Jagex wants classic British point

Jagex CEO Jon Bellamy wants RuneScape to be the biggest MMO in the world within five years. That means toppling World of Warcraft, the genre's undisputed heavyweight champion for the better part of two decades.

Speaking to The Game Business, Bellamy laid out his dream — and a "pragmatic" path to get there. "The dream is we're not the number two biggest MMO brand in the world, we're the number one," he said. "There's a big ol' gap between us and number one. But we know if we get it right, we can make headways."

Why This Matters

RuneScape has been running for over 25 years. For a title that old to even be in the same sentence as WoW is remarkable — and Bellamy's confidence suggests Jagex sees real momentum behind its two core MMOs and a new survival game, RuneScape: Dragonwilds.

The goal is to have at least three large, growing RuneScape games with a combined multi-million player audience. Those three: classic RuneScape, its massively popular retro sibling Old School RuneScape, and the upcoming Dragonwilds, a survival crafting spin-off leaving Early Access later this September.

Bellamy isn't worried about the games eating each other's lunch. "I'm not worried if the strawberry ice-cream outsells the chocolate ice-cream," he said. "We just want to sell ice-cream."

That analogy lands better when you see the engagement numbers. The average play session for Old School RuneScape is just under five hours a day. And the average player is 32 years old.

"Ask me what I'm doing behind the scenes while I'm doing the job: I'm logged into Old School, right now I'm fishing. That's true for many people. There are millions of Deloitte consultants out there somewhere who have Excel open on one screen and Old School open on another. I think you design for that reality and that's what we do."

That kind of idle-friendly, second-monitor gameplay is a huge part of why Old School RuneScape has thrived in an era of live-service burnout. It's a game you're never really "playing" in the traditional sense — you're just there.

What's the Bigger Picture?

Jagex's ambition comes at a time when World of Warcraft is still massive but no longer untouchable. Final Fantasy XIV proved a challenger can carve out a huge audience, and the MMO space has seen a quiet renaissance with new players discovering older titles.

Bellamy's five-year vision depends on Dragonwilds becoming a genuine pillar. Survival crafting is a proven genre — Valheim and Palworld showed how explosive it can be — but translating RuneScape's grind-and-quest loop into a survival sandbox is a bet that could either broaden the brand or split it.

Of course, being number two isn't bad for a game that launched when Bill Clinton was president. Jagex has already outlasted dozens of would-be WoW killers. Whether it actually takes the crown depends on execution — and whether players still want to fish while they work.

RuneScape: Dragonwilds exits Early Access this September. The race for number one begins in earnest then.