Originally developed and released in early 2001 by brothers Andrew and Paul Gower, under the company they founded together, Jagex, fantasy MMORPG RuneScape has proven immensely popular over a remarkable period of time. However, the road to such success has been anything but an easy one, as multiple updates and subsequent controversies have divided the community on more than several occasions.
As a reaction to the declining user base and negative reception to the state of RuneScape in January 2013, players were polled on whether there was interest in Jagex opening a separate branch of the game based on a backup dating from August 2007. The poll exceeded the required threshold of 50,000 votes in just a few hours, which eventually led to the release of a so-called Old School RuneScape in February 2013. Ever since, both forks of RuneScape have been running and receiving expansions in parallel and, as per a report published by Game Developer in January 2026, have cumulatively generated more than 3 billion USD in lifetime revenue.
During RuneFest 2026, a fan convention dedicated to all things RuneScape, Jagex not only announced ambitious roadmaps for all three current game projects, which, as of September of this year, include the survival title Dragonwilds, but also that a fourth title is now in early development. To talk more about what’s in store for Old School RuneScape in particular, we caught up with Elena Nordmarkt, Lead Game Designer, at Rune Fest 2026 and asked her about what’s in store for 2027 and even beyond:
Hello and thank you for having me! So, RuneScape, Old School RuneScape especially, has a legendary reputation. What do you think it is that keeps people coming back for more?
Elena Nordmarkt: That’s a big question! I think there are multiple factors, for sure. I think community is a really big part. We’re very focused on listening to the players and consulting them on the updates that we do. We’re going to talk to them about the updates and say: “Look, what do you guys want to see?” We have some ideas, but ultimately, they’re the ones who decide what comes into the game. And that’s done through the polling system, which requires a supermajority vote of over 70% or more in order for content to actually come into the game. So, I think that’s one of the huge parts of it.
The other one is our approach to design. We’re super focused on horizontal progression, respecting players’ time and making sure we’re not invalidating their past grinds by superseding that content in the next expansion. And that’s kind of shaped how the roadmap for 2027 looks. We got a lot of feedback this year that people want more permanent content, and they want more of what really makes the game great. And that’s what we’re trying to do. Every single month, there’s a huge update coming in that’s focused on permanent content and that doesn’t supersede the old content.
Speaking of permanent content, the golden gates of Menaphos are finally set to open after 20 years or so, which is very exciting for legacy players. Why is now the right time for this momentous occasion?
Elena Nordmarkt: So, RuneScape has been around for 25 years, which is what we’re celebrating at RuneFest this year, and, yeah, I believe it’s been at least 20 years since the concept of Menaphos was introduced to the game. As a kid, I would go to the neighbouring city of Sophanem in the desert, and I would do all the quests, and I would just look across the river, and I would wonder what’s in there.
And so, it’s so exciting for me, now, as an adult, to actually get to work on the game and deliver that update that I was so excited about as a kid. Last year, we kind of removed the black square that was covering Menaphos on the map, so we kind of teased a little bit of what’s there. We’re definitely going to update that and give players a lot more content because it’s still locked off currently, even if it’s visible.
We’ve been steadily trying to expand the game both in terms of the type of content and also area expansions. Recently, within the last few years, we released a huge new continent in Varlamore and Kourend, as well. Sailing involved a huge area expansion as well, with lots of islands. But, we’re softly trying to also revisit those areas that we kind of know they exist as the lore has told us about them for forever. But we just haven’t got there yet.
We feel like the team’s really strong, we’ve got a solid roadmap planned, and Menaphos just feels like that sort of missing piece that we’ve not yet explored. In the back of your mind, it’s that sort of unresolved questline, right? And also, the type of content that we imagine being there is something that would fit quite nicely alongside the other stuff that we’re doing.
Beyond Menaphos and everything else announced in the roadmap, are there any unresolved threads you’d like to pencil in?
Elena Nordmarkt: Well, we’re announcing it here, but we’re resolving the Fairy Tale story, so to speak. It’s not an area expansion, but we’re finishing that storyline with the third part.
Broadly speaking, where do you expect Old School RuneScape to go after fulfilling the 2027 road map?
Elena Nordmarkt: Internally, we talk about where we want to go in three years, in terms of the narrative, the areas, the tech and game modes and stuff like that. The plans are fleeting and ever-changing, so I can’t really commit to definitely doing this and that, but those conversations and topics are always up in the air and something we actively discuss all the time. One of the big things we are doing very soon is introducing Hardcore Worlds, which is actually happening this year. So, it’s always something we’re innovating on.
Furthermore, Old School RuneScape still draws in new people, just like me. In adding new features like the PVP tutorial, would you say that onboarding newbies is an increasing priority?
Elena Nordmarkt: I would say so, yeah. We’ve been quite lucky in that last year we had a lot of people come over from World of Warcraft and try the game, which was awesome for us. And I strongly believe that luck is kind of what you make it, right? So, when luck finally strikes, it’s built off of you having the right preparation. And so, the WoW players, they came over, and they stayed because the content there is solid.
And that’s what we’re committing to: we want to keep up that sort of steady flow of content. So, yeah, absolutely, we want even more players to see that, and we want to make sure that the first-time user experience is better. We know that the game isn’t the easiest to get into. A lot of it is quite old and those are some of the development problems that we struggle with when we’re building off of such an old game.
But, at the same time, we know that there’s so much good stuff there. So, how can we show that to players earlier in their journey? This year we released a cow boss called Brutus, which is one of the first bosses you get to and is super low level. The intent was to show new players the quality of boss fights that we do at higher levels but give them an idea of that really early in their journey so that you can find him quite early as well.
And, I think the Dungeons of Gielinor update that we’re doing is kind of the continuation of that. So, not only are we revisiting old dungeons that are naturally on your path as you progress through the game, but this update is targeting quite a big range of players.
How would you say you’re balancing both being accessible to new players but also making sure that the more deliberately mysterious aspects of Old School RuneScape remain in place?
Elena Nordmarkt: We work a lot with different clients. So, we have an unofficial client called RuneLite, and they develop a lot of plugins and stuff that players can optionally choose to use. And, a lot of the time, those are really helpful for new players, especially. We’re not opposed to that and, in fact, we really want people to be able to play the way that they want to play. And so, it’s important to us that those options are there, but that they stay optional. We don’t want to force the solution of a puzzle or a quest upon you, but if you want that help, you can access it in a really convenient way.
I believe it was Mod Ed, who is our Principal Narrative Designer, who, when asked about how he felt about people skipping through quest dialogues, said that we should let people play the game in the ways that they enjoy it. Why should we force them to interact with a quest when what they want lies beyond the quest? Who are we to tell them how to enjoy the game?
With regard to the community, six thousand of whom are here at RuneFest, it is clear that it serves a massive role in shaping the present and future of Old School RuneScape, especially through the community polling system. In this sense, to what extent can you anticipate what the community wants? Is there a game mode or a mechanic that you were surprised by the reception of?
Elena Nordmarkt: Usually, our process is to talk to players in what we call “community consultations”. So, we’ll release a blog that kind of outlines that we want to take things in a certain direction. And then, we’ll have our lovely community managers read Reddit and social media and pick up on what players are saying about where we want to go next. They’ll then recommend some changes to the development team and also highlight what’s really good as well, which is really important to know because otherwise we might risk changing something that was already popular.
In this way, we can validate that something is going to work before we actually commit to doing that work. Which is really good, because it can really save a lot of time sometimes. And, yes, there is a lot of time sunk into doing the consultation, but, at the same time, we would rather fail early, so to speak, and not develop something that the community doesn’t want.
To give you a semi-recent example, we did a poll on something called Wrathmaw, which was meant to essentially be a world boss in the Wilderness. But the players didn’t really like that. And this has kind of reignited the conversation around what we should do with player-vs-player content in general. The Wilderness is a very contentious area where some players feel kind of forced to engage with, but they don’t like going there because they’re at risk of getting killed by other players.
And some people, who are the player killers, enjoy that content, right? So, that’s a big topic that we’re thinking about these days: how can we improve that experience? And this is something that we’re going to engage the community on, as well.
Another recent one was Bronzeman, which actually came together in one of our internal game jams. I personally worked on Bronzeman with the Principal Gameplay Engineer, Mod Nin, and we had this working prototype, and we thought it was really cool. The concept behind Bronzeman was that you couldn’t trade an item until you’ve unlocked it yourself, which was meant to apply to any item in the game.
We thought this would be a really fun and cool mode. When we got to polling it to the players, there were still quite a few unresolved questions that we hadn’t really given the proper attention to before we went to the polls. As a result, players didn’t really feel confident in the content. Which is fine! That’s why we poll it: we would rather know it at that point rather than release it and then have them say they don’t want it.
So, to me, that’s proof that the polling system works, but it doesn’t mean that Bronzeman will never come into the game. It just means that we need to rethink how we approach that. What can we change in the design? How can we communicate better?
In light of the recent announcement of a fourth RuneScape game project, has an “Old School RuneScape 2” project ever been in the discussion? Or is the plan for it to remain largely the same consecrated experience?
Elena Nordmarkt: We have no current plans to do a sort of “Older School RuneScape”. But I have definitely seen some sentiment around that from players multiple times through the years because Old School RuneScape is this off-branch from 2007, right? But then, what we found quite early was that, yes, people want that nostalgia, that old feeling, but that doesn’t make them stick around. So, you need new content to keep it fresh and interesting, but you want to develop it in the style of 2007.
And that is the key thing that we take forward, and that’s why we keep updating the game, and that’s why we have a stacked roadmap through 2027. So, yeah, no current plans to do any alternate versions of Old School RuneScape, but we do hear the desire from some. At the same time, we don’t want to split players into different camps, so to speak, by making another branch of that game again wherein things might develop differently.
With regards to the different RuneScape branches, are you planning to make the RuneScape Classic build that people are enjoying here at RuneFest available for people to play at home?
Elena Nordmarkt: As far as I’m aware, there are no current plans for that, but we definitely try to make the RuneFest experience unique. Last year, for example, we announced Sailing and we gave players more information. And then, without having told anyone before, we announced that a Sailing demo was available for players to try out. So, it’s quite important for us that the RuneFest experience isn’t just about meeting up with your clan mates and the content creators and the mods, but also about trying all these things. It’s a unique experience each time.
Seeing how RuneScape: Dragonwilds came out on both PC and console, are there discussions for Old School RuneScape to come to something like the Switch or the PS5 in addition to PC and mobile?
Elena Nordmarkt: I’d be lying if I said we hadn’t thought about it. But there are no current plans to port them as far as I’m aware. There are so many challenges in terms of moving them over, right? Because RuneScape is point-and-click, how do you transfer that to a controller, right? So, there would be a lot of things to figure out from purely a user experience perspective and how to respectfully, I suppose, reflect the game in that manner. And, currently, we don’t have a great solution to that. But also, there’s a lot of technical stuff that clashes.
Is there anything else you’d like to add?
Elena Nordmarkt: I keep thinking about the roadmap because that’s the big news that we’re talking about. But I think the other thing is that we are really focusing on getting Q&As back. Like I said before, communication with the community is so key, and that’s something that we’ve really been missing the last few years. So we want to bring that back.
