Is League being left by the wayside?
LoL MMO - Seemingly Riot Developers' Main Focus
From the success of League of Legends, due to its constant updates, Riot Games understood that to keep being relevant, one must always stride forward. So they've released a shooter, a card game, and an auto-chess game.
Their next two projects are the fighting game, and the MMO based on the lore of League of Legends, where we'll likely meet all of our favorite champions. However, it all seems to point out that the MMO is the main focus of the company nowadays.
Is LoL MMO Riot's New Main Game?
Massive Multiplayer Online games are a crowning achievement of any game studio to develop, due to how difficult it is to do so, with resources, time, and experienced workers all needed to create a quality one.
When it comes to Riot, up until now, League of Legends has always seemed to be the main focus of the company, but comparing some data, the results would show that not to be the case, as a recent Reddit thread has pointed out.
All the way back in 2017, League of Legends Season 7 had a lot of events and new additions taking place in the game
- 5 new champions
- Elementalist Lux, the best of all Ultimate skins
- 4 champion updates
- 3 game modes
- The iconic Legends Never Die cinematic
Now, compared to season 13, which has difficulties with even ASUs, not to mention full champion updates, and with one of the worst season start cinematics ever, we can see why some fans are dubious.
At the beginning of the year, the Riot CEO at the time stated that Riot's budget for 2023 is the largest it has ever been. So, where is that budget being spent, as it certainly isn't on League?
The answer can be found in a game genre that is incredibly costly to build, requiring experienced game developers and incredible amounts of resources dedicated to developing it. That is, an MMO.
Most of Riot's experienced developers seem to be turning their focus towards the new games being designed, or towards different projects entirely in some cases, of which the MMO should, logically, take up the most resources available.
On the other hand, a new cadre of developers is being trained, by RIot's own admission, where the developers of the new 2v2v2 game mode is a new team formed around December last year.
- Speaking of LoL games, you can also get the LoL puzzle to pass the time
All in all, we can expect the next year to be better for League of Legends, once the new Rioters get some experience under their belt, with wrangling the spaghetti code into something useful, while, on the other hand, the upcoming MMO shows promise, as it would seem RIot are investing quite heavily into its development.