Jagex Is Building a New RuneScape MMO. Like Riot's, It Runs on Unreal Engine, and It Started Life as a Survival Game Expansion That Players Pushed Into an MMO.

What Happened

Jagex announced a fourth RuneScape MMO years before launch, in Unreal Engine, and promised to build it with players in the loop.

The reveal

• A fourth RuneScape. RuneScape, the long-running MMO from the studio Jagex, is getting a fourth MMO. RS4 is its working title, and Jagex says it is not the final name.
• RuneFest, October 3. Jagex announced it on October 3, 2026 at RuneFest, its fan event at the NEC in Birmingham, attended by about 6,000 people.
• Unreal Engine. It is built in Unreal Engine, Epic Games’ engine. No platforms were announced.
• Years out. Jagex’s official page says RS4 is "a few years away". More on its world and team is promised in 2027, per GosuGamers.
• Nothing gets replaced. "RS4 is not a replacement for any of our games, be it Old School, RuneScape or Dragonwilds," the official page says.

Where it starts

• Gielinor’s Sixth Age. RS4 is set in Gielinor, RuneScape’s world, during its Sixth Age.
• Opens in Ashenfall. It begins in Ashenfall, the region from RuneScape: Dragonwilds, Jagex’s 2025 survival game, years after Dragonwilds’ story.
• After the queen. That puts RS4 after the destruction of Dragon Queen Kuldra in Dragonwilds.

From expansion to MMO

• Started as DLC. RS4 began as Shadows of Ashenfall, a planned Dragonwilds expansion (PC Gamer, The Sixth Axis).
• Players asked. Dragonwilds players kept asking for persistent servers, higher player counts and trading, said Jesse America, executive producer on Dragonwilds.
• The whole studio. "This is something that the entire studio will work on, all of us together," America told Well Played.
• Built with players. The official page: "We’ve learned that our games are at their best when we build with you, not just for you."

So the MMO came up from the players. A survival game shipped, its players asked for the things that make an MMO, and Jagex gave the expansion a game of its own.

The trailer

• Mostly CGI. A roughly 90-second concept trailer, mostly CGI, closed the show.
• Dragons to ride. It shows dragons players can fight and ride, and a three-headed dragon attack.
• Still unannounced. No gameplay, release window or business model was announced.

What This Means for the Riot MMO

RS4 is the closest live parallel to the Riot MMO, and on visibility Jagex just made the opposite call.

• Same engine. Riot’s own MMO job listings name Unreal Engine, down to the Sydney senior UX designer role.
• Same window. Riot co-founder Marc Merrill has put the Riot MMO "before 2030", the same late-decade window RS4 is aiming at.
• Opposite visibility. Riot went dark after its March 2024 reset and has shown no name, screenshots or footage. It even told trackers to stand down in July.
• Money on record. Jagex promised RS4 "integrity and permanent progression" before revealing anything else. Riot has never put an MMO business model on the record.

Merrill calls an MMO "the grail" of game development. RS4 shows one way to test that demand cheaply: a smaller game, players asking for more, then the big build. A smaller Runeterra game could scout for Riot the same way. That reading is ours; Riot has said nothing about it.

Our read. Jagex is betting that years in public earn trust before launch, and it has paid for trust before, when RuneScape deleted 298 microtransactions. Riot’s silence means it never has to walk back a promise. How the RS4 community holds up over the next year is a live test of which approach keeps players.

Your Take

Reported from Jagex (official RS4 page); corroborated by Massively OP, PC Gamer, GamesRadar, Gematsu, VGC, PCGamesN, Well Played, The Sixth Axis and corroborating coverage. The MMO read is ours and clearly speculative. Analysis by RuneGrove.