Riot MMO co-founder calls it 'the grail' — and warns many brave knights will die on the quest

Riot Games co-founder Marc Merrill surfaced at PAX West over the weekend and briefly addressed the studio's long-in-development MMO, offering cautious optimism but zero concrete details. The comments came during a panel hosted by Greg Miller, who pushed Merrill for more after he dropped a passing mention of the project.

Merrill's most quotable moment leaned hard into the difficulty of building an MMO at scale. "We jokingly call it 'the grail' internally because we're like 'Fuck it, you know, many a brave knight are going to die on the grail quest. But fuck it, it's the grail, so let's go,'" he said. He added that the team knows what players want and that execution is the challenge, closing with: "I think the future's incredibly bright." Beyond that, Merrill had nothing to offer — no project name, no release window, no development milestone, no platform details.

The comments land at an awkward moment for Riot. The studio recently shut down 2XKO, its tag-team fighting game, which had been in active development and public playtesting before the plug was pulled. That closure rattled confidence in Riot's ability to ship non-League of Legends projects, and the MMO — which has been in some form of development for years without a single public reveal — is now carrying extra scrutiny as a result. Riot has historically built its identity around League of Legends and its extended universe, and an MMO set in Runeterra has been one of the most anticipated potential projects in that space for a long time.

For now, the MMO remains a ghost — no name, no footage, no timeline. Merrill's enthusiasm is real enough, but "the grail" framing cuts both ways: it signals ambition, but also the very real possibility that the quest never ends.