RuneScape: Dragonwilds was a game that wasn’t even close to being on my radar a few months ago. Ahead of gamescom 2026, the team behind the game reached out about appointments, and I intended to decline, since I didn’t have any experience with the franchise. Instead, they tossed me a game code and convinced me to jump in blind, promising that I didn’t need a long history with the franchise to find something to enjoy. They were right.
I did indeed need to pull in my trusty EIC, Brendan Frye, to help me, since I was getting my butt kicked constantly, but I found that RuneScape: Dragonwilds had a lot to offer for gamers coming from all kinds of genres, like MMOs, RPGs, survival titles and more. Now, after just over a year in Early Access, we are heading into RuneScape: Dragonwilds 1.0, bringing with it a pile of updates and a brand new raid to take on Kuldra, the Dragon Queen.
At gamescom 2026, I was able to sit down with RuneScape: Dragonwilds Executive Producer, Jesse America—what a badass name, amiright—and Senior Community Manager, Jake Blunt—also a really cool name; what is with Jagex—also known as Mod Doom. They took me through what Early Access has looked like up until this point, what they have learned during that time, and even shared more about what is to come. And yes, I have seen the Dragon Queen.
I was kind of convinced to play RuneScape: Dragonwilds, as it is different from the original RuneScape. For those who don’t know, what is the difference between Dragonwilds and normal RuneScape?
Jesse America: You probably don’t know the saying, but it’s a sort of informal statement that RuneScape is a grind. It just means that the RuneScape MMO has 25 years of content, a little bit less than that. But they are big, big games, big open worlds with many years of content, and it can be a bit daunting for new players to be thrown into that and to consume all of it.
This is more a newcomer-friendly entryway into the game, essentially into the world. We don’t hit you over the head with a lot of statements about RuneScape, the world, which you need to know in order to enjoy the game. The game just starts. You start in the temple area, then you walk out, and you see a big dragon flying overhead. There are buildings in the distance, big towers, big fortresses that indicate these are places you probably want to visit at some point. And it doesn’t ask you anything else.
It will tell you along the way what the story is of this place. And then to most casual players, it will be revealed like, “Hey, there’s apparently an entire universe out there.” The difference is that the pace of this is more gentle than the RuneScape MMOs. There’s less that it asks of you to understand about MMOs. Anybody can dive into it. It’s just a bit more accessible.
Do you think that there is still something in it for those RuneScape MMO players? Are they going to think this is kind of a dumbed-down version of the franchise?
Jesse America: I wouldn’t say so; that hasn’t been the response, because we’ve got a pretty active, pretty large segment of players who are active MMO players, and they don’t see this as a dumbed-down version of RuneScape.
They see it as a different version of RuneScape that they really enjoy, and that they get to bring friends and family, spouses, children into, which normally doesn’t always happen with the MMOs because it puts some demands on your time.
Why the choice to make something different under the RuneScape banner? Why not just focus on what you already have?
Jesse America: It’s a really good question. Essentially, the RuneScape franchise over its lifetime has had more than 300 million active players at one point. There are entire population sizes of countries that fit into that number. But many of those players—right now, active players are a couple of million if you combine the subscribers with the free-to-play players.
So there are hundreds of millions of players who no longer play the game. Usually that is because they don’t have the time anymore. They can’t do the commitments anymore. But there’s very strong nostalgia tied to RuneScape. The music, the setting, the feeling it gives for many returning players—players who once played the MMOs—they come back.
They play Dragonwilds, and they say, “This invokes a sense of my childhood, which I find pleasant, and I enjoy it.” And I think that’s the answer. There are so many hundreds of millions of players who would not return for the MMOs, but they will return for something like this.
Something more digestible. For the people already playing RuneScape: Dragonwilds in Early Access, what can they expect from this new section that’s coming?
Jesse America: So essentially, we will cap the story. This game’s got a story, and it is basically about this land, dragons. They are ruled over by a dragon queen. At the end of this year’s saga, the players—the adventurers—take on Kuldra, the Dragon Queen and kill her, essentially ending her reign. And that final section is the part that is coming out with version one, together with lots of updates to the core, lots of improvements to combat, new weapons, new items to chase, new quests, and a big raid, which is a big new area in the game.
It’s basically a sort of gauntlet you have to get through. Super dangerous. It will test all the skills you have gathered in playing the game so far, and then you get pitted against the ultimate badass at the end of the game. And that is where we complete that part of the story, setting things up for what comes next at the end of this year and next year.
Raids are not unfamiliar to MMOs, but this is a little bit different than if I were to jump into regular RuneScape, but also something like World of Warcraft, where your raids can be 25 people at a time.
Jesse America: Correct.
How do raids work in RuneScape: Dragonwilds?
Jesse America: So Dragonwilds is session-based. You open up a session, and your friends join you, or strangers join you; it’s four players. If you use dedicated servers, which is renting your own server, then it’s up to six players, and that’s the cap. We have balanced it so that you can play it solo. We have balanced it so that you can play it with up to six friends.
I like to call these games that ruin my life in the best possible way. That’s very much my jam. But why the choice to hit RuneScape: Dragonwilds 1.0 on a raid? And I don’t mean this disrespectfully, but something that looks so small compared to what you have launched in Early Access already. Why not launch 1.0 when you launched the last massive area?
Jesse America: That’s a really valid question. I see it as early access is intended to build your game together with the community, get feedback. And that is what we did. We could theoretically have kept that tiny area throughout early access, iterated on player feedback, and then released all the rest of the content. But we kept pace with what the players wanted.
They want more content. So we released it piecemeal. But essentially for new players—which is a lot of people who’ve been waiting for version one—they will get to experience all of this beginning to end as a big package. So I think there’s value in that as well.
Now, this new raid— is it something that people will have to do to progress? Or if raids aren’t really their thing, is that something they can skip over and just enjoy the rest of RuneScape: Dragonwilds even going beyond 1.0?
Jesse America: So the content that comes hereafter does not require you to have finished the raid. But because the raid is replayable and gives good loot, you will want to.
You mentioned that it is soloable. I’ve heard that word a lot this week at gamescom, immediately followed by, “Yeah, but it’s really hard.” So is it solo for everyone, or how much does it scale?
Jesse America: Different types of players find certain types of content really difficult. You can never tell. There are players who will say, “Velgar was a pushover”—that’s the first dragon boss. And there are other players who say, “I just can’t get it done.”
I’m getting my butt kicked by little dudes, so I get that.
Jesse America: I would always say, try to find other players you can play with. Even if it’s just temporary, and you ask online or in the Discord servers, “Hey, can anybody help me with this boss?” Usually, you will find good players who will jump onto your world and help you.
And how does the RuneScape community do with that? I find early access tends to bring people together really early, and they create this tight-knit group. Do you find that you’ve built a community around RuneScape: Dragonwilds specifically?
Jesse America: I think Jake can speak a little bit to that.
Jake Blunt: The community that we built initially came out of testing the game with our most invested, most engaged franchise fans. When we first put the call out and said we’re doing alpha tests for a new thing from Jagex, the first people you hear are the RuneScape fans. So they were the first voices that came in.
And the game has grown and developed and reached new audiences. We’ve had more voices come in. We’ve got an amazing community—a super creative, generous, passionate community that is very willing to have positive, constructive, critical, negative conversations with us. They run the full spectrum, and they’re amazing and have been with us the whole way.
We’ve seen it go from strength to strength. The community grows with every update, with every headline that comes out, every change we make. You see new players. We’ve made a ton of announcements about consoles, and that’s brought in more players. People are interested and following along. It’s been super positive, super constructive. And there are always players volunteering their time to help. If a player has lost everything—lost all their gear and ended up in misadventure—players say, “Hey, I’ve got loads of spare stuff in these boxes. You can get whatever you need. Help yourself.”
So there is a hugely supportive community, but that isn’t the only thing we’ve got. We’ve introduced custom world settings so that if you find that you’re like, “I’ve put 15 hours into this and I’m getting my butt whooped. I’m not enjoying this. I wish I could turn some settings down,” there are over 50 different variables we’ve given players as levers to pull. If you want the game to be harder, you can add some friction. But if you’re finding that you hate having to go get water and constantly maintain your hydration levels, you can turn that down drastically.
So there’s a ton of ways for players to ease things. If you aren’t in the mood for being social and want to do the whole thing by yourself, you can give yourself a custom world where you can play the game how you like, make it your own, and enjoy an experience where you can access all the content—even the raid—but it’s on your terms, rather than throwing yourself at a brick wall.
So what should players know about this RuneScape: Dragonwilds Dragon Queen?
Jesse America: You will see her in the trailer. She’s big. She’s the most dangerous dragon we’ve built so far, and it is going to take all of your skills to bring her down.
Okay, that’s not terrifying at all. Is there anything people should really know before they go in? Any tips you can give? Anything they should make sure they’ve prepared?
Jesse America: I would say that people who play Dragonwilds usually understand prep, because that’s part of the game loop. Before you go into a new area, make sure you’ve got potions, you’ve got food, you’ve got good gear, you’ve got a base nearby, you’ve got a lodestone somewhere so you can teleport back and forth. All of those things are a good starting point. Make sure you get good materials from Umbral Sands, so you’re geared up.
The reason I asked that is that when I was trying to find a trailer for RuneScape: Dragonwilds 1.0 before gamescom, everything online was people telling others how to prepare. Is there an official statement anywhere—did you guys put out a “Hey, make sure you definitely have completed this or done this”?
Jesse America: We’ve actually worked together with our community of creators, and the stuff that’s out there is, in a way, the best source of information you can find on what to do next. Especially people like Primitive Nomad—they are a true source of really good information. They do it so well that we don’t actually have to.
So what have you learned during the RuneScape: Dragonwilds early access period? It’s clearly not been a quick and snappy one. You’ve done quite a bit. So what did you learn from the community? What have you adapted?
Jesse America: Players quite quickly indicate to us what the things are that they would like to see less of, what they thought was good. So you make choices based on what they’re saying—whether it is “We want to change our graphical settings more than what you provide,” “We want better menus,” “We want a lot of quality-of-life features.”
What we learned is that there is always somebody who is going to be disappointed by the choices you make, because there is no unified audience. People have different ideas about what they want.
Sometimes you bring out an update, and it’s all about quality-of-life, and it doesn’t contain any content, because we release content monthly. And people will be disappointed. Other times you bring out massive pieces of content and no quality-of-life features, only bugs, and they will say, “This is great content, but it sucks that you guys released so many bugs.”
What we found is that certain updates walk a middle ground—where we release a skill, which is content but not like a new region or quest, one new quest, a couple of quality-of-life features. And then all of a sudden we see enjoyment among players jump up because they get stuff to play and some good updates to the game. And that’s lovely to see. You wish you could do that forever, but you also need to push out update after update to get the game ready.
I know you touched on it a little bit before, but is there anything you can tell us about what comes beyond RuneScape: Dragonwilds 1.0?
Jesse America: At the end of this year, in December, we will have another update called Luminance. What is in that update—we will talk about more closely at RuneFest, which is our big fan fest. We will reveal more there. But there’s another update coming at the end of the year with lots of goodies in there. And then we’ve got plans for 2027 as well, and we’re going to be revealing those.
Essentially, we’ve got a multi-year plan to get us to a specific story beat. We are ending Kuldra’s saga. The continent is liberated from the tyranny of the dragons, but there’s lots of magic left behind, lots of mysteries. There’s an entire story behind that. And each year we are going to have a story beat that advances all of that to a point where this part of the world—Ashenfall—is going to join the wider RuneScape globe.
At the moment, this part of the map is invisible to the rest of Gielinor, which is the RuneScape world. It does not feature on any of the other maps. There are lore reasons for that. And the big story is about how this new continent—almost like Atlantis emerging from the sea—joins the rest of the world and potentially becomes ready for settlement, becoming a new frontier.
I say this with love as a nerd myself; the RuneScape nerds are going to be so excited! That’s a really cool concept and amazing that you can share that with us.
Jesse America: We’re going to talk more in detail about it at RuneFest. So if you are not able to come, just catch the livestreams.
Jake Blunt: And that’s the second and third of October, so just a few weeks. We’re going to be heads down on supporting the 1.0 release, making sure everything’s super smooth, having the best time with all these new players, all these new platforms they’re going to be on. And then just a few weeks later, laying out everything.
You’re going to have so many new RuneScape players that want to come! That’s going to be so exciting. And then my last question: what is your favourite part of this RuneScape Dragonwilds 1.0? Just personally, what are you really excited about, whether it’s a skill or character or whatever?
Jake Blunt: I’m massively biased. I love just how Kuldra looks. We’ve alluded, we’ve shown silhouettes, we’ve kind of alluded…Kuldra is a multi-headed great dragon is enormous. Magnitude larger than any dragon you’ve seen or faced before. RuneScape has had its fair share of multi-headed dragons. Pop culture has had multi-headed dragons. I love them all. I’m very biased. They look awesome.
You have a type, alright!
Jake Blunt:Yep. And she’s my type.
I love it.
Jesse America: What I think is great is that when we released the game in Early Access, people often commented on how you couldn’t even jump over a tiny fence and how jumping felt bad and how movement felt bad. With the agility update that we recently did, we reworked a lot of the movement systems, made everything a lot more responsive and precise, and the raid is filled with platform sections, platforming sections.
The raid would have been totally unforgiving under the old system. But the fact that we’ve got it now improved, I love the idea of players going through this and being like, “That was so awesome, but with the old version of the game, this would have killed us.” So it will hammer home how much work we have achieved.
I love that for you. Now let me see this Dragon Queen!
I did see the Dragon Queen, and she is indeed fabulous. RuneScape: Dragonwilds releases into 1.0 on September 15, 2026. The game will launch on PC, PlayStation 5, XBOX Series X|S (including XBOX Game Pass), and Nintendo Switch 2.
