Jagex announces RS4, a new Unreal Engine RuneScape MMORPG set in Gielinor

Jagex has confirmed that a fourth-generation RuneScape MMORPG is in development. Announced at RuneFest and detailed in a 4 October post on the official RuneScape site that quickly reached the front page of Hacker News, the project currently carries the working title RS4 and is being built in Unreal Engine.

A fourth generation, revealed unusually early

According to the announcement, RS4 reflects that this is the studio's fourth-generation RuneScape project, though the team cautions that the name may change before launch. Development is described as being at the very beginning of a highly ambitious effort, with the game still a few years out. The studio says it weighed keeping the project under wraps for longer but decided that revealing it now better fits how RuneScape has been made for 25 years: with players involved throughout. The plan is to share ideas, run tests and adapt based on community feedback from the start, rather than presenting a finished product later.

Where and when it is set

RS4 takes place in Gielinor during the Sixth Age, and begins in Ashenfall, a region first introduced in RuneScape: Dragonwilds on a landmass to the north-east of Gielinor. The new game is set years after the events of Dragonwilds and the destruction of the Dragon Queen Kuldra, so time will have passed and Ashenfall itself will have changed. Ashenfall is explicitly only the starting point: the stated ambition is for the game to expand well beyond it over time, moving into familiar locations as well as new areas and stories across Gielinor.

Not a replacement for existing games

The announcement is emphatic on one point: RS4 will not replace Old School RuneScape, RuneScape or Dragonwilds. Each of those games has its own dedicated team, its own roadmap and continued investment, and RS4 is being designed as an additional, independent way to experience the setting. The team's view is that several parallel RuneScape experiences strengthen the franchise as a whole, whether players settle in one game, move between them, or encounter Gielinor for the first time through RS4.

Design principles and open questions

Jagex says RS4 will combine the technical groundwork laid on Dragonwilds with the community co-development approach developed across RuneScape and Old School. Two design commitments are named directly: integrity and permanent progression, which the studio frames as central to what a RuneScape game is.

Plenty of practical questions are still open. Platforms, account structure, membership, progression systems, combat and skills are all unaddressed, and the announcement says it is simply too early to answer them. A fuller reveal covering the world, the game itself, the team building it and how players can get involved is promised for next year.

Why it matters

RuneScape is one of the longest-running franchises in the MMO space, and it began life as a browser game written in Java. Moving its next major instalment to Unreal Engine is a meaningful technology shift for a series long associated with bespoke, in-house technology, and it puts one of gaming's most established MMO brands on the same modern engine stack that much of the industry now relies on.

The unusually early reveal is also notable. Jagex is deliberately trading secrecy for community involvement, mirroring the open, iterative development models that have become common in live games. For the existing player bases of Old School RuneScape, RuneScape and Dragonwilds, the announcement's repeated assurance that those games will continue to receive dedicated investment is the key reassurance. And for developers watching from outside, RS4 is a large-scale case study in running four parallel games in one universe while betting that openness from day one produces a better fourth attempt.