Jagex CEO wants RuneScape to overtake World of Warcraft within five years

Jagex CEO Jon Bellamy has gone on record saying he wants RuneScape to become the number one MMO in the world — which means knocking World of Warcraft off the top spot. He made the comments in an interview with Chris Dring at The Game Business.

Bellamy's plan hinges on having at least three large, growing RuneScape games running simultaneously within five years, each pulling in a multi-million player audience. Those three titles are Old School RuneScape, RuneScape, and RuneScape: Dragonwilds — the survival crafting spinoff currently in Early Access and due to launch fully in September. He's not worried about the games cannibalizing each other's audiences either. "I'm not worried if the strawberry ice-cream outsells the chocolate ice-cream," he said. "We just want to sell ice-cream." He also noted that Old School RuneScape players average just under five hours of play per day, with the average player aged around 32 — a remarkably engaged adult audience. Bellamy himself admitted he's logged into Old School while doing interviews, currently fishing.

RuneScape has been running for over 25 years, which makes it one of the longest-lived MMOs in existence. Old School RuneScape — a deliberately retro version of the game restored from a 2007 backup — has quietly built one of the most loyal playerbases in the genre, often outpacing the main game in active users. Jagex has historically struggled to expand beyond its core audience, but Dragonwilds represents a genuine attempt to reach players who wouldn't normally touch a point-and-click MMO.

Whether Jagex can actually close the gap on World of Warcraft is a tall order — Blizzard's game still dominates the MMO space despite years of subscriber fluctuation. But with three active products and a playerbase that clearly isn't going anywhere, Bellamy's ambition isn't entirely without foundation.