Riot Games has now confirmed the development of a League of Legends MMO. Here’s all we know so far about the LoL RPG game, including the planned release date, regions and classes, and much more.
Riot has been adding auto-battlers, board games, the adventure title “The Ruined King,” and even a fighting game to their ever-expanding roster for the realm of Runeterra over the last year.
They’ve arrived at the logical conclusion: a massively multiplayer online game set in the LoL universe, similar to World of Warcraft or Star Wars: The Old Republic.
Marc Merrill, the founder of League, teased plans for an MMORPG in late 2019. Twelve months later, Riot vice president Greg Street publicly — and very softly, to be fair — announced Riot was still working on perhaps the most awaited League of Legends title ever.
All we know so far about Riot’s upcoming League of Legends MMO.
However, there are a few options here. One is that Riot was already hard at work on the MMO’s foundation even before Street made his announcement. This may shorten the timeframe and set the game’s release date for late 2022. The massive LoL tag, on the other hand, is more likely to arrive in mid-2023.
We’ll certainly hear more from Riot until they have a better sense of when they’ll be able to deliver an alpha build for their title. We’ll update this post as soon as anything new becomes available!
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Riot warns that the title will not be loved by all.
Riot Games recently released an alert about their upcoming League of Legends MMORPG — “not everybody is going to love” the planned open-world Runeterra release, and that’s fine; they’re not looking to satisfy everybody.
“One thing I can say about the unannounced MMORPG is that you would not all enjoy every feature in it,” executive producer Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street cautioned. “We’re going to make certain decisions about which you might disagree. Different items are desired by players in their games. That’s all right. Some of you do not like the game at all. That’s also perfect. We can also make several errors. However, [we are] ready to pivot if the concept fails to achieve our objectives.”
Will there be RPG raids in the LoL MMO?
Yes, simply yes!
Indeed, lead developer Greg Street has acknowledged that the end-game Raids included in Riot’s new League of Legends MMO RPG would be one of the most critical factors, at least in his opinion. He also said that if the team fails to deliver on the promise of endgame wars, he would be “crushed.”
“Anyone who knows me from my World of Warcraft dev days knows that I love dungeons and raids as a player,” he said.
Riot is yet to reveal the design of their LoL raids. Dexerto anticipates the legendary Summoner’s Rift monster Baron Nashor will appear as an early Raid boss.
Regions of the game.
Second only to when the game will be released is that we will be able to explore through Runeterra when the MMO is released. Fortunately, Riot has been working tirelessly to make League of Legends as rich as possible, with a plethora of well-known areas.
In reality, Riot selects champions from thirteen distinct areas for their flagship title. These same areas are likely to be chosen for every new MMO tag.
The key regions could be more ‘civilized’ places like Demacia, Noxus, or Piltover, while fantastical regions like Bilgewater, Shurima, and the endearing Bandle City could also play a role in the online game.
Here’s all thirteen of the regions in Runeterra:
- Bandle City
- Bilgewater
- Demacia
- Ionia
- Ixtal
- Noxus
- Piltover
- Shadow Isles
- Shurima
- Targon
- The Freljord
- The Void
- Zaun
Riot Games will want to start with just a subset of these — they choose just eight as “card regions” for Legends of Runeterra — but we expect them to finally include all of the legendary League of Legends areas in the expected online game.
The map of the game
There’s been no official confirmation the League of Legends MMO will copy Runeterra exactly, but we’d be pretty surprised if it didn’t. That means players will be able to navigate around the huge, fantastical land either through fast travel, or simply adventuring across the lands and regions.
Here’s what the League of Legends MMO’s map may look like in-game:
LoL MMO classes
If Riot Games follows the same design as other common MMORPG titles, we can expect a diverse set of “professions,” or classes, that define each player character.
There are frequently traditional fantasy themes such as Fighter, Healer, and Wizard. Although LoL is a little different, each champion does collapse into common positions like these, with some variation. These can be carried over to the new MMO when it is launched.
Here are the current groups and subclasses in LoL:
- Controller
- Enchanter
- Catcher
- Fighter
- Juggernaut
- Diver
- Mage
- Burst
- Battlemage
- Artillery
- Marksman
- Slayer
- Assassin
- Skirmisher
- Tank
- Vanguard
- Warden
Riot’s selection of the six key groups — Fighter, Mage, Marksman, Slayer, Tank, and Enchanter — seems to be a pretty decent bunch!
However, as with continents, there is no idea what the League of Legends developers will ultimately determine. Riot might opt to skip all LoL classes altogether, or only a couple of the more common ones to begin with. We’ll have to watch to see what happens.
And there you have it — everything we know so far about the League of Legends MMO, including its release date (a long way in the future! ), potential regions, planned LoL classes, the Runeterra map, and much more!
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