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 8 days

That is not a gap in the coverage — it is the coverage. Of 157 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: 8 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: 8 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: 28 October 2026 (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.)

What the beat actually publishes: Lore 45 · Industry 42 · 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

• 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.
• 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.
• 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.

New on RuneGrove Media

• 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.
• 2XKO Is Ending With a Surprise Fighter. I Don't Think Riot Was Out of Touch — Nobody Knew

The Runeterra codex

Fresh on RuneGrove

• Blizzard Punishes WoW Gold Paid Via Middlemen. Raid Carries Paid With Gold Routed Through a Third Player Now Risk Wiped Gold and Suspensions, a Week Before WoW Forever Opens.
• K Da Never Going Back Ft Miyeon And Soyeon Of I Dle Official Visualizer
• WoW Forever Reversed Its RP-PvP Call in a Week. Name Reservations Open Today on a Ruleset Blizzard Had Shelved, Eight Days Before a Realmless Launch.
• The Shadow Isles Rise In League Classic
• WoW Forever Just Reversed Its Own Server Rule. Blizzard Said a Roleplay-PvP Ruleset Would Split Its Megarealm Players, Then Added One for the November 4 Launch.
• WoW: Forever Names Open Oct 27. It Launches Nov 4; Hardcore Comes Later.
• True Damage Akali Ekko Inkshadow Braum Ekko Yasuo
• Blizzard Froze WoW Forever's Level Cap at 60. No catch-up, no token, one bank of points shared across every alt, and a studio whose games never had a power ladder to begin with.
• Blizzard Used to Build a World. Then Someone Put a Number on It.
• The Classic MMO Everyone Was Rooting For Just Halved Your Backpack in Beta -- Then Sold the Other Half Back in a Cash Shop
• A King Drowned His Kingdom in Grief. The Same Love Sewed the Doll That Hunts Him Now.
• A Quarter-Million Survey Answers From WoW Classic Diehards: More Raids, No Flying. It's the Exact Question Riot's MMO Has to Answer.
• Bandle City’s Portals Open by Accident. Riot Printed a Tea Maker Who Blended Two Leaves Wrong, Fell Asleep, and Woke Up on the Far Side of a Door That Is Supposed to Need a Specialist.
• Blizzard Made Transmog Optional in WoW Forever. Turn it off and everyone looks like what they earned, a dungeon drop hands its look to the whole group, and Riot sells looks for a living.
• Blizzard Prototyped WoW Hardcore in Two Weeks. Concurrency went from 200 to 1,500 over one holiday, the boss face-palmed and said yes, and Runeterra already keeps a lodge of the dead.
• Decoding Riot's MMO: Job Postings Hint at a 2029 Release

Riot MMO & Runeterra dispatches

• 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)
• Riot MMO Dev Jokes WoW Forever Emptied His Town. Orlando Salvatore saw almost no one on a five-mile walk, and Blizzard's Classic lead says the beta numbers are the craziest in 17 years. (21 September 2026)
• Riot Punished 296,416 Accounts for Boosting. Vanguard now judges who was really at the keyboard, and Riot says MFA and TPM chip requirements are coming on an expedited timeline. (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, 16 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.