Chapter 01 · Frostguard Citadel
Ice that does not melt. Tribes that do not kneel.
Pre-reset
Named by Riot among the regions players would explore. That was the vision before the March 2024 reset.
2020Announced
2024Reset
2030Before
13Regions
The record
What is actually known
Six years, two directors, one reset. Every entry below is dated and sourced, and carries the status we give it: confirmed, reported, pre-reset, or rumour.
Teased
Riot hints at an MMO during its tenth-anniversary broadcast. No name, no footage.
Announced
Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street, formerly WoW’s lead systems designer, confirms a Runeterra MMO is in development.
Street leaves
The project’s public face departs Riot after nine years. In October the MMO is folded into the unified Runeterra canon.
The reset
Marc Merrill restarts the vision: the first one “wasn’t different enough.” Fabrice Condominas, ex-BioWare, becomes Executive Producer. The team goes dark.
“Most of my time”
At the DICE Summit, Merrill calls it probably the project he spends the most time on. The MMO had lost its technical director two months earlier.
The WoW veterans
Raymond Bartos, former lead producer on World of Warcraft, joins in January. Brian Holinka, its former lead combat designer, follows in June.
The only window
Merrill’s single public statement on timing. Anything more precise is an estimate, and we will say so when we quote one.
Blog
From the atlas
Follow the latest news and know everything about Riot’s next MMO.
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Every Riot game has a ranked ladder, and the MMO's new principal designer ran World of Warcraft's PvP. The three PvP models, and which fit Runeterra and Riot.
Shaco: the Demon Jester, explained
Valoran's homicidal comic, whose official biography admits nobody knows what he is; in the Riot MMO he is a random-encounter boss and never a quest-giver.
When is the Riot MMO set? The question that decides the cast
Riot has never placed its MMO on Runeterra's timeline. The three eras it could choose, what each does to the champions, and how other licensed MMOs chose.
Riot MMO classes: what the lore already decides
Riot has announced no classes for its MMO. But it already sorts 173 champions into six roles, and Runeterra has eight magic systems. A class list from both.
Riot MMO: will champions be playable, NPCs, or bosses?
Riot has never said whether you will play Garen or meet him. The three models an MMO can use for 173 pre-written characters, and the one the lore pushes toward.
The 13 regions of Runeterra, and how many there really are
Riot's own pages give three different counts: ten, twelve or thirteen regions. Which is right, why the others exist, and what each region holds.
Riot MMO: what is left of the 2021 vision after the reset
Open world, action combat, raids, housing, respect for your time: every promise Greg Street made in 2021, and our estimate of whether it survived the reset.
The atlas while we wait
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