Brian Holinka Joins Riot Games' MMORPG Team

Brian Holinka, WoW's longtime Lead PvP and Combat Designer, has joined Riot Games as a principal game designer on their still-untitled League of Legends MMO set in Runeterra. Today marks his first day on the job.

Holinka spent over a decade at Blizzard — joining in 2012 as Lead PvP Designer before transitioning to Lead Combat Designer across all of WoW, overseeing systems like the expanded talent trees introduced in Dragonflight. He left Blizzard in 2023 to serve as gameplay design director at Fantastic Pixel Castle (Greg Street's indie MMO studio), but that project, Project Ghost, shut down earlier this year.

The Runeterra MMO has been in development limbo for years — it underwent a complete reset, has shared zero gameplay footage or screenshots, and its most concrete update is a vague target of releasing before 2030. Riot's co-founder has said the studio is "more committed than ever," and they continue to bring on industry veterans. Whether Holinka's deep PvP and combat design experience moves the needle remains to be seen.