The Elder Scrolls Online's Director Called…

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Source: GamesRadar+. Verified against multiple sources; datamines and reports are labelled as such, not stated as fact.

The Elder Scrolls Online, whose game director Nick Giacomini says few new MMOs have been able to break through (ZeniMax Online Studios / Bethesda Softworks)

What Happened

GamesRadar+ put the leads of The Elder Scrolls Online, Warframe, and Final Fantasy XIV on the record about why their genre is healthy and why almost nothing new gets into it.

Riot's MMO boss called building one a monumental undertaking on the day he got the job. Two years on, the game director of The Elder Scrolls Online reached for the same phrase to explain why hardly any new MMO breaks through.

That second quote comes from a GamesRadar+ feature published July 25, 2026 by Hayes Madsen, built on fresh interviews with three people already running MMOs that survived: Nick Giacomini, game director of The Elder Scrolls Online; Rebecca Ford, creative director of Warframe; and Naoki Yoshida, producer and director of Final Fantasy XIV. Riot doesn't come up once in it.

Their read on the genre is bullish. Giacomini says live-service games trained a whole generation in the habit of returning to one world: "The industry is more crowded now, but the desire for a world you can live in and escape to is stronger than ever." Ford gets there from the other side, since the players filling Warframe today never lived through the dominant MMO era and turned up anyway.

The MMORPG genre isn't going away any time soon. MMORPGs are homes for players in a way that most genres just aren't.

— Nick Giacomini, game director of The Elder Scrolls Online, speaking to GamesRadar+

The other half of their answer is the part a new studio has to sit with. Giacomini's full line is that creating an MMORPG is a monumental undertaking, and few new MMOs have been able to break through. Ford puts the odds more bluntly: "There's really no place for confidence in the current ecosystem; nothing is guaranteed."

Yoshida doesn't argue with that. He says if he were to develop a new online live service title from scratch, he'd be "challenging myself to tackle completely new game designs and values" rather than refining what already exists. He's running a smaller version of the same move inside FF14, steering the game toward change with the Evercold expansion instead of holding the line.

ESO has been live since 2014, the ten-year span Giacomini says forces a studio to change its design ethos or get left behind (ZeniMax Online Studios / Bethesda Softworks)

Warframe, live since 2013, whose creative director Rebecca Ford points to nearly 200 Devstreams as the reason it lasted (Digital Extremes)

Ford's advice to anyone building an MMO now: get weird, and work with the community rather than for or against it (Digital Extremes)

Final Fantasy XIV, whose director Naoki Yoshida says a from-scratch project today would need completely new designs and values (Square Enix)

The Three Directors

Each lead names the same mechanism for staying alive, and none of them names scale.

Warframe has been live since 2013, and Ford's explanation for that is almost boringly procedural. The team has run Devstreams close to monthly for nearly 200 episodes, and if players hate a feature that's already been announced, the team is prepared to scrap it. Her advice to anyone building an MMO now: "Get weird! Go left instead of right, but always, always be ready to work with your community, not for or against them."

Giacomini's version is a rule about drift. ESO went live in 2014, and his line is that if your design ethos doesn't change over ten years, you're going to get left behind. Neither of them talks about budget or headcount as the thing that kept the lights on.

Nick Giacomini

"Creating an MMORPG is a monumental undertaking, and few new MMOs have been able to break through."

The Elder Scrolls Online

Rebecca Ford

"The younger generations of gamers have not been exposed to the dominant MMO era, yet the strongest MMOs still stand."

Warframe

Naoki Yoshida

"I chose to steer FF14 towards change in pursuit of creating even more enjoyment and evolving further."

Final Fantasy XIV

2013Warframe live sinceDigital Extremes has been talking to players on stream ever since

2014ESO live sinceThe ten-year window Giacomini says forces a change of design ethos

200Warframe DevstreamsClose to monthly, and announced features get scrapped when players push back

2024Riot's MMO resetMarch 20, the day Condominas took the executive producer job

2014

The Elder Scrolls Online goes live

The start of the ten-year span Giacomini says forces a studio to change or get left behind

March 20, 2024

Riot resets its MMO and names a new boss

Merrill says the initial vision wasn't different enough; Condominas calls the job a monumental undertaking

July 25, 2026

Three directors describe the conditions

GamesRadar+ publishes the feature, with no mention of Riot

Yoshida's franchise has its own recent scar tissue on the live-service side, since FF14's mobile version shut down after 15 months, closed by Tencent, which also owns Riot. Longevity in this genre is conditional even for the studios that have already proved they can do it.

What This Means for the Riot MMO

The one confirmed fact about Riot's game is its setting, and the directors' checklist lands on the one thing Riot hasn't done.

Fabrice Condominas posted this on March 20, 2024, the day Riot named him executive producer of the MMO: "Developing an MMO is a monumental undertaking, and while I am eager to dive into the work, I am also mindful of the patience and perseverance it will require." Giacomini, two years later and talking about somebody else's problem, reaches for the same phrase.

The GamesRadar feature never mentions Riot. The connection is ours, and so is every read under it.

View post on X

Yoshida's from-scratch answer lands on that same date from a different direction. March 20, 2024 is also when Marc Merrill explained the reset by saying the initial vision just wasn't different enough from what you can play today. A Riot founder got to Yoshida's answer two years early: stop refining the genre, go find new designs and values. There's a live test of that same bet running in a 1999 MMO relaunching with modern comforts.

Then the part that doesn't flatter Riot. The one thing all three call load-bearing is the one thing Riot hasn't done.

The one thing all three call load-bearing is the one thing Riot hasn't done.

Warframe has its nearly 200 Devstreams. ESO has a public design ethos its director re-examines on a ten-year clock. Riot has no equivalent for the MMO: no stream, no regular post, no public cadence of any kind since the project went dark. There are decent reasons to stay quiet with a game this early, and showing an unfinished world is part of how the 2024 reset happened, but the trust these three describe as the moat is a thing you accumulate, and Riot isn't accumulating it yet.

ESO's year makes the same point from the other end. The studio lost its studio head, executive producer, and game director in the same week, and Riot's MMO has been staffing up on exactly those veterans. The knowledge of how to run a decade-old world is moving between buildings right now, and Riot is one of the buildings it's moving into.

	ESO, Warframe, FF14	Riot's Runeterra MMO
Years live	Warframe since 2013, ESO since 2014	Not revealed
Public cadence	Nearly 200 Warframe Devstreams, close to monthly	No stream, no regular post, no public cadence
Stated brief	Yoshida: completely new game designs and values	Merrill: the initial vision wasn't different enough
Setting	Franchise worlds their studios have run for years	Runeterra
Regions, era, platform	Shipped and playable today	Not revealed

Giacomini's other point is the encouraging one. If live-service games normalised the habit of living in one world, the audience an MMO needs already exists and mostly isn't playing MMOs right now. That's the market we mapped in our rundown of the MMO wars, where a Runeterra MMO would land next to Guild Wars 3 and a WoW Classic revival.

Here's the full list of what Riot has confirmed about the game: it's set in Runeterra. Not which regions ship, not how much of the map you'd walk, not the era, not the platform, not how it charges you. The map below is the fiction Riot draws on, not a starting zone, and the scope is unrevealed.

Runeterra, the world the Riot MMO is set in.

That's the world Giacomini's "world you can live in" framing would be pointed at. Runeterra already has the furniture: the Great City of Demacia, the Placidium of Navori in Ionia, the Sun Disc of Shurima, the Immortal Bastion in Noxus. Which of them exist in the game is not something Riot has said.

Riot has also already shown what that world looks like when it's selling it as a place. Warriors, the Season 2020 cinematic, runs from a Demacian wall under siege to a Piltover clocktower, with Garen holding the line and Caitlyn perched over the street.

Caitlyn on a Piltover clocktower balcony, backlit by the clock face (0:54).

A survivor in a ruined street. Riot sells Runeterra by showing who lives in it (1:21).

Garen swinging into the charge at a Demacian wall (1:50).

Gold light magic wraps a blade over a fallen defender (2:20).

A Void-lit fighter mid-leap, trailing magenta energy (2:58).

That's a world with weather, architecture, and people who live in it. Holding one for a decade is the job all three directors were describing, and every one of them said the way you hold it is by talking to the people inside it.

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