Brian Holinka, a veteran developer who long managed the combat systems for World of Warcraft, has joined the League of Legends MMO development team.

Brian Holinka announced his move to Riot Games via social media. He will serve as a lead game designer for the League of Legends MMO team. Holinka spent over a decade at Blizzard Entertainment, where he served as lead PVP and combat designer for World of Warcraft (WoW). Given that his start date is June 2026, it appears he has effectively just joined the team to begin his role.

While this was Holinka's first day working on the League of Legends MMO, he has a history with the game's leadership. After leaving Blizzard in 2023, Holinka joined Fantastic Pixel Castle, founded by Greg Street. Street is a former Riot employee who spent over nine years at the company and previously led the League of Legends MMO project. In a sense, Holinka, who worked with Street after Street left the LoL MMO, is now developing that very game as a designer.

Meanwhile, this is not the first time a former WoW developer has joined the League of Legends MMO team. Raymond Vartos, a former lead producer for WoW, has already joined, and lead software engineer Orlando Salvatore began working on the project in 2024. A trend is emerging where key personnel from WoW's combat, operations, and engineering teams are gathering at Riot. Even with very little information publicly available, this is being read as a sign that development of the League of Legends MMO is indeed underway.

The League of Legends MMO was first revealed in 2020 when Street announced on Twitter (now X) that an MMO based on the Runeterra universe was in development. Since then, minor details have trickled out alongside public job postings, but news dried up following Greg Street's resignation as executive producer in 2023. Notably, in 2024, Riot CPO Marc Merrill mentioned that the project's direction had been reset, signaling that more time would be needed to complete the game.

While the specific development process remains under wraps, the continued recruitment of key talent suggests that Riot is prioritizing human resources as it pushes forward with development.