// Articles // 28th Mar 2016 — 8 years ago // By Thomas Hughes

Runescape At 15: Interview with Neil McLarty and Phil Mansell

While at the recent Runescape at 15 celebration I got the chance to sit with Phil Mansell and Neil McLarty from Jagex. Phil is the studio head and Neil is the commercial director. They’ve been busy recently, working on the release of Runescape NXT alongside Chronicles: Runescape Legends and the Runescape Idle game that is also in the works.

GameGrin:

Runescape’s main draw has always been its ease of use, allowing players to play in their browser. Is the move to a dedicated client an attempt to catch more of the mainstream audience?

Neil McLarty:

Runescape began as quite a cutting edge product for its time, and what we’re trying to do is raise the bar once again. Even with all of NXT’s improvements the client is still incredibly small.

Phil Mansell:

Well yeah, it’s only a one megabyte download at the moment, as it streams everything as you play.

NM:

Runescape has always been accessible by a very broad range of PC’s. so with NXT we believed it was important to keep the same expectation of consumer specs. So that way people with much older PCs or laptops are still able to play; we’ve been testing it on some seriously old hardware, making NXT as robust as possible

7 Client

GG:

With NXT on the horizon, will we ever see a console Runescape experience?

PM:

I think it comes down to getting the controls to work, Runescape is a very point and click game. It works with stuff like tablets and touchscreen laptops very well as the UI works well with it. So trying to get it working on a pad would probably be quite hard as we would have to change aspects of the game. Chronicles: Runescape Legend is a game that could likely come to console as the game works very well with controllers.

NM:

We do think that there can be a middle ground MMO Experience that is designed specifically for mobile, as touchscreens are suited well to the UI of Runescape.

GG:

If there were no time or budget constraints, what feature would you most like to see implemented into Runescape?

PM:

I would probably find a way to go back and re-design a lot of the older assets in the game, some of them haven’t held up that well over time. So the ability to go back and re-design all the old areas and modernise them would be lovely.

NM:

Haha, good question! I think that some of the things I would love to do now, we will be able to do in a year or so. This is stuff based around the grid system in the game, making it feel more fluid. The graphics and performance of NXT are already a vast improvement over what we had previously, but I would love to make it more free and modern if I could. Although these are things that are going to happen over time.

GG:

If there was any other universe you could cross Runescape with what would it be?

PM:

That’s almost a dangerous thing to answer, our players take things like the integrity of the world very seriously. I’d be worried about a fan coming across an interview where we’ve expressed an interest in merging Runescape with something like Lord of the Rings or Buffy.

NM:

I think we are more interested in merging Runescape with other genres, so for example the Runescape Idle game and Chronicles: Runescape Legend which is a card game.

NXT 1 Al Kharid

GG:

So what other genres would you like to see Runescape in?

NM:

I think you need to go into genres that make sense within the lore of Runescape, so stuff like strategy or simulation fit the universe well.

GG:

How many hours of Runescape have you both played?

PM:

I’ve got a 110 days played so 110 multiplied by 24 is around 2640 hours played overall

NM:

I’ve only played around 40 days overall, but I tend to do more of the quests, whilst Phil generally tends to grind more often.

GG:

15 years from now we’ll celebrating 30 years of Runescape. Where do you think Runescape will be then?

NM:

Haha, well we’ll all be a bit greyer. I’d honestly love to be sat here in 15 years saying Runescape has had multiple games, a movie and even books. I think we’re on the cusp of being generational, where there is a timeline in which the kids that played it 20 years ago are introducing their kids to it. If you can get that kind of loop, that’s when these massive brands like Star Wars become what they are. So I would love to see Runescape get to that level.

NXT Preview 3 Wizards Tower news image