Initially, I misread the headline as referring to RuneQuest, the Betamax of tabletop fantasy role playing. Better than D&D, but which didn't win the popularity contest.
It is one of three games I would love to see made into software, with the other two being Traveller and Paranoia (the computer is your friend, trust the computer)
For anyone unaware this is stated to essentially be the MMO continuation of Runescape Dragonwilds which was a survival and crafting game that recently released into 1.0 after its commercial success.
Everything Jagex touches turns to shit. They are not good at creating. At best they are a steward for already created IP and the community provides that taste that makes it good.
Maybe Jagex from ~15 years ago, but today they are hitting out of the park with OSRS updates. You can't tell me with a serious face that Varlamore or Sailing are bad or were not created by Jagex, sure they had to pass in the polls but only a few things have failed that.
Jagex blunders hard and gets very lucky each time. The entire Oldschool RuneScape idea came from a private server whose owner was sued out of existance by Jagex, only for the community to revolt, and when official servers launched, they only survived because Jagex upper management forgot about their existance until the community did enough marketing for it.
Is graphical fidelity what people are looking for in a RuneScape game? Unreal seems like an interesting choice. OSRS has something like 5x the player base and the gap only seems to be growing, so it looks odd to me to putting so much investment into a continuation of RS3.
They've already confirmed that this is a new game, not a continuation of RS3. New world, different gameplay (WASD movement instead of clicking), different everything.
This is also not their first Unreal game, as they just released the 1.0 version of RuneScape Dragonwilds, their survival-crafting multiplayer game that has been both a critical and commercial success. It appears that RS4 is to some extent an expansion of Dragonwilds into a proper MMO.
Besides, if they're going to create a brand new big-budget MMO, what else other than Unreal could they realistically use? Graphics aren't the primary reason to replace the RS engine with Unreal - the reason is gameplay.
Their internal engine that they use for RS3 (and OSRS) is only suitable for games like current RS. Even RS3 is still fundamentally based on a 1 square meter grid, gameplay-wise 3D is an illusion (no jumping, climbing or flying), and most importantly game logic updates only once every 600ms, which is about one tenth of even World of Warcraft. They've made two pretty good games despite those limitations throughout the decades, but it can't scale to anything that feels more "modern".
> gameplay-wise 3D is an illusion (no jumping, climbing or flying)
3D is an illusion in this sense in every game, with the potential exception of space combat simulators. And they can only make it work by pretending inertia doesn't exist.
You can fly in World of Warcraft, but all of the content is on the ground, and the designers keep griping about how they don't want you to fly because it makes them feel bad when you skip their content.
You can jump in Quake. You can't jump in Doom. This makes no difference. Level layout is the same. Jumping gives you the ability to cross very small walls and/or gaps, which Doom handles by simply not placing things to jump over in its levels. Elevation is real in both games; you can always walk up a ramp. There are three dimensions whether you can jump or not.
Doom is actually a 2.5D game and it cannot have free look or rooms over rooms. Quake can have both, since it’s genuinely a 3D engine.
The IP seems stickier than the graphics. People didn't revolt on Rs3 graphics because it was different, they revolted because they were bad. They've since improved and people seem to like it
I would have preferred to see MechScape / Stellar Dawn.
i heard a rumor that perhaps someone on here can confirm or deny. did jagex actually turn down the opportunity to publish minecraft.
is that true?
>did jagex actually turn down the opportunity to publish minecraft.
I'm not familiar with the market economics around indie games. Is there any value that Jagex would've added by being the publisher, rather than solo publishing as an indie dev?
I figured they'd continue with Dragonwild. Didn't expect them to make a new MMO.
What's with this resurgence in MMO's? WoW Forever, Runeterra, and now this?
IDK if those equate to an MMO resurgence. WoW Forever is just milking an old cow, and Runeterra is vaporware, as is RS4. MMO talk is cheap. Shipping something original and not half-baked trash is rare.
I do think Riot is in a good position to develop an MMO though, and maybe GW3 will deliver something as well, but the genre is on life support IMHO.
I think the success of expanded offshoots (OSRS, TurtleWow, Ascension, etc.) showed there is plenty of demand for games that add new features to older, slower, and more sociable games. many features in wow forever are lifted directly from some of these offshoots. blizzard leaning into things like sd models, no flying mounts shows this is beyond just nostalgia bait (something wow classic has been poked for) and indicates that these older iterations that had less streamlined experiences can still have a lot of juice if brought in new directions.
SaaS is dead and other AI doomerism, might as well play games. Nobody knows so might as well guess.
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