At RuneFest in Birmingham, Jagex revealed a fourth RuneScape MMO under the working title RS4. The studio’s RS4 page says the game is built in Unreal Engine, set in Gielinor in the Sixth Age, and begins in Ashenfall. Jagex says RS4 is not a replacement for RuneScape, Old School RuneScape, or RuneScape: Dragonwilds, and that platforms, accounts, membership, and combat are too early to answer. The game is still a few years away. Gematsu and Polygon published the news on Saturday, October 3, so this is a catch-up on the RuneFest announcement, not a separate Sunday reveal.
RS4 is a working title, not a locked name. Jagex calls it a fourth-generation RuneScape project and says the final name may change. The page treats the RuneFest showing as a first glimpse of a project still at the beginning, not a full reveal.
Ashenfall is the region players met in RuneScape: Dragonwilds, a landmass Jagex places to the north-east of Gielinor. RS4 is set years after Dragonwilds and the destruction of the Dragon Queen Kuldra. Jagex says time has passed, Ashenfall has changed, and the region is only the start. The ambition is to grow past Ashenfall into familiar places and into new parts of Gielinor.
RuneScape, Old School RuneScape, and Dragonwilds each keep a dedicated team, a roadmap, and continued investment. RS4 is meant to sit beside them as another way to experience Gielinor, not to retire the games already running. Players might stay in one game, move between several, or meet the setting for the first time in RS4.
Jagex will not yet say which platforms, what accounts, or how membership, progression, combat, and skills will work, or when anyone can play. It calls those answers too early. More is promised next year on the world, the game, the team, and how players can get involved. The page names integrity, permanent progression, and community-driven development as principles, drawing on Dragonwilds technology work and on co-development from RuneScape and Old School. It also invites players to sign up and follow the project.
What Polygon heard before RuneFest
That origin is not on the public RS4 page. In a pre-RuneFest briefing reported by Polygon, Dragonwilds executive producer Jesse America said the project began as a Dragonwilds expansion called Shadows of Ashenfall. Players wanted more social play, he said, so the team tried persistent servers, high player counts, and player-to-player trading. When the prototypes looked like their own MMO, Jagex split the work off as a separate game. Polygon also reported that a trailer shows dragons players can fight and ride. Those details are Polygon’s account of America’s briefing, not copy from the RS4 page.
What is still open
Jagex has not set a release date. “A few years away,” and a promise of more next year, are the only timing lines on the RS4 page, and they are not a calendar day. No price, player count, platform list, account plan, or membership model is stated.
