League of Legends developer Riot Games is still bashing away on its MMO, which co-founder Mark Merrill recently described as the studio’s “grail quest.”
Riot announced its MMO five years ago, in August 2021. Since then it’s seen a number of changes and various high-profile developers exit the project. But speaking to Kinda Funny Games’ Greg Miller at PAX, Merrill insisted it’s still in the works.
“We know what players’ hopes and dreams are,” he said. “It’s just on us as a team, and can we succeed in the execution?”
Merrill said Riot jokingly calls the MMO the “grail” because “f**k it, many a brave knight are gonna die on the grail quest. But f**k it, it’s the grail, so let’s go.”
“That’s the mindset that we really try to cultivate. And that is hard to do at scale,” he continued. “But I think we’re doing a reasonable job. And I think the future’s incredibly bright.”
It’s fair to say Merrill’s comments were met with a healthy dose of skepticism, particularly from fighting game fans. Riot recently announced its League of Legends fighting game, 2XKO, ends active development at the end of this year due to a lack of players. It only released late 2025, so you can understand where this sentiment is coming from.
“They hyping up this MMO like they aren’t just going to shoot it in the face after six months cause it won’t be bigger than WoW,” commented X / Twitter user and fighting game community member sl0th.
“It’s gonna release at the same time as a FF14 expansion for some reason and they’ll kill it in three months because it didnt make a f***youillion dollars,” added Shinhua.
“Why would anyone be excited for anything they release when they fumbled 2XKO as hard as they did.” commented Gil. “No faith they can handle a MMO when that’s 2x harder to please people.”
Will the League MMO actually come out? In January, former World of Warcraft producer Raymond Bartos joined Riot Games, giving fans renewed hope that the project will eventually see the light of day. The appointment came after the MMO was “reset” back in 2024, with Merrill stating at the time that Riot had gone back to the drawing board “some time ago.”
Concern grew in 2022 when then-executive producer Greg Street warned fans that there was “no guarantee” the League MMO would ship. The lead then went on to announce his departure from Riot in early 2023.
Two years ago, when he announced the development reset, Merrill said he understood fans’ frustration at the lack of progress on the MMO, but insisted the time spent in the dark would “help provide space for the team to focus on the incredible amount of work ahead of them.”
“Remember, ‘no news is good news,’ as it means we’re hard at work, pouring our hearts and souls into making something that we hope you’ll love,” he continued.
Image credit: Riot Games.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].