Riot Should Take Six Things From WoW Forever. Nine decisions Blizzard put on stage at BlizzCon, sorted into the six the Runeterra game should copy and the three it should leave in Azeroth.

Nine Decisions in Two Days

Blizzard put nine design calls on stage at BlizzCon, and RuneGrove read each one for the Riot MMO. Six to take, three to leave.

Blizzard just made nine design decisions in public that Riot has not made in private. Blizzard is the studio that makes World of Warcraft, the long-running online role-playing game its players call WoW, and for two days in September it put the team building the next version of that game on a stage and let them explain themselves.

The game is World of Warcraft: Forever, a permanent version of the 2004 original that Blizzard says it will keep running and adding to rather than replace. Its team shortens that to WoW Forever, the name it uses on stage. The beta opened on September 17 and the launch is November 4. The stage was BlizzCon, Blizzard's annual fan convention, held on September 12 and 13 in Anaheim.

Riot, the studio behind League of Legends, the five-on-five battle game its whole catalogue grew from, is building an MMO of its own. An MMO is an online role-playing game that thousands of players share at once, and Riot's is set in Runeterra, the fictional world its games share. Riot has said almost nothing about how that game plays. So every decision Blizzard explained on stage is a question Riot still has to answer, and this week RuneGrove read them one at a time.

Three of the pieces were about the player in front of the screen: the transmog switch, which lets a player turn off other people's cosmetic looks; the end of the realm list, which replaces named servers with rule sets; and the gamepad mode, official controller support after two decades.

Three were about the world: how Blizzard builds a zone from a flat map first, a level cap frozen at 60 with one sideways ladder, and a hardcore rule set that was measured before it was built.

And three were about time: a campfire that makes you sit for a minute, a ban on flying that keeps everyone on the ground, and a ban on gold-for-loot raids decided before the first raid. This piece is the tally. Six of the nine belong in Riot's MMO. Three should stay in Azeroth, the world of World of Warcraft, where they were made to solve Blizzard's problems and not Riot's.

Take: Everyone on the Ground

No flying, a run that stays long, and a campfire that makes you sit for a minute. Three decisions that treat the world as the main character.

The first three decisions worth taking are one decision told three ways: the world is the main character, and nothing is allowed to skip it. Tim Jones, the lead game designer on Forever, set the rule six minutes into the reveal, in a panel called What's Next, the 47-minute session Blizzard posted on September 13.

No flying is the famous half of that sentence. The half that matters for Riot is the test in front of it. Every addition is measured against whether it belongs, and Jones gave the reason at the end of the same list, under the pillar that decides what counts as a convenience in this game.

The best account of what that discipline protects came from an engineer. Nora Mills, the lead software engineer on Forever, sat down with Jones for Game Informer, the American games magazine and site, and was asked about the long runs between places. She began with the case against them, and then rejected it.

That is the whole argument for keeping the run, and it covers fast travel as well as flying. Both delete the stretch of time Mills is describing, and with it the chance that a trip turns into a friendship or a rivalry. Forever still adds speed, but only the kind that carries you through the world. Evan, the lead content designer who co-hosted the Found Photographs panel and gave only his first name on stage, explained the new ship routes.

The third decision is the smallest and the most copyable. Forever adds a campfire that every crafting profession feeds, and the buffs it gives only land on a player who sits at it for a minute. Jones told Game Informer what the minute is for.

Take all three. No flying and no fast travel, written down before the first player logs in. A run kept long on purpose, judged by Mills's test and not by a stopwatch. And a minute you spend sitting where other people sit, because the buff is real and so is the crowd.

Take: Rules Set Before Launch

No realm list, a cap that never moves, a hardcore mode measured before it was built, a raid economy decided before the first raid, and a look that tells the truth.

The next three decisions are about what a player is told before they start, and Blizzard settled each one in public. The first is that there is no realm list. Ana Resendez, the lead software engineer on Forever's servers, showed the slide on the Deep Dive panel, Blizzard's hour-long design session from the same weekend, and gave the goal behind it in one sentence.

A new player in Forever picks a rule set, not a server, and the game keeps the same strangers in front of them so a community can form without a named world to hold it. Riot should take that whole, because the first decision a new player makes should not be the one they cannot undo, and because the day-one count is the one number a launch never knows in advance.

The second rule is the cap. Forever's level cap stays at 60 and Blizzard said on stage that it will never move. Clay Stone, the associate production director on Forever, put the whole philosophy in seven words to Destin, a YouTube creator who filmed a hands-on at the show.

Past the cap there is one sideways ladder, called Legacy. Legacy is a bank of points earned across every character a player owns, spent on small permanent bonuses, and capped so the bank can never become a second grind. Resendez explained the cap.

Sixteen points to spend out of sixty-five to earn is a number worth stealing. It is small enough that a new player never has a long way to catch up, and it is the same rule Riot's other games have run on for years: everything past the cap is cosmetic or prestige, never power.

The third rule was measured before it was built. Josh Greenfield, a senior designer on the team, told the story of the hardcore rule set on the Go Again panel, Blizzard's session on the mode where a dead character stays dead. Players invented it with an add-on, and Blizzard counted them: the number of hardcore players online at once went from about 200 to 1,500 over one holiday break.

The prototype took two weeks and the fairness took the years after: a countdown before a disconnect kills you, and a way out that moves a dead character to another rule set instead of deleting two hundred hours. Kris Zierhut, a principal game designer on Forever, described the reward that outlives a lost run.

Riot can take the method whole: measure the players who already play a rule before building it, own the fairness once you do, and let progress outlive the character. The one part to leave is the schedule. Blizzard can ship Forever without hardcore and call it soon, because its community already exists. Riot's first version is the only version its players will have met.

Two more rules were set before launch, and both belong on the take side. On September 17 Blizzard's developer Q&A, a 95-minute session with the Forever team, ruled that GDKP, the raid format where loot is auctioned for gold and the gold is split among the raiders, will not be allowed in Forever. Greenfield said the format swallows guilds and prices out new players, and that the team had been too lenient on gold buyers in the past, which is changing. A carry economy is the one thing you can only ban before it exists.

And the transmog rules. Transmog, short for transmogrification, lets a player wear the look of one piece of armor over the stats of another. Forever keeps it, with a rule that makes the look honest.

A look that tells a stranger your level is information, and Runeterra's own gear already works that way. Take the rule. What Forever does with the switch is the first thing to leave.

Leave in Azeroth

The off switch for other players' looks, the two-faction wall, and gap-filling as the whole plan. Three decisions that solve Blizzard's problems and not Riot's.

Three of the nine decisions fit Blizzard's game and not Riot's, and each one is a good decision for the studio that made it. The first is the off switch. Forever lets every player turn off other people's transmog and see the world as if the system did not exist, and Greenfield said so plainly on the Deep Dive panel.

Blizzard can give looks away and let players hide them because the subscription is the product. Riot sells looks for a living, in every game it runs, and nothing it has said supports a subscription for its MMO. A world-wide switch that hides what other players bought is a pricing decision in disguise. Take the first-login mode selector that ships beside it, one screen with a handful of presets you can change later, and leave the switch until the business model exists.

The second is the wall between the Horde, one of the game's two player sides, and the Alliance, the other. Forever deleted the realm list and still cannot let those two sides group together, so its world logic needs balance mechanisms to keep player-versus-player fights even. That is a 2004 problem, and Blizzard is solving it well. Runeterra's regions were never two teams. Demacia, the lawful kingdom on the map, and Noxus, the empire that keeps trying to conquer it, are enemies in the fiction, and a Demacian and a Noxian can still walk into the same tavern. Riot should build for that, not for a wall.

The third is the plan itself. Forever's new zones are gaps on a map Blizzard drew twenty-two years ago, filled in so the old world feels whole. Matt Heyman, the lead environment artist on Forever, explained, on a panel about the art of the remake, the standard every zone was checked against.

Take the ground truth. Riot's equivalent is its own splash art and its own codex, and the check should be as literal. Leave the strategy. Blizzard can fill gaps because the rest of the map exists, and Runeterra's famous cities are gaps too. Leave the fenced-off starting zone as well: Zephris, Forever's new starting zone, is cut off from the endgame on purpose, and a Runeterra region built as a tutorial and then abandoned would waste the scarcest thing Riot has, which is a place its players already care about.

What Riot should keep from that same panel is the storytelling. Greenfield, hosting the Found Photographs panel, told the room what kind of stories the new zones tell.

Runeterra's short stories are already written at that scale. The MMO is where they get a floor to stand on.

What This Means for the Riot MMO

Our read, and it is speculative: six rules Riot can adopt today, three it should read as Blizzard's problems, and one map that is almost all gap.

Our read, and it is speculative. Riot has not named a platform, a price, an era or a launch window for its MMO, and it has not said a word about flying, servers, caps, hardcore or raid loot. Everything below is what Blizzard's decisions would mean if Riot made them too.

Blizzard needed twenty-two years to write these nine rules down. Riot gets to read them before it has a game. Six of the nine are rules Riot can adopt today, before a single system is public, because each one is a promise to the player rather than a feature: no flying and no fast travel, a run kept long on purpose, a minute at the fire, no realm list, a cap that never moves with a small sideways bank, a hardcore mode measured before it is built, and a carry economy banned before it exists.

The three to leave are Blizzard's problems wearing Blizzard's answers. The off switch exists because looks are free. The faction wall exists because the 2004 game had two teams. The gap-filling exists because the map is old. Riot's map is almost all gap, its looks are its business, and its regions were never two teams.

Runeterra will tempt Riot on the first rule, because its canon already has a teleporter. Piltover, the city of inventors on the map, is home to the Hexgates, the magic-powered gateways that let ships cross the world in a single trip. Mount Targon, the tallest mountain in Runeterra, is the canon case for the opposite: a climb few survive and nobody skips. And the Freljord, the frozen north of the map, is where the game's own stories put the right kind of fast, a beast bred for mountain passes rather than a menu of destinations.

That map is the fiction Riot draws on, not a launch plan. Which regions the MMO opens with, how its world is laid out, its era, its platform and its price are all unrevealed. What Blizzard handed Riot this month is not a game to copy. It is a list of promises, each one explained by the person who made it, with the clock so anyone can check.

Your Take

What to Watch

Two dated Forever beats, then the three pieces in this series to read first.

Nov 4

World of Warcraft: Forever launches

The first full population on a world with no flying, no realm list and a cap that never moves.

Dec 9

The first new raids unlock

The first raids under the GDKP ban, and the first test of the enforcement promise.

Riot's MMO Should Never Let You Fly.

Riot MMO

Blizzard Is Deleting the Realm List in Forever.

Riot MMO

Blizzard Made Transmog Optional in WoW Forever.

Riot MMO

Reported from Blizzard's BlizzCon 2026 videos, its developer Q&A, Game Informer's interview and Destin's hands-on on YouTube, embedded above with the clock. The MMO read is ours and clearly speculative. Analysis by RuneGrove.