Jagex Is Building a Fourth RuneScape MMO in Unreal Engine

Jagex closed RuneFest on October 3 by revealing a project it had kept quiet: a brand new RuneScape MMORPG built in Unreal Engine, working title RS4. It is set in Gielinor and begins in Ashenfall, it sits alongside the existing games rather than replacing them, and the studio says it is still a few years away.

What was announced

The studio published the details on its own site the same day as the reveal. RS4 is the working title — Jagex calls it the fourth-generation RuneScape project and says the name is not settled. The engine is the headline: after a quarter of a century on in-house technology, the next RuneScape is being built in Unreal Engine.

The setting is not a reboot. RS4 takes place in Gielinor during the Sixth Age, and it starts in Ashenfall, the landmass to the north-east that players first explored in RuneScape: Dragonwilds. The story picks up years after the destruction of the Dragon Queen Kuldra, with the world moved on and Ashenfall changed with it. Jagex says the ambition is to grow beyond Ashenfall over time, into familiar places as well as new ones.

The studio was blunt about what this is not. In its words, RS4 is not a replacement for any of its games, be it Old School, RuneScape or Dragonwilds — each keeps its own team, roadmap and investment. The design principles it commits to are the ones its audience tests hardest: integrity, permanent progression, and development driven by the community.

It also listed the questions it will not answer yet, which is an unusually honest way to run a reveal. Platforms, accounts, membership, progression, combat, skills, a release date — all of it, in the studio's own phrasing, is simply too early to say. More is promised next year.

What it means for players

For the people playing RuneScape on a phone, the useful part of this announcement is the part that is missing. Old School RuneScape has been on the App Store since October 2018 and RuneScape followed in 2021, both published by Jagex, and both have carried full mobile clients since. RS4 has no platform list at all, so nobody should assume a phone version — or rule one out.

What the reveal does guarantee is that the mobile games are not being wound down to make room. Jagex tied itself to continued investment in Old School, RuneScape and Dragonwilds in the same paragraph where it introduced RS4, and the plan it describes is players moving between titles rather than migrating off the old ones.

The Unreal decision matters for a different reason. It is the practical reason the studio can talk about this project years out: an off-the-shelf engine lets a new team start building worlds before the technology is finished, which is also why the first thing shown was a trailer of Gielinor rather than a feature list.

What happens next

Jagex says the next real update comes next year, covering the world, the game, the team and how players can get involved. The studio is explicit that it revealed the project early precisely to pull players into development, so expect tests and feedback rounds rather than a long silence.

Until then, nothing changes in any game anyone is currently playing. The sentence worth holding onto is the one about timing: it is still a few years away, and it was announced anyway.