Riot MMO Delayed Years

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Paradox Gaming Network

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15,700

Published on March 21, 2024 4:23:52 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SK16u3v9O7g

Game:

League of Legends (2009)

Duration: 11:37

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34

In a series of tweets yesterday, Mark Merrill (aka Tryndamere) the Co-Founder of Riot Games and Co-Creator of League of Legends announced that the MMORPG that Riot Games has been working on will be delayed by several years and Riot Games is going dark on the project. Now, I know the title of the project is not the League of Legends MMO, however many MMORPG fans (and fans of Riot) affectionately refer to the game in development as the LoL MMO as it reflects and pays homage to the top selling product from Riot Games.

The news that the game is being delayed has been received with mixed reviews. In his statement Merrill said “we don’t believe you all want an MMO that you’ve played before with a Runeterra coat of paint; to truly do justice to the potential of Runeterra and to meet the incredibly high expectations of players around the world.”

Oddly enough, at least in one Reddit thread, it seems like many people did want that, however the question of “what do gamers want” is not an easy one to answer. MMORPG fans have a wide range of tastes, and while World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XIV are the top two performing MMORPGs of present time, many gamers are saying we don’t want more of that while at the same time it is hard to deny that gamers absolutely do want more of that given the massive popularity of these two games.

What was interesting about the announcement is that since February of 2020 when the Riot MMORPG was first announced, nothing of real substance regarding the game, its vision, its direction, its particulars have been released. While Merrill says they decided to pivot, based on what they think the community wants, it's hard to know if what they were developing was good or not because they never let us, the players, know. Before anyone says that’s a bad thing, I will remind everyone that New World from Amazon Games Studio started off as a MMO Survival Game but AGS listened to players and pivoted while in development ultimately releasing a game not accepted as a survival game (because it wasn’t) not accepted as a MMO (because it wasn’t) and only accepted by a small group of players. New World never saw a concurrent player count above 1M, and quickly saw their average player count drop from 410k in October 2021 to now just averaging 10k concurrent players per month.

So, is Riot right to delay? Absolutely. While it may not be the news the players and fans of League of Legends and Runeterra want to hear, but Riot is absolutely known for making good games. The last thing they want to do is release another bland, meh, ho-hum poorly received MMORPG into a market that has been suffering from releases like this for the better part of a decade.

#riotmmo #leagueoflegendsmmo #jahlon

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