RuneScape: Dragonwilds dev explains how RuneScape 4 began development

At last weekend's RuneFest, the annual celebration of all things RuneScape, Jagex announced the next era of the series with RuneScape 4.

During its announcement, it was revealed that the idea for the game first arose during RuneScape: Dragonwilds' development.

In a chat with Dragonwilds executive producer Jesse America (Mod Jesse), he explained how RS4's existence came to be.

"Essentially, early feedback on [Dragonwilds] indicated that players really wanted higher player counts. They wanted certain social features like a social hub and seeing other players in the world whenever they started the game, Jagex secure servers and all that sort of stuff.

"And initially, we thought, well, there are other survival games that do that. We can have a look at bringing that to the game.

"There were, at the time, technical constraints that we had and design choices that had been made, so we put that on the roadmap for 2027, as in, that's where we're going to release a big expansion, almost like a version 1.5 of the game, so to speak, that brings all that to the game and more."

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But while development of these new concepts began well alongside creative director Rick Turek (Mod Rook), it quickly became apparent that this was bigger than just an update to Dragonwilds.

"Rick and his team did a lot of really good prototyping and designing, and out of that came stuff [that] when we looked at it, we came to a realisation: this is its own game.

"And the enthusiasm within the company grew, and then we made the decision. It was born organically, basically."

Furthermore, on speculation about the origin of the game, America wanted to clarify something:

"I want to set the record straight [regarding] that Dragonwilds was a test run for an MMO. That was never the case. The approach wasn't in that way."

RuneScape 4 remains early in development, with the process currently set to continue for several more years before it sees the light of day.

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Authors

Alex Raisbeck is a Gaming Writer at Radio Times, covering everything from AAA giants to indie gems. Alex has written for VideoGamer, GamesRadar+, PC Gamer, PCGamesN and more.