse group of short-ranged combatants who excel at both dealing and surviving damage.
Mage
Subclass: Burst & Battlemage
Mages are champions who typically possess great reach, ability-based area of effect damage and crowd control, and who use all of these strengths in tandem with each other to trap and destroy enemies from a distance.
Marksman
Marksmen are ranged champions who use their reach to land massive continuous damage from a distance
Slayer
Subclass: Assassin & Skirmisher
Slayers are highly mobile champions who specialize in single target burst damage. What they generally lack in resilience, they more than make up for with their ability to quickly cover large distances and kill priority targets.
Tank
Subclass: Vanguard & Warden
Tanks are tough melee champions who sacrifice damage in exchange for powerful crowd control.
Specialist
Specialists are a diverse group of champions who do not “fit into a neat little box” in regards to other class/subclass specifications.
While nothing is 100% confirmed about the races that we will see in the MMO we can look at the world of Runeterra to get an idea of what is likely to be the playable Races!
humans
Humans are the dominant sapient life forms of Runeterra. While their point of origin on the planet is currently unknown, the majority of human diaspora arrived from either the eastern lands beyond Ionia, Ionia itself, or the Freljord. They have a great variety of appearances, strengths and magical powers.
VASTAYAN
The Vastaya are a chimeric race of Runeterra that are the weaker magical descendants from enlightened mortals that took the power of the spirit realm into themselves known as the Vastayashai’rei. Some harnessing ferocious, bestial powers and others harnessing the power of magic they all share animal and human hybrid characteristics.
yordle
The Yordle are a race of spirits who generally take the appearance of mammalian bipeds. They mostly reside in a mystical place known as Bandle City, though some of them have ventured out to live in numerous locations around Runeterra.
other?
The potential for playable races and subraces in the world of Runeterra is truly massive. Ranging from Golems, Minotaurs, and so much more you are only limited by your imagination…or more accurately the developers over at Riot Games 😉
Who know? We don’t! But the Riot MMO team has a very strong stance on this, which to me personally sounds like this will be a defining part of the core game play loop and I look forward to hearing about it!
We have not shared this yet, but we have a strong stance on it
— Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) September 9, 2022
No, no it is not Duppy.
Yes! The Riot MMO will contain some form of PVP. Beyond that we do not have any specifics yet.
The challenge is even if I say we will have PvP (and we will), that can mean so many different things, from ganking, to epic battles, to looting, to dueling, to arenas, to even esports. So still probably not for everyone.
— Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) December 18, 2021
The Riot MMO team is filled to the brim with experienced and more importantly proven Dungeon and Raid designers from a vast list of previous MMORPGs. Including, but not limited to, Wildstar, Guild Wars 2, World of Warcraft and many more!
It will almost certainly have RPG systems like stats, gear, dungeons. We're not ready yet to talk about how much it is or is not like other games out there. What defines an RPG can be a bit academic in nature, but I call it an RPG.
— Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) May 20, 2021
Based on numerous job postings, stating a requirement for experience with “Action Combat” I think it is safe to assume, at least at this point that the game will have action combat. But it may be more than you have experienced in other MMORPG’s that have done this in the past!
Not quite ready to share this kind of detail. We think combat is a space where the genre feels a little dated (and humbly I think Riot is pretty good at combat) but explaining our design and intentions will take a lot more space than a tweet
— Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) January 13, 2022
There are games that take on the challenge of no trinity. But that becomes a major design focus, which means you aren’t innovating on something else, and the trinity does mostly work. Besides there are lots of players who just really want to tank or heal.
— Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) July 3, 2021
Yes.
Don't RPGs have to have fishing? I think it's in the bylaws.
— Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) June 30, 2021
We will have customization. Not everything can be justified by being easier to balance. The game has to be fun, and making decisions about how to make your character is fun for most of us
— Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) April 28, 2022
Separate PVE and PVP Balance has become common place in MMORPG’s recently and it looks like this trend will continue in the Riot MMO.
Are you okay if abilities work differently in PvE and PvP?
— Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) May 1, 2022
Yes! We will be able to play alts, but they will not be required to better grind for your “main.” In fact, their current theory is that you should not be able to do everything yourself and will need some level of social interaction with other players.
There are pros and cons to the FF job system vs stable of alts system. Most likely we won’t be able to make everyone happy there. But the one thing we do want to avoid is feeling like you are don’t need other players at all because you can do it all yourself
— Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) November 12, 2022
Riot Games has a MASSIVE in house narrative and story design team that will continue to be interacting with the MMO team to develop and weave its stories into the MMORPG. The lead narrative designer is none other than the author of Ruination Ant Reynolds.
As usual, nothing is currently set in stone but here is a little bit of the teams theories on the topic.
Sometimes those systems are designed so players don’t fall too far behind rather than trying to get you to login every day.
— Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) May 1, 2022
no.
Too soon to share. But as I said before, we know players want different things in an MMO and we won't be able to deliver on all of that. Some want almost all PvP. Some want almost all PvE. Some want nostalgia. Some want something brand news. None of those desires are wrong.
— Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) September 4, 2021
