Jagex made an official statement on the code name issue, which they send to Ren of MechScape World.
Hello everyone,
In a recent press release we stated that our upcoming sci-fi title was code named “MechScape”. Many people have been looking for clarification regarding the name of this new game, so we decided it would be best to attempt to clarify this matter.
When we first came up with the idea for our new game it was primarily focused on robots known as “mechs”, hence the name MechScape made perfect sense. It drew on the main theme of the game, and also played on the “-scape” brand which we had established with RuneScape. Okay, we thought, we have the name sorted, so now let’s get on with the exciting bit of development.
And so we grew fond of the name, and some fans found out about it and many of them got invested in the name too, and therefore we believed that the name was definitely going to be MechScape. But recently we decided to re-evaluate it, which is why we referred to it as just a “code name”. There are various reasons for us to stick with the original name, and it is possible that we might end up doing just that, but there are also reasons why we might still want to change it.
During the game’s early evolution we became a lot more ambitious, and substantially widened our vision beyond just robots to encompass the wider possibilities of the sci-fi genre. This meant that the first half of the MechScape name could give people an overly narrow view of what the game is about. Similarly, if we drew on the RuneScape brand by using the “-Scape” suffix then it could make people think the game was essentially RuneScape in space, which it defiantly is not. Whatever name we go with we will be using for a very long time, so we want to get it right and that is why it is back on the table for discussion.
So the honest answer to the question of what the game will be called is that we don’t know yet. We have a number of ideas, one of which is just to stick with the initial name. We understand that many people would have liked to have known earlier that the name wasn’t set in stone. In response to this we would like to make it clear that it was only very recently that we seriously began reconsidering the name again. However, I admit that we should have told our fans as soon as we were unsure about it. We are aware that the name of our title is a very emotive area, and whatever decision we ultimately make we will not make lightly.
Please don’t take this statement to mean that the game is now done and all we have to worry about now is what to call it. There is still a fair amount of development work left for us to do. We can’t give you a release date at the moment because large complex game development projects such as this one are extremely hard to estimate. The last thing we want after spending so much time and energy on this project is a rushed release, which is why we won’t launch it until we are confident that it is ready.
I do hope this clarifies matters a little bit more and that you remain as excited about the game as we are.
Source: http://www.mechscapeworld.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=6075
Basically they’re not sure yet what name they will use it might be MechScape, Stellar Dawn or even a different name. The amount of commotion created by the possible change of the name might be the trigger for Jagex to reconsider their decision to name it something else than MechScape. Also this message by Jagex tells us that MechScape will still be in development for a significant amount of time and they have not yet picked a release date yet.
