Jagex Says RuneScape: Dragonwilds Had to Untangle RuneScape From Its MMO Roots

Jagex is preparing RuneScape: Dragonwilds for its 1.0 launch this September, with the survival crafting spin-off headed to PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S on September 15. A Nintendo Switch 2 version is also planned for September.

Speaking during Summer Game Fest, creative director Rick Turek and product director Robert Galassi-Fox talked about the trickiest part of building Dragonwilds: making it feel like RuneScape without turning it into another RuneScape MMO.

Turek said the team wanted the game to work for both longtime RuneScape players and people who may only know survival games, or high fantasy games, more broadly. That meant keeping recognizable pieces of the setting and its systems, while also accepting that some MMO expectations wouldn’t fit the survival format.

The biggest early challenge, he said, was pushing past the idea that RuneScape has to mean an MMO first. For Dragonwilds, Jagex is treating the franchise more like a setting and style it can build different kinds of games around. In this case, that means co-op survival, crafting, exploration, life skills, and combat in a RuneScape-flavored world.

Galassi-Fox said feedback from Steam reviews has already shown players using Dragonwilds in a different way than the main MMO. Some are playing it with family members or kids, partly because it’s less demanding than a long-term MMO commitment.

That’s also something the team seems aware of as a responsibility. RuneScape has a lot of nostalgia attached to it, and Galassi-Fox said the developers want Dragonwilds to introduce new players to the series’ lore, life skills, and general feel without requiring them to already be invested in decades of MMO history.

RuneScape: Dragonwilds is currently in the run-up to its full 1.0 release, with Jagex positioning it as both a survival game for new players and a side door back into Gielinor for older RuneScape fans.