RuneScape giant Jagex has made another wave of high-profile hires, attracting veterans from EA, PlayStation and Nintendo.

The company's new VP of studio is Melissa Bachman-Wood (pictured top left), who boasts over 20 years of experience having worked The Sims maker Maxis and publisher Electronic Arts, in addition to Backbone Entertainment and Jam City.

Meanwhile, James Burns (pictured bottom left) has been hired as technical director having held online engineering roles at the likes of PlayStation, Activision and Splash Damage.

There's a new director of quality assurance, too, with Nintendo, Electronic Arts, Microsoft, Natural Motion and Zynga vet Malachy O'Neill (pictured top right) coming on board to head Jagex's QA department.

Furthermore, Mark Faulkner returns to the RuneScape firm as director of publishing platform having departed his head of games lab role in April 2010. He's since held roles at Spil, Bossa Studios and PlayFusion. Almost-seven-year-Jagex-vet Ben Albon (pictured bottom right) has also been promoted from lead operations engineer to IT director.

“I’m thrilled to join the Jagex team and delighted for the chance to enable our teams to deliver even more great games to our players," Bachman-Wood said.

"I’m eager to help lead Studio strategy and execution to enable Jagex to excel in its ambition to be the home of living games, building out our world-class studio teams and processes.”

SVP of game development Nick Beliaeff added: “With the significant talent we’re able to continuously attract to Jagex, it's very clear that big things lie ahead for the studio. These great new additions to the team add industry-leading experience and knowledge, which fuel our goals to build and expand RuneScape and Old School RuneScape for players on both PC and mobile, extend the franchise to new platforms and new game experiences, and bring new living games into the Jagex portfolio.”

This story was originally published on PCGamesInsider.biz.