Old School Runescape, the proudly antiquated
OSRS gold model of Runescape
that still looks and performs like the game I snapped innumerable hours
into when I really should have been studying, is getting a raid. A
fantastic raid needs good rewards, therefore when the Theatre of Blood
was declared late last year, players were anxious to see what clearing
the multi-man challenge would make them. Jagex responded with Justicar
armor, a brand new best-in-slot armor set (above). There was one little
problem: gamers absolutely hated it.
They memed on it so tough
that Jagex is currently totally altering the armor's design. Almost all
of Old School Runescape's updates undergo participant polls, but that is
the first time a suit of armor has been forged in a passion of memes.
The
irony is that while players loathed the'closing' armor revealed earlier
this season, they loved the prototypes shown while the raid was
declared. Originally, the Justicar armor was part of a trio of armor
sets, West tells me, but since the Theatre of Blood went from obscure
idea to actual content, the armor shifted with it. Participants said
there was enough DPS gear but insufficient tank gear, so it had been
narrowed down to only 1 armor set. And if they were only going to use
one group, Jagex figured they might as well make a new one based on the
armor worn by the raid's big poor.
"We thought changing it a bit
made sense," West says,"but players weren't quite on board with the
original proposal we shared on stream. And , well, Reddit went wild."
The
memes came hard and fast. Most demanded a return to the model designs.
Others believed the new armor didn't look tanky enough and generously
provided some choices, with some calling for a more drastic redesign.
It got so bad that a few players started to
buy RuneScape gold seriously
believe that a meme the upgraded armor was by another artist, and that
the artist who left the prototypes had abandoned Jagex. But something
amazing happened. Even as memes blotted out sunlight, gradually but
surely severe suggestions started to glow through. It started with crude
Photoshop jobs, but shortly proper examples and fan art started to crop
up. Players rallied around the idea of a milder, blessed armor group
inspired by the Runescape god Saradomin, so that they went back to
West's prototype designs and made a few changes.
Inspired by the
memes and motivated by elements of West's designs and other players'
suggestions, legend_arts created a hybrid armor layout so great it not
merely silenced the memes, it captured the attention of West himself.
