Riot has "reset" the development of its MMO League of Legends, according to co-founder and CPO Marc Merrill, who posted on Twitter, "Yes, we are still working on the game," Merrill said, but confirmed that the project has been put back into the early stages to pursue a new design direction Merrill confirmed on Twitter that the project has been pushed back to the early stages in order to pursue a new design direction. The decision was made "some time ago" because the studio felt that the MMO in development, set in League of Legends' Runeterra world, was too similar to its competitors. The initial vision wasn't different enough from what you can play today," he said. We don't believe that you want an MMO that you've played before with a Runeterra paint job, and we're not going to give you that, but we're going to give you an MMO that you've played before with a Runeterra paint job."

The MMO's development is currently being led by Fabrice Condominas, Riot's executive producer and former production lead at BioWare and EA, Merrill said, adding that Condominas is the technical director Vijay Thakkar's successor, who has been leading the MMO development team for the past year, building "key elements of the technical foundation" for the game's new direction.Merrill also announced that Riot is "in the dark" about its production, and that the studio will not share details of the MMO He stated that it would be "a few years" before he would share them. Merrill said, "This silence will help provide space for the team to focus on the incredible amount of work in front of them."

We first heard about the League MMO project in 2020, when Greg Street, then Riot's VP of IP and Entertainment and former lead systems designer for World of Warcraft, was working on the Runeterra universe when he casually confirmed in a tweet that he was working on an MMO set in the Runeterra universe.By March 2021, Riot was expanding its MMO development team, with a recruitment website stating, "It takes a lot of manpower to create an MMO, and to bring Runeterra to life, a fairly large A raid team will be needed."

News about the game was sparse until April 2022, when Street tweeted without warning that there was "no guarantee this game will ship," causing concern about the MMO's development status. We are optimistic, but you never know until it happens." Realizing that expressing it out of context may not have been the most reassuring sentiment, Street followed up in a tweet thread later that April and "speculated" that development was not going well, despite what "some players and media" might think, when in fact " it's going well," he elaborated.

Its damage control efforts were somewhat hampered by Riot's continued insistence that it would "never ship a game that disappoints," even if development was not going well. However, the company will work hard until the game meets your expectations." Street then stepped down from his position at Riot in March 2023, stating that the MMO was "in good hands and it's the right time to take over for the next phase." [Given that WoW is still the most direct MMO object that comes to mind, it is clear that there is room for speculation here that Street's background in WoW development may have contributed to the all-too-familiar design direction. Street has since worked with Netease on Fantastic Pixel Castle, a new studio that is currently developing another MMO. Since Merrill's announcement, Street has posted a reaction on Twitter, "I wish Riot MMO success. It has a great world to explore and the team is really top notch. I will definitely be playing this damn game."