Riot's MMO Boss Teases WoW Forever Research. Fabrice Condominas Joked About 'Competitive Research' Seven Hours After Launch, and an Ex-WoW Engineer on the Team Streamed It.

What Happened

Riot MMO executive producer Fabrice Condominas marked the World of Warcraft: Forever launch with a joke about "competitive research."

The post

• The timing. Condominas posted about seven hours after Blizzard, the studio behind WoW (World of Warcraft), opened Forever, a separate branch of the game, on November 4.
• The tags. The post tagged Blizzard senior game designer Josh "Aggrend" Greenfield and WoW executive producer Holly Longdale, adding "I see what you did there."
• The sign-off. It offered "Huge congrats to everyone behind #WoWForever!" and ended, "Now, back to this competitive research thing..."

Orlando Salvatore's posts

• Launch stream. Orlando Salvatore, a senior engineering manager on the Riot MMO and a former WoW engineer, posted about streaming Forever 33 minutes after it opened.
• Congratulations. At 1:13 a.m. PST on November 5, Salvatore named seven WoW team accounts and wrote: "Flawless launch, tons of familiar faces, and undoubtedly a return of a juggernaut."
• Earlier posts. Salvatore had already joked that Forever emptied the town and recruited Horde players for a PvP guild.

What Forever is

• The pitch. Forever expands the original Azeroth, and Blizzard says it "is not a mode, a season, or a new version of Classic."
• New content. It adds three new zones, over 1,000 quests, nine dungeons, two raids and a new race, the Skyborne.
• Level cap. The cap stays at 60.
• Raids next. Forever's first three raids open December 9 at 10, 20 and 40 players.
• The trailer. Blizzard's cinematic trailer ends on the line "Azeroth beckons us back. To home. To adventure. Forever." (3:21).

How the launch went

• Short queues. Gaming site iXBT Games reported queues of about 5 to 10 minutes, with no mass disconnects.
• Reported problems. The same report listed payment-processing problems and missing pre-created characters.
• AMD crashes. It also said AMD users reported crashes, with the cause unclear.
• No player count. Blizzard has published no launch-day player count.

WoW veterans on the Riot MMO

• Riot's September post. On September 5, Riot's account posted "So about that MMO we're building…" with a clip of co-founder Marc Merrill's PAX talk. It has 7.2 million views.
• Salvatore's reply. Salvatore quote-posted it that day: "MMOs are truly a grail."
• Producer hire. Raymond Bartos, formerly a WoW lead producer, joined the Riot MMO in January 2026.
• Combat hire. Brian Holinka, a former WoW lead combat designer, joined in June 2026, PC Gamer reported.

What This Means for the Riot MMO

Riot reset its MMO in 2024 because the vision wasn't different enough from what players could already play, and Forever joined that list on November 4.

• No MMO news. The post says "another MMO team" and gives no features, timing or design for the Riot MMO. Riot announced nothing with it.
• The 2024 reset. Merrill's March 2024 reset note said "the initial vision just wasn't different enough from what you can play today," PC Gamer reported.
• Progression unknown. Forever stays at its cap and adds zones, quests and dungeons instead of new levels. Riot has said nothing about its own progression.
• Genre signal. Salvatore told the WoW team "MMOs still have a place in this world, and you showed people why," the same year Riot wound down 2XKO, its fighting game.

Our read. The joke confirms interest and nothing more. Riot reset this game once for sitting too close to what players already had, and that list got longer on November 4. The MMO now has to stand apart from a rebuilt old-world WoW as well as the modern game. With Salvatore, Bartos and Holinka, Riot has people who worked on the game it has to differ from.

Your Take

What to Watch

Forever's first three raids open December 9.

Reported from Fabrice Condominas on X and corroborating coverage. The MMO read is ours and clearly speculative. Analysis by RuneGrove.