Riot Comments on Controversial League of Legends MMO Tease

League of Legends co-creator and Riot Games co-founder Marc "Tryndamere" Merrill was just joking around with his exciting teaser tweet about a League MMO, but Riot still has big plans for the developer's next games.

Last week, Merrill shared a tweet that combined two things that have been in the back of the the minds of players for years: League and an MMO. The tweet followed Riot's release of a new map of Runeterra, the land that consists of the various regions that make up League's universe, a map that was coupled with expansive backgrounds on every part of the world.

Speaking to Variety, Merrill said that the teaser about an MMO was controversial within Riot since it may not every become a reality, but the response from players was exciting nonetheless.

"The tweet was a bit controversial internally," Merrill told Variety. "Absolutely there was some risk, we may never deliver on that question, on the other hand, it is so validating and exciting to have players' minds focused on what could come."

Should we build a MMO? Yay or nay? https://t.co/doZs8zkLNX

— Tryndamere (@MarcMerrill) July 25, 2018

While Riot hasn't confirmed that an MMO is what the company is working on, Merrill added that the developers "are exploring lots of different games," though he didn't offer any hints to specific genres. Saying that they wanted to feel out what the playerbase thought about Riot's endeavors to other games, Merrill wouldn't definitively answer whether or not Riot was working on an MMO.

"I'm not going to answer that directly," Merrill said. "The question that is really interesting and relevant is, 'What does the future of MMOs look like?' I think we have a view, others have a view, players have a view. World of Warcraft continues to be a dominating game. There is a really good argument that going head-to-head with WoW may not be the best move, but who knows. We're exploring a lot of stuff, thinking about a lot of stuff."

League has been in development for nearly 10 years with the game's champion roster actively expanding as the meta shifts in different directions with routine updates. The process has built up a trove of narratives that connect champions, factions, and events throughout thousands of in-game years, so the framework is there to build more games. Riot Games still has just the one though with the joke about the company not putting the "s" in Riot Games having some merit to it, but Merrill said that whatever the next games are, they'll likely be League-related.

These projects will come in the form of a handful of games every decade, Merrill said. He explained that they'd overlap like a Venn diagram with the games targeting different interests, but what those games are remain to be seen.