It’s been over three years since Riot officially started working on the long-rumored League of Legends MMO. Back then, the team was led by former Age of Empires and World of Warcraft designer Greg Street, who has since left Riot to found his own studio and start another MMO project; for more about that, head to my lengthy interview with Greg.
Riot fans had been wondering if the League of Legends MMO was still in the making, though. Today, the prolonged silence has finally stopped. Co-founder Marc Merrill tweeted an update on the project, and it’s a bit of a good news, bad news situation. The good news? They’re still making it. The bad news? It was basically rebooted, so it’s still a long, long way off. Merrill explained:
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.
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.
This is a huge challenge, but one that our team of deeply passionate MMO players and game development veterans is incredibly motivated to pursue.
Fabrice Condominas will helm the rebooted League of Legends MMO project as Executive Producer. Condominas has credits in games like Mass Effect 3, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Mass Effect: Andromeda, and Star Wars: Squadrons. Responding to Merrill’s tweets, he said there’s a long road ahead, and the team he is now leading is just in the first few miles of a marathon.
Indeed, Merrill concluded his thread by warning fans that the developers will now be going dark for a long while, likely a few years. As such, one may surmise this project may be coming to light, if it ever happens, towards the end of this decade – or the beginning of the next. Still, we’ll be keeping an eye on what could be the Messiah that MMORPG fans have long been waiting for.
