Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
The Riot MMO release date might not be here for several years as we might have expected. On July 19th, 2023 Riot Games published a job posting for a Senior Manager, Software Engineering position. In the job ad it called for the hiree to have experience in Riot’s earliest development stage, incubation, among others.
Table of Contents
Stages of Riot MMO Production
Riot Games shared their research and development lifecycle roadmap. We’re using their explanation page to determine what the Riot MMO team is thinking and planning to do.
Stage 1
The first stage of the research and development lifecycle is the incubation stage.
The team is “sensemaking”. They are researching the playerbase, exploring the genre, and defining their goals.
With “sensemaking” is mind, the developers are generating and discussing a ton of broad ideas. During this stage, a thesis statement is defined. It simply states what the end goal of the game is. Next, those ideas are narrowed down and brought over to the next development stage, prototype.
Stage 2
Game ideas are still being discussed during the prototype stage. Although, these ideas are connected to the project’s thesis statement.
Thesis n.
an articulation of why solving those problems or realizing those opportunities has the potential to be a huge game worth pursuing
Jim “Apothesis” McArdle
In other words, these ideas solve a specific problem and provide an opportunity.
Riot Games states, the incubation stage allows them to keep the team “smaller (and more agile)”. In fact, it allows they to move into the prototype stage faster.
What Stage is the Riot MMO in?
We left out pre-production and the following stages. It’s unlikely the job posting would call for experience in a development stage they have moved on from permanently.
Albeit speculative, it likely as of July 2023 the Riot MMO is in the prototype development phase. We’ve examined the distinction between incubation and prototype. Of course there is a chance they’re still in the incubation stage.
Keep in mind, incubation and prototype share similarities. The Riot MMO could be in the prototype and experience in the incubation stage could provide useful.
When is Riot MMO Coming Out
On July 18, 2023 one day before the job post we had a lengthy discussions about the league mmo release date in our Discord Channel
One of our Riot MMO Discord members, ShambitsGaming works in software and occasionally takes contracts in gaming. He think the Riot MMO expected release date is between 2026 to 2028.
Shambits goes on to say,
Based on Riots old incubation post in 2020, it’s safe to assume they’re in prototype stage, maybe moving into pre-production where they begin to model the final game.
Shambits
This lines up with some of the subtext we’ve seen from Xeno and GhostCrawler about wanting to “deliver content”. If I’m even roughly right and they’re in prototype stage then they haven’t even decided what’s going to be in the game yet, let alone started building it
Why the Size of the Engineering Team Matters
The next day, while discussing Riot MMO staff members, Shambits pointed out the early stages of a project requires less staff than during the production development phase.
Now notice in the job posting, one of the responsibilities includes:
Therefore, we can safely conclude the Riot MMO is in an early development stage. The team is likely in either incubation, or prototype.
Riot MMO Release Date
Based on the our analysis of the Stages of Research and Development at Riot and our Discord discussions, the Riot MMORPG release date is probably between 2026 and 2028.
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Riot MMO Release Date Years Away
by u/RiotMMO in theRiotMMO