Riot co-founder Marc Merrill did not walk into PAX West 2026 with a trailer, a title, or a release date, but he did give League fans one of the clearest looks yet at how the company talks about its long-awaited Runeterra MMO. During his Storytime keynote in Seattle on Friday, September 4, Merrill called the project Riot’s internal “Grail” quest, a mix of joke and warning that basically means the prize is huge and a lot of people might not make it there.
The talk with Greg Miller was billed as a career retrospective, not a product reveal, which did not stop the room from circling the same question fans have asked since 2020. Riot later posted a clip with the caption “So about that MMO we’re building…” and that was enough to dominate the weekend conversation. Merrill said the studio already knows the hopes and dreams players have for a living world in Runeterra. The hard part is actually executing on them, and internally the team treats that challenge like a dangerous hunt worth chasing anyway.
The game was first confirmed in December 2020, when Greg Street was the public face of the project. Street left in 2023, and Riot reset development in 2024 after deciding an earlier version felt too much like other MMOs. There is still no official name, no screenshots, and no gameplay footage. Merrill has previously suggested a launch before 2030, which remains the closest thing anyone outside the building has to a timeline.
The loudest sign of progress this year has been hiring. Former World of Warcraft producer Raymond Bartos joined in January as a senior game producer, and former WoW combat lead Brian Holinka started in June as principal game designer. Other Blizzard veterans, including engineer Orlando Salvatore, were already on the team. That does not guarantee a great game, but it does look like Riot is staffing this like a real MMO rather than a vague experiment.
The comments landed two weeks after Riot said active development on 2XKO will end in December because not enough players stuck around. Servers stay up, but new work stops. That contrast makes Merrill’s Grail line land harder. Riot will shut down a live game that is not working, and it is still pouring senior talent into a project that has shown the public almost nothing.
So the update is simple. The MMO is alive, leadership is still willing to talk about it in public, and the team keeps hiring people who know how living online worlds actually run. Everything else, from classes to combat to a beta date, is still behind closed doors.
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