Hello 'Scapers! I'm Mod Breezy, Game Designer for RuneScape, here today with Mod Ryan, Design Director for RuneScape. This is the first of several design blogs where we'll be giving you a lay of the land and share our goals for the Road to Restoration as we build toward a new future for RuneScape.

My RuneScape journey started way back in 2006, when my friends invited me over to their house after school to play this cool new game they'd been talking about. I've played consistently since then, with some time away here and there to focus on studies and such.

I've maxed, gotten 120 all, Comped, and got a few boss logs under my belt. I joined the RuneScape team as QA almost 8 years ago, and moved into my role as game designer almost 4 years ago.

In my time here, I've had a hand in updates such as the Mining & Smithing Rework, 120 Farming & Herblore, War's Retreat, a 2 year stint on the Ninja Team, Zamorak, Catalyst League, and recently the Road to Restoration roadmap updates, just to name a few.

TL;DR: The new Lead CM introduces themselves and wants to hear from you about what we can do to help make the RuneScape community better.

As you read through this, please ask yourself: “what do I want the RuneScape Community to be like?”

Hi everyone, I'm the new Lead Community Manager: Mod Anvil. I joined Jagex in December and have spent my first few weeks observing, listening and generally supporting the teams. I briefly popped up a couple weeks ago, but it's high time I got properly stuck in, so here I am. Hello! :wave:

As RuneScape continues its march into our bold new era, we want you to be part of our journey, every step of the way. That means giving you greater visibility on what's coming down the road, so that you know exactly what to expect, and when.

On the first Monday of each calendar month, we plan to share a "Month Ahead" view with you which dives a little deeper than our 2026 roadmap. We'll be giving you details of what's happening week-by-week and much further ahead than previously. For now, we want to keep things simple, but we do want to hear your thoughts on how these Month Aheads are structured!

Understanding what information is important and how you want to receive it, will help us ensure that you stay informed at all times.

Good afternoon folks!

Today, we’re launching another beta build to showcase upcoming Combat Modernisation changes and gather your feedback, helping us continue to refine and polish the update.

This beta branch will be available from today until Monday, February 16th, and we plan to follow it up with a blog later that week, sharing player feedback, key insights and what we’ve learned as part of a dedicated “What We Learned” post.

So grab your weapons, set up the dummies and get a feel for these new ways to approach combat in RuneScape!

UK-based developer Jagex has said players will never encounter content created using AI within its games.

Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, the company's SVP of product, James Dobrowski, said that it has a "pretty hard line stance" on the matter, saying that it does not want to be using the tech to "drive creativity".

The executive did say that Jagex is open to using AI, but in areas that players will not see, such as tasks like "tooling efficiency".

"We've got a pretty hard line stance with the team, which is a commitment that no generative AI will ever be present in any asset that a player can touch, hear or feel. There will be no generative AI in the game that they experience," Dobrowski said.

"Where we are open to the use of AI is in things like tooling efficiency; how do we make the way we work more efficient in order to make our staff's lives easier and allow us to produce better content. But we do not want to be using AI to drive creativity."

Old School's fourth (and toughest) raid is coming later this year...

The RuneScape franchise turns 25 this year. Old School RuneScape (OSRS), which launched in 2013 using the 2007-era source code from RuneScape, is at the height of its popularity right now, peaking at 240k concurrent players in 2025. Last year, OSRS got its first-ever new skill in the form of sailing, which brought waves of players (sorry not sorry for the pun) back to the game. Somehow, the team at Jagex implemented water-based movement into a game with a 25-year old foundation, where characters walk using a grid-based system. And it has been a roaring success with players.

Later this year, sailing will expand even further, with multiple quests, a Barracuda Trial, and activities around the Red Reef. At a recent press event to mark the big anniversary, I spoke to OSRS design director Kieren Charles about the ins and outs of sailing and how new skills and mechanics are introduced. For Charles, adding a new mechanic to a 25-year-old game was a formidable challenge, but also an enticing opportunity

You can't kill that which has no life, but you can apparently steal that which has no value. A UK judge recently ruled that stealing gold pieces in Old School RuneScape counts for the purposes of at least one judgment that was made on Jan. 14, as spotted by Gamesradar.

The case involves an ex-employee of RuneScape dev Jagex who's been accused of hacking 68 player accounts, seizing hundreds of billions of gold pieces which he then sold outside the game for Bitcoin. Jagex argued the gold was worth over $700,000.

One of the UK's home-grown video games is turning 25-years-old, and anybody who ever had to sit through a boring IT lesson at school likely already knows what it is. It's RuneScape, the point-and-click MMORPG that not only has remained popular over the years, but has seen a surprising amount of growth recently. The big question is: why?

It's no secret that MMORPGs are tricky to make and trickier still to keep live and bustling with eager players, and only a select few have managed to do so through the rise and current stagnation of live service game development. Still, RuneScape has managed to weather the storm, alongside a select few other legacy MMOs.

To learn what allowed Old School RuneScape in particular to remain as big a part of the MMO ecosystem as it has, Eurogamer sat down to speak to design director Kieren Charles and senior game designer Elena Nordmark to learn more.

Integrity. Inteh-gritty. In-teh-grih-teh. That's the word of the day when it comes to 2026 RuneScape, or at least it will be if the plans Jagex have just laid out work as intended. To be fair, pushing the big button that finally gets rid of those Treasure Hunter microtransactions folks vocally disliked is a good start.

That's exactly what the RuneScape makers have done to kick off the opening section of the 2026 roadmap they talk through in the video above and this post. The gist of what they've dubbed the game's "Road to Restoration" is that they're hoping to make sure that RuneScape's put firmly back on track and set up for a bright future as it rings its 25th anniversary.

RuneScape is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, with huge updates and announcements coming to all of its products. First up is the main RuneScape game, also known as RS3, which now has a full roadmap for 2026, including the introduction of the "largest area expansion in the game's quarter century." The RuneScape Ahead video, embedded below, details the entire roadmap, all of which comes following the removal of the Treasure Hunter mechanic, as voted upon by nearly 125,000 players.

Called Havenhythe, the first part is coming in Spring, bringing with it two new story quests, two new early-game bosses, and two miniquests, alongside the hunter skill rising to a level cap of 110. Part two, which arrives next winter, doesn't have quite as many details yet, but there will be a new end-game boss: the Ghrazi Blood Knights. Throughout the year, more Havenhythe content is coming too, including a story quest in the update following the region's introduction, and a dig site after that.

Twenty-five years ago, the first adventurers set foot in Gielinor. This year marks the start of new adventures, new content, and new experiences for us to share together across RuneScape, Old School RuneScape and RuneScape: Dragonwilds.

With that, we have a packed calendar of events, announcements, and nostalgia lined up to mark RuneScape’s 25th anniversary.

We’re kicking things off today with a special cross-game celebration video. It offers a first look at the year ahead, shaped by deeper investment across all three games, a renewed focus on player driven developments, and some of the most ambitious content and live experiences we’ve built in a long time, all giving you plenty of ways to enjoy your time in Gielinor... and there might even be a few surprises along the way!

For more information on 'what's in store for our anniversary year, such as exclusive merch that will be available, check out the dedicated page here.

On top of that, each game will also be hosting its own 2026 preview. Here is when and where to catch them

One week left to spend your TH keys and Oddments!

A lot of people around my age might read those words and be instantly thrown back to the days of dial-up internet, MSN Messenger and Napster.

But before you instinctively type the letters "a/s/l" on your keyboard, get this - for a lot of people, this is hardly the stuff of distant memories.

In 2025 RuneScape - the online game where players can go on quests with their friends which first launched way back in 2001 - saw an influx of players.

Its number of paid members grew to "well over a million" according to the company, an increase of 30% compared to the start of the year.

Many millions more play for free, and the firm saw a historic milestone in 2025 - with a whopping 240,000 logging in at the same time, the most simultaneous players in the game's 25-year history.

To put that into context, at the time of writing, only three games available on the online store Steam have more current players.

Nearly three years ago, Old School RuneScape player, Twitch streamer, and YouTube content creator Pen Sir decided to collect unopened reward caskets acquired by completing scavenger hunt-like minigames called clue scrolls. With over 10,000 clue caskets amassed, like a dragon savoring his pile of gold, he's finally decided to crack them open, distilling years of work down to one delicious shot of dopamine.

The announcement that Pen Sir is "finally going to be opening this up tomorrow [January 3]" immediately made waves in the OSRS Reddit community. This is a big deal; the screenshot, showing unthinkable piles of caskets, is a head-turner. The equivalent would be watching a man arrange lines of dominoes for years and threaten to finally knock the first one over.

The OSRS team values YOUR input!

We're running an opinion poll on Sailing, since we want to ensure that we're making updates on the features that matter to you the most. Let us know your thoughts. We'll use this data to update our roadmap plans, and allocate our time in 2026 to the things that the community cares about most. As always, thank you so much for working with us and helping us to make Sailing even better. The feedback we've received from you helps us massively.

Back in March 2024, we introduced a wide range of systemic updates to the core Combat skills to improve their flow, such as:

• Combat made more fluid - improvements for the original three combat styles to modernise them closer to Necromancy.
• Clearer tooltips, labels and descriptions to help you understand combat and make decisions in the moment.
• Overhaul of accuracy, so it impacts damage rather than chance to hit, removing splashing from RuneScape. Never miss an Ultimate again!
• Improvements to Critical Strike and the damage ranges of abilities so that you are more consistently in control and less at the mercy of RNG.

Prior to releasing those changes, we hosted beta worlds to showcase the changes to players, gather feedback and insight so we could polish and tweak the update.

As a special Christmas surprise, we will be launching another beta, aimed at shaping further modernisations for Combat in 2026. Instructions on how to join are at the bottom of the blog!