The end of an era
If you’re a child of the ’90s, chances are you’ve played RuneScape at one point or another. What is possibly the first MMO for multiple generations of gamers, RuneScape has been trucking along since its launch in 2001. Despite a couple of sequels and other games stealing its thunder, RuneScape remained popular enough for developer Jagex to keep it online. Today, though, Jagex announced it will be shutting down the servers for the legendary title on August 6, 2018.
A blog post on the official website (which still looks positively old-school) states, “It has been amazing to see such dedication amongst those of you who have kept playing RuneScape Classic over the last few years, some of you have even managed to reach max total! However, it’s not all fun and games. With advancements in technology helping to further support both RuneScape and Old School RuneScape, our tools are no longer compatible with Classic. This is particularly a problem with our community safety and macro detection tools. The game is now easily abused with the use of 3rd party macro tools, and botting has become an increasing issue.”
Due to the developer no longer supporting the game, numerous bugs and issues are growing to the point of breaking game balance. While RuneScape Classic actually stopped accepting new players a while back, that did little to prevent the rise of cheaters and modders that were twisting the game to their own whims. While Jagex could leave the game running and disregard everything, they want to give RuneScape a proper send-off and let players say their last goodbyes.
“The RuneScape Classic servers will be taken offline at 8:00 am BST on the 6th of August 2018,” the blog notes. “After such date, it will no longer be possible to log in to the Classic game. You will, of course, be able to continue playing as normal up until that date.”
RuneScape Classic: Farewell [RuneScape]
