JAGEX takes Runscape: Dragonwilds in early arrival to steam

Jagex It announced that the game survival in the open world Runescape: dragonwilds It is now available early on steam.

John Bilami, who held the position of CEO Runescape jagex On March 4, he said in an interview with Gamesbeat that the game is a great bet on a new type of play for Runescape fans.

The title is set on the forgotten Ashenfall in the Runescape world. In the game, the players meet, embrace, and practice strong magic in the Unreal Engine 5.

Cambridge, UK -based JAGEX, is deeply diving today and talks about new adventure with fans. Only by mastering staying and detecting old secrets, you can hope to slaughter the queen of the dragon – or with allies.

It is a great bet for Runescape, an online game world that has made $ 3 billion so far and has 300 million registered users over the decades. Bilami said the game still has 1.3 million active subscribers. In December 2024, the 24 -year -old game had the highest membership level ever. Pelami sees it as a game to make memories and move nostalgia.

Today, the MMORPG multi -playing game (MMORPG) includes Runscape and Old School Runescape, on a personal and mobile computer, presenting very advanced worlds and focusing on society.

The New Runescape: Dragonwilds Adventure mixes magic and high imagination with light RPG elements and the famous Runescape process. Players can take a single or one team with up to three friends via Ashenfall, which has not been explored before. Bilami said that the company built the game on societal reactions, with multiple alpha tests to assess the fans’ reaction to the design.

Bellamy himself played more than 100 hours of the game, which has cooperative and restarting modes.

“It will be very familiar to the players,” said Bilami. “It is new to something familiar.”

A long fan and an Arab tour of the company

Paul and Andrew Jawji began construction in a kitchen in Nottinghamshere in 1998. They launched it in 2001 and it was a success. In 2013, Jagex launched the old Runescape school to return to the 2007 version of the game. He did so because the players fell on a petition saying they wanted to return to the old game.

JAGEX has bounced a bit recently. In 2016, Jagex was purchased by HongTou, a Chinese investment company, which was later obtained by Zhongji Holdings, whose name later changed to Fukong Interactive Entertainment. JAGEX was sold for $ 530 million to Macarthur Fortune Holding in April 2020.

In the midst of the epidemic in 2021, the company was obtained by Carlail in 2021. In 2022, Jagex expanded with gaming games, which made SCUM, a nickname for a multi -millions survival of the world.

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After that, CVC Capital Partners and Haveli Investments acquired Jagex in February 2024.

“This is the function of dreams for me,” said Bilami. “I have been playing Ronalscape for 20 years. I worked shortly in Jagex for three or four years ago about a decade, then I asked CVC, (the current owners alongside Haveli), to help evaluate Jagex as a business.”

Bellamy got a lot of training because he was the Runescape player for more than two decades. He has served on the Jagex Board since 2024, and has played executive roles in Jagex from 2015 to 2018. Exec was also at Huuge Companyo Casino Social from 2019 to 2023.

Manzel, who has worked as an eight out of 14 years old at Jagex, will advise Bilami for a while and said in a statement that Bilami is interested in the company’s games and his business. Bilami looks himself as a host of the game’s privilege and this means a lot for millions.

Pelami did this and acquired CVC and Haveli Jagex later. He served on the blackboard and was removed from this role when Manzel decided to step down. The owners evaluated and then appointed Billy as an executive head in March. The operation of the company is not nearly a fan or developer.

“I must remember myself every day that I am not a games designer,” said Bilami.

He is happy to head the first match of Runescape more than 10 years ago, and more than three years have been worked with a team ranging from 30 to 50 people.

Investment in Ronalscape: Dragonwilds

The game may be the largest new investment for products in Jagex so far, however it is a small part of 500 employees, which is strongly assigned to maintain Runescape and Runescape for the old school. When a games company succeeds in such titles, it is not easy to launch a completely new game.

“For many years, we were told as a company, even during the last time I worked here 10 years ago, with what Runscape will look like as an equal measurement game that is played on the shoulder, with unrealistic drawings – how will the world look like?”

Bilami Jesse America, the executive product, has strengthened to take a great swing and reach an approach from modern drawings in a beloved world that has been positively received by fans so far.

“They have mainly asked for a game like this two decades ago now, and when we announced that Dragonwilds is now available to the Wish list just two weeks ago, people said it finally happened,” Bilami said.

In the past two weeks, Dragonwilds has been included more than 350,000 times.

In response to a question about the reason why people did not continue in the game, Belly said: “I have been asked so much. It is really unique. It is not MMORPG the way many others are. For example, the research in Runescape is radically different, for example, seeking World of Warcraft, where you may be asked to go to a certain number of resources and return them to the person.”

He added: “The pursuit of Runescape can be several hours of telling high stories with the tongue in the British humor.

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In fact, the age of the normal player is now more than five years, and you can spend many years of fun in the universe without relying on expansion package versions.

While JAGEX returned from the owner to the owner, Pelami said that the employees were stable and were for several years. Most of the team is gaming developers, and many of them have thousands of hours of playing in Ronalscape.

He said: “We see many people who have older playing the game and realizing its charm.” “They dreamed of working on runscape as a child or when he was a teenager grows up. Maybe they went and spent a few years in Deloitte or anything else to be adults, then they realize, in fact they still want to come and work on Runescape.”

In the past, the strategy was to expand the company beyond its roots. But Bilami’s goal is to obsession with the basic game and improve the player’s experience. He is interested in active players as well as those who notice from the side lines, but they still consider themselves part of society.

Industry problems

As for the layoff of the industry, this was an incredibly difficult year for the industry. There are still a very large number of professionals who go out of work or are looking for roles. And every time I open LinkedIn, I can see it directly. It is not lost.

He added: “I think we have excessively rented them collectively with irresponsible practices during the long years in particular, so we saw a reaction to that. All of this is vibrating from the system as we went back to normal. We are at the meeting point now where the cost of development was not above ever.”

Add to this economic stability, and this makes it difficult to invest in any new project.

He said: “It was not absolutely difficult to build and release new wide games and ambitious for those who are still trying to do so. We are putting our best forward, but we also realize that it is much more difficult than it was a few years ago.”

He said: “Although it is easy to understand what happened and why it happened, we can say frankly in good faith that we are doing our best to push the industry forward and make the games that we believe that the industry deserves and the players want them.”

Looking at the rest of the game industry, which suffers from the demobilization of workers and the non -successful live service games, Bellamy believes that it has non -sustainable practices, which is incomplete, and has aggressive models and does not represent fair value anymore.

“I think the general playing experience in a live service game is worse than it was 10 years ago,” he said. “I think Runscape and Old School Runescape are an oasis in the desert. You pay subscription fees and you can access the entire game as long as you want.”

He said: “I am sure that you see who is happy and is not happy in the ecosystem of games with the latest later releases. In my view, it seems that people are not widely happy. So if we can start some of this change and carry the flame, this is a legacy that we leave.”

Although some may view players today as their right, Bellamy does not see this in this way. I have just attended RUNEFESTWhich attracted thousands of players to the United Kingdom, achieved a clear score of 89 %.

He said: “We cannot only say that the players are very entitled. This is the quarter of the planet.”

Therefore, he does not want to expand beyond Ronskib.

“I do not see him in this way,” said Bilami. “I actually think that you are Runscape is the best thing we can be. I think it is for games like us that has achieved billions of dollars of revenue from hundreds of millions of players, there is no shame in success.”