Former WoW lead producer joins Riot Games to work on League of Legends MMO

The League of Legends MMO project is still alive—which is news in itself—but it has just taken a significant turn with the arrival of Raymond Bartos. The former World of Warcraft Lead Producer has joined the dedicated team at Riot Games, as he announced on LinkedIn on January 15: “I’m incredibly excited to be joining Riot on the MMO team!!!”

The MMO’s existence was first confirmed in 2020 when Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street, then Vice President at Riot, revealed he was working on an MMORPG based on the Runeterra universe. Having spent time at Blizzard between 2008 and 2013, notably as WoW’s Lead Systems Designer, Street quickly became the face of the project before leaving Riot in March 2023.

His departure to launch his own project (another MMO, according to his comments at the time) rattled the community and sparked a period of uncertainty regarding the game's future. In 2024, Riot internally admitted to "resetting" the project's development, starting from scratch to realign the vision and team structure.

It is within this context (and following a long period of silence) that Raymond Bartos, who officially left Blizzard in December 2025, joins Riot Games as Senior Game Producer on the MMO. In a post shared on LinkedIn and X, he explained he was struck by Riot's company culture and stated his goal to "help deliver an MMO experience that players will truly enjoy."

Bartos is also reuniting with Orlando Salvatore, the former Lead Software Engineer for World of Warcraft, who joined the MMO project in October 2024. The producer spoke of "re-queuing" with his "longtime duo partner," asserting that given their shared history on WoW, the team should be able to hit the ground running from day one.

Despite this update, Riot remains extremely vague regarding the timeline. In early 2025, Marc “Tryndamere” Merrill mentioned in an interview with journalist Stephen Totilo that they hope for a release “before we go to Mars”—a quote that suggests players will still have to wait several more years.