RuneFest is taking place this weekend and as is the case with many events like this, we have been seeing new announcements come out of it. The biggest news to come out of the event is that RuneScape 4 is now in active development.

First reported by MMORPG from Birmingham, UK where the event is taking place, RuneScape 4 will be the next major MMO in the RuneScape franchise.

From Expansion To New Game

What makes the news even more interesting is that what is now RuneScape 4 was originally set to be an expansion for the recently released RuneScape: Dragonwilds.

While players have been loving Dragonwilds, the feedback developer Jagex has been getting is that they want more of what makes RuneScape feel like RuneScape. This meant more player counts in servers and social features you’d typically see in an MMO. And while the team was working on these features for a 2027 expansion of Dragonwilds, they decided that it should just be its own game.

“As we built that, the team embraced that challenge with a lot of creative ambition and a lot of enthusiasm,” Jesse America, developer on RuneScape 4 told press at a briefing. “But along the way, the team realized that the scope of what they were building deserved to be its own game. It’s own MMO.”

While details are scarce at the moment beyond an announcement trailer, RuneScape 4 is being built on Unreal Engine and is being built by the entire studio. It’s also probably fair to say that RuneScape 4 won’t be releasing in 2027 like the expansion was originally planned to. America did say it is in its “early days” in their briefing according to MMORPG.

This at the very least seems to suggest that Dragonwilds is doing well for Jagex, and it’s great to see such a long running franchise enjoy continued success.