RuneGrove — the Riot MMO & Runeterra universe hub

Riot is building an MMO in Runeterra, and no gameplay has ever been shown — the 2020 reveal was an announcement and nothing more. So we did the opposite of hype: we mapped the world first. Every region, every creature and every story Riot has published about Runeterra, catalogued and cross-referenced, and read as what it really is — a design document for a game that does not exist yet.

1,754 catalogued lore works · 542 codex entries · 142 mapped places · 177 champions · 13 zones.

The MMO ledger — Riot has said nothing on the record for 11 days

That is not a gap in the coverage — it is the coverage. Of 159 published dispatches on this beat, exactly 6 were a dev update. Everything else is analysis, lore and industry reporting read through the lens of a game that does not exist yet.

• Since Riot spoke on the record: 11 days (Riot's MMO Boss Said Goodbye to BioWare. EA Shut the Studio Where He Made Mass Effect, and His Farewell Ends on a Baldur's Gate Line. — 22 October 2026)
• Last hard signal: 11 days (Riot's MMO Boss Said Goodbye to BioWare. EA Shut the Studio Where He Made Mass Effect, and His Farewell Ends on a Baldur's Gate Line. — 22 October 2026)
• Merrill’s on-stream hope (not a Riot commitment): Before 2030 (Riot has committed to no window. No title, no codename, and no gameplay has ever been shown.)
• Our last dispatch: 1 November 2026 (WoW Forever Launches November 4 Without Realms. Players Pick Rulesets Instead, and a Riot MMO Engineering Manager Is Already Recruiting Horde for a PvP Guild.)

What the beat actually publishes: Lore 46 · Industry 43 · Analysis 33 · Hiring 15 · Community 9 · Concept 6 · Dev Update 6 · Riot MMO 1.

The full Riot MMO tracker & development timeline ›

Newest from the Riot MMO beat

• WoW Forever Launches November 4 Without Realms. Players Pick Rulesets Instead, and a Riot MMO Engineering Manager Is Already Recruiting Horde for a PvP Guild.
• Kalista’s Betrayal, Told as a Questline
• AI Voices Could Make the Riot MMO Fully Voiced. Two WoW Forever addons already voice the quest givers no studio ever recorded, and champions should still get real actors.
• ArcheAge Chronicles Will Never Sell Power. XLGAMES Opens Early Access November 3 at $29.99, No Subscription and No Store at Launch, a Model Riot Has Never Named for Its MMO.
• Diana Fled the Solari Temple in a Trail of Death
• The Most Powerful Beings in League Lore, Ranked
• WoW Forever Keeps Its 40-Player Onyxia Raid. Blizzard's First Three Raids Open December 9 at 10, 20 and 40 Players, and a Riot MMO Engineer Who Worked on WoW Is Cheering It On.
• Riot's MMO Boss Said Goodbye to BioWare. EA Shut the Studio Where He Made Mass Effect, and His Farewell Ends on a Baldur's Gate Line.
• AI Could Make the Riot MMO Feel Alive. A Red Dead 2 mod shows the idea, and the tools reaching game studios now could give Riot's growing MMO team far more reach.
• Riot Apologized for TFT's Rough Unreal Switch. Its MMO Job Listings Ask for Unreal Too, and Riot Admits It Launched Knowing TFT Wouldn't Feel the Same.
• Mount Targon’s Stellacorns Are Fallen Stars
• Jagex Killed RuneScape Reignited in 12 Days. Veterans said its fresh-start economy would split the world, the same week Riot said its own League Classic mode ends in January.
• WoW: Forever Now Freezes Suspected Gold Buyers. Its new hold blocks trade, mail and the Auction House, and a Riot job listing shows the Riot MMO plans a trading economy of its own.
• Riot's MMO Chief Eyed a 'Frozen Lore' Theory. A League lore YouTuber said its story has been stuck for nine months and hoped it was held for the MMO; the producer replied with an eyes emoji.
• Which Champions Suffered Most in League Lore?
• Riot Says Most League Classic Players Left. Its Throwback Mode Ends in January, and Riot Says Copying the Past Too Closely May Have Held It Back, a Lesson for Its MMO.
• WoW Forever Puts a Weekly Cap on PvP Ranks. Riot's MMO Hired WoW's Former Lead PvP Designer, and Blizzard Just Simplified the Original Honor Ladder From Rank 1 to Rank 14.
• 2XKO Ends With Sett, a Fighter Nobody Expected. Samira and Sett Arrive October 27 in the Game's Last Big Patch, and the Riot MMO's Design Director Reposted the Reveal.
• The Zaun Gray Thins Out the Higher You Climb. Riot’s stories move Zaunites up through the smog by elevator, by hitched ride and by hand, and Piltover’s richest streets are lit above it.
• Ornn's Hearthblood Died When He Fought Volibear. Their story already reads like a crafting questline for the Riot MMO, from a smith relearning the craft to Ornn's own anvil.

New on RuneGrove Media

• AI Voices Could Make the Riot MMO Fully Voiced. WoW Mods Already Did It.
• Miss Fortune vs the Harrowing | League of Legends Lore Audio Drama
• Which League Champion Suffered the Most? Nine Ranked by What It Cost Them
• The Void Rises Under Shurima | League of Legends Lore Audio Drama
• Kai'Sa & Taliyah vs the Void | League of Legends Lore Audio Drama
• Jax Saw Icathia Fall to the Void | League of Legends Lore Audio Drama
• Locke vs Evelynn | League of Legends Lore Audio Drama
• Ornn's Smiths Died in His Fight With Volibear. The Survivors Are Rebuilding From Stories.

The Runeterra codex

Fresh on RuneGrove

• FFXIV Evercold Trades Daily Chores for Weeklies. Everyone in a Raid Now Gets a Loot Item, Zones Open in Any Order, and the Expansion Slipped to February 23, 2027.
• A $15 Indie MMO Pulled 20,000 Players in Its Launch Week, Then Had to Switch Off Trading to Save Its Own Economy
• A 20-Player Dragon Raid Is Landing in a World Where Other Players Can Loot Your Corpse on the Way In
• A Dead WoW Classic Server Came Back Because One Paladin Refuses to Trade or Kill Anything but Undead. His Crusade Has 300 Members and an Enemy Faction Now.
• A Free MMO Just Put a $25 Door on Its First Five Days, and the People Who Pay Get Their Own Servers
• After 12 Years of Infinite Levels, This MMO Set a Hard Ceiling at 75 and Turned Its Endgame Into Seven Gods
• A Mythic+ Boss Died at 90% Health and the Combat Log Named the Spell 'Area Death (TEST)'. Two Days Later Blizzard Fired the Employee Who Cast It.
• A New MMO Lets You Reroute a River Until the Desert Blooms. It Launches August 18, and Its Designer Says Theme Parks Are Finished.
• An MMO Just Built NPC Neighbours With 13 Personality Traits Nobody Else's Copy Has. The Studio's First Promise Was That No AI Writes a Word They Say.
• A One-Man MMO Just Shipped Raids Where 14 of Your 15 Raiders Are Bots, and They Now Recruit Each Other Into Guilds
• EverQuest Just Relaunched Without Its Death Penalty, and Its Raids Now Cap at Eight People
• Final Fantasy XIV Is Shipping Two Combat Systems Because It Couldn't Change One. Its New Tank Only Works in the New One.
• Guild Wars 3 Is Launching With Four Playable Species, and ArenaNet Just Published the Exact Reason a Fifth Didn't Make It
• Nobody Announced It. A Bot Caught Blizzard's Unannounced Warcraft Build Leaving the Building at 05:23 UTC.
• Sea of Thieves Is Switching Off Fast Travel. An Entire Season Ships With No Headline Feature, Just a World It Wants You to Cross Again.
• The Elder Scrolls Online Just Lost Its Studio Head, Its Executive Producer, and Its Game Director in the Same Week
• The Man Who Built Ultima Online Just Explained Why Every MMO Since WoW Feels the Same
• The Genre-Defining MMO Returns July 28, Rebuilt So One Player Can Beat the Whole Thing Alone
• RuneScape Deleted 298 Microtransactions. It Lost 40% of Its Revenue the Next Day, and Six Months Later Its CEO Says the Bleeding Stopped.

Riot MMO & Runeterra dispatches

• Jagex Is Building a New RuneScape MMO. Like Riot's, It Runs on Unreal Engine, and It Started Life as a Survival Game Expansion That Players Pushed Into an MMO. (6 October 2026)
• RuneScape 4 Is Real and Built in Unreal. It began as a Dragonwilds expansion, it is years away, and Jagex chose to build it in public, the opposite of Riot's silent MMO. (5 October 2026)
• Marc Merrill Made the Case for Riot's MMO. On Lemonade Stand he agreed MMOs are insane, said Riot waited for a fan base of hundreds of millions, and talked free to play and Tencent. (1 October 2026)
• Mount Targon’s Climb Takes Months, or One Day. No map survives its upper slopes, the dead sink into the rock, and the one Aspect host who skipped the walk was handed a portal. (1 October 2026)
• Riot’s MMO Runs on Unreal Engine. The open MMO listings name the engine, massively multiplayer scale, and a live server fleet. (1 October 2026)
• The Shadow Isles’ Monsters Ignore Your Torch. A Demacian historian’s notes on Legends of Runeterra cards say what hunts looters there feeds on their fear, and he paid to leave a week early. (28 September 2026)
• Shurima’s Buried Capital Is Already a Dungeon. Riot staged its traps, its cursed door and the ghosts on its dais, and its narrator calls the city’s rise a worse tragedy than its fall. (28 September 2026)
• League Classic Voters Pick the Next Old Kit. Riot's first poll revived three items and added modern jungle timers; the second asks if Urgot, Udyr or three others get their old kits back. (26 September 2026)
• Riot Delayed League's Team Voice Chat. It was due in Patch 26.20 for NA and OCE, and Riot has no new date for the feature that lets five strangers talk to each other. (26 September 2026)
• WoW Forever's Builder Says It Isn't for All. Matthew Armstrong's 1.7-million-view post calls convenience the death of the journey, and the Riot MMO faces the same choice. (24 September 2026)
• The EU's KIDS Act Would Ban Daily Streaks. The draft also bars strangers from messaging minors and needs their consent for group invites, rules Riot's MMO would launch under. (23 September 2026)
• Riot's Co-Founder Became a Snake in WoW Forever. Marc Merrill found the serpent form Blizzard hid in a Wailing Caverns armor set, and Blizzard's Classic lead answered with a snake. (23 September 2026)
• Riot MMO Engineer Calls Cancelled Fake News. Orlando Salvatore shot down a guild-name joke, told a fan 'One day I hope!' and thanked Blizzard's Classic lead for the beta that emptied his street. (22 September 2026)
• Riot's MMO Never Promised Easy Classes Can Win. League's lead gameplay designer says simple champions must beat experts at every rank because players with jobs and kids can't grind; the MMO never has. (21 September 2026)

The thirteen zones of Runeterra

The most likely explorable map, ranked by how much of each zone actually exists in this archive. Every zone has its own guide, its own codex and its own body of fiction. Meet the people who live in them on the champions index.

• Demacia Modern era — 130 lore works · 57 codex entries · 15 champions · 5 mapped places
• Noxus Modern era — 122 lore works · 62 codex entries · 17 champions · 4 mapped places
• Ionia Classical era — 200 lore works · 114 codex entries · 23 champions · 50 mapped places
• Piltover Modern era — 106 lore works · 36 codex entries · 8 champions · 3 mapped places
• Zaun Modern era — 148 lore works · 35 codex entries · 14 champions · 3 mapped places
• Freljord Ancient era — 110 lore works · 51 codex entries · 15 champions · 5 mapped places
• Shurima Ancient era — 86 lore works · 83 codex entries · 11 champions · 31 mapped places
• Ixtal Classical era — 42 lore works · 29 codex entries · 8 champions · 9 mapped places
• Bilgewater Modern era — 94 lore works · 42 codex entries · 8 champions · 6 mapped places
• Targon Cosmic era — 86 lore works · 51 codex entries · 7 champions · 15 mapped places
• Shadow Isles Cursed era — 109 lore works · 30 codex entries · 10 champions · 6 mapped places
• Bandle City Beyond era — 49 lore works · 10 codex entries · 7 champions · 2 mapped places
• The Void Beyond era — 38 lore works · 14 codex entries · 9 champions · 3 mapped places

What is actually in here

• Lore works: 1,754 — 970 of them cinematics, trailers or music
• Codex entries: 542 — across nine codices — Baron Nashor, Rift Herald, Elder Dragon…
• Mapped places: 142 — Great City of Demacia, Immortal Bastion, Placidium of Navori, Howling Abyss…
• Champions: 177 — by zone, story and the fiction each one appears in
• 3D models: 11,326 — 277 champions, 17 2XKO fighters, 493 Riot Forge characters
• Cards: 3,975 — Legends of Runeterra and Riftbound, with art
• Voice lines: 74,126 — every line every champion says, transcribed and searchable

Latest in the Runeterra chronology

The most recent chapters of Runeterra’s own history, in lore order rather than publication order. Currently ending in The Noxian Expansion & Beyond — 24 entries.

• Back from the Brink — Locke Champion Cinematic (1002 AN+ · cinematic · Locke, Vayne)
• Salvation — 2026 Season 1 Cinematic (1002 AN+ · cinematic · Garen, Sona, Shyvana)
• For Demacia: Spearhead — Motion Comic (1002 AN+ · motion_comic · Jarvan IV, Xin Zhao, Yunara)
• For Demacia: Winged Protector — Motion Comic (1002 AN+ · motion_comic · Jarvan IV, Shyvana)

Everything Runeterra, in one place

More from RuneGrove

• Riot’s MMO Runs on Unreal Engine. The open MMO listings name the engine, massively multiplayer scale, and a live server fleet.
• The Zaun Gray Thins Out the Higher You Climb. Riot’s stories move Zaunites up through the smog by elevator, by hitched ride and by hand, and Piltover’s richest streets are lit above it.
• WoW Forever Keeps Its 40-Player Onyxia Raid. Blizzard's First Three Raids Open December 9 at 10, 20 and 40 Players, and a Riot MMO Engineer Who Worked on WoW Is Cheering It On.
• WoW: Forever Now Freezes Suspected Gold Buyers. Its new hold blocks trade, mail and the Auction House, and a Riot job listing shows the Riot MMO plans a trading economy of its own.