Why RuneScape 4 Probably Won't Ever Happen

Published: 13 Nov 2022 4:51 PM +00:00 Updated: 13 Nov 2022 5:15 PM +00:00

Runescape has been around for, literally, decades at this point. Starting off as Runescape Classic, the game slowly evolved into Runescape 2, then Runescape 3, and now it’s just called Runescape, but it’s the same live service game that’s been around for over 20 years. But it is 2022, and many are wondering what’s in store for Runescape. Unfortunately, a new major update to Runescape that turns it into Runescape 4 isn’t likely coming, so in this article, we’ll explain why Runescape 4 probably won’t ever happen.

Runescape 4 Just Doesn’t Make Sense

Today, Runescape isn’t even the most popular version of Runescape, and that’s true by a huge margin at that. Old School Runescape is the more popular game, and it’s quite different and separate from Runescape, though they are both, undoubtedly, Runescape.

You can play Runescape if you want to keep playing that same account you created 15 years ago or if you want to play a version of Runescape that looks, feels, and plays a lot more modern than Old School plays. And you can play Old School Runescape if you prefer the look and feel of the older game as well as its lack of microtransactions and lootboxes, which is why most choose Old School.

Updating Runescape to Runescape 4 wouldn’t make sense in a lot of ways. First, as mentioned above, it’s not the most popular version of the game, so you’re already courting a relatively small playerbase. What’s more is that unless a lot of the changes that came to Runescape 3 as opposed to Runescape 2 are undone, most probably won’t move up to Runescape 4.

Things like the Evolution of Combat, the microtransactions in the game, or any other number of changes that pushed players to quit Runescape or transition to Old School would need to go away to attract those players back, and removing all the core features that have defined Runescape for over a decade at this point in order to create Runescape 4 just doesn’t make a ton of sense. Why not just let those players play Old School instead?

Then, launching Runescape 4 as a totally new game doesn’t make a lot of sense, either. Imagine if Jagex developed and maintained three whole MMOs: Runescape, Old School Runescape, and Runescape 4. Who would know which they should play, and the playerbases of Old School and Runescape would suffer and get split. It just wouldn’t make a lot of sense, and it would be quite expensive and resource intensive.

And of course, Jagex couldn’t just shut down an existing version of Runescape. Players would riot, and people would quit en masse. Nobody wants to play MMOs from the company, especially grindy lifestyle MMOs, that can just get deleted when a new game is coming out. Especially when Runescape has been around for two decades and Old School for a decade.

So, What Is Runescape’s Future, Then?

It’s pretty safe to say that both Old School and Runescape will be sticking around for a long time. No doubt, too, both will be expanded and updated over time. These are Jagex’s most beloved games in the singular IP the company has that’s been massively successful. Losing either would be suicide for the company, so don’t expect that to happen.

But Jagex can’t just sit on maintaining and updating a game from the turn of the century and a 2013 version of a much older build of that game forever. The company needs to innovate and launch new games and forge a new path forward into the future, picking up new players that haven’t already been playing Runescape for most of their lives.

But if Runescape 4 doesn’t make sense, what does? That’s actually a surprisingly easy-to-answer question because there is one thing that all Runescape players have always wanted from Jagex for decades at this point. What’s that, you ask?

Imagine if you could play a fully-3D open-world version of Runescape with action combat that played much more like Dark Souls than the Runescape we know and love does. What if it came with truly beautiful, truly modern graphics, and what if it had the same open-ended freedom of classic Runescape and got updated forever, too. That’s what most Runescape players want.

For the reasons listed above, this wouldn’t really work as Runescape 4, not to mention that it would likely feel like too different a game from the Runescape we know to truly be considered Runescape 4 by many players anyways. That’s why it would have to come as a Runescape game with something of a subtitle after it, like Runescape: Legends, or something.

What’s more is a game like that could come to consoles just as well as PC and mobile, which would open up a huge new market for Jagex and a huge new playerbase, too. They’d be free of the expectations you’d have with Runescape 4 while still making a Runescape game that felt modern and played like everybody dreamed it could.

The even better news is that a game like this appears to actively be in development at Jagex, right now. Months ago, the news broke that Jagex was working on an open-world survival game set in the world of Runescape that’s running on Unreal Engine 5. Of course, until more details are revealed, we won’t know for sure, but that sounds a lot like the above.

Runescape in a lot of ways is already an open-world survival game, so seeing Jagex take a shot at making another one of those, set in Runescape’s world, in Unreal Engine 5 is inevitably going to be a game to keep an eye on, especially for Runescape fans.

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