Jagex’s RuneScape is currently undergoing a massive boost in popularity despite some controversy due to its scrapped annual Pride event. With WoW players migrating over OSRS and streamers heavily pushing the MMO, RuneScape managed to cross its all-time player peak with a high of 286.813 concurrent players.

John Bellamy, the new CEO of RuneScape developer Jagex, discussed the MMORPG’s recent player growth in an interview with The Game Business, explaining his plan to continue growing the ever-popular MMO to rival Blizzard’s World of Warcraft. 

In the interview, Bellamy explained that changes to monetisation are paramount to the continued success of RuneScape. If the game is to survive “another 25 years”, Jagex has to look at what needs to change to stop frustrating the game’s player base.

“We saw in [our] surveys, that if we could wind back some of the microtransaction approach that we’re doing, or augment it to make it more sustainable and healthier, then there were many people who were saying ‘look, I’d be interested in coming back to RuneScape 3. It’s a game I view very fondly and I have a lot of nostalgia for, but that really pushed me away’,” he said. 

All of this is in the bid to make RuneScape the “second-biggest MMO franchise ” in the western market. “I would like Old School RuneScape, RuneScape 3, and Dragonwilds as a collective RuneScape franchise to be, if not the biggest, then clearly the second biggest MMO franchise in the Western world,” the CEO explained.

Bellamy explained that RuneScape as a whole isn’t actually that far away from the company’s goal due to the recent expansion of its player base with the CEO stating: “we’re already very close to that”

Despite some recent backlash, RuneScape is in a fantastic place across both OSRS and RS3 with the spin-off survival game Dragonwilds also seeing major success on PC. With the main MMO games now also available on mobile, more players are able to join than ever before.