The memes came out hard and fast. Others thought the new armor didn't look tanky enough and liberally provided a few alternatives, with some calling for a more extreme redesign.

Runescape gold got so bad that a few players began to seriously feel that a meme that the upgraded armor was by another artist, and that the artist that made the prototypes had abandoned Jagex. But something amazing happened. Even as memes blotted out the sun, slowly but certainly severe suggestions started to shine through. It began with primitive Photoshop jobs, but shortly appropriate examples and fan art began to crop up. Players rallied around the idea of a bulkier, blessed armor set motivated by the Runescape god Saradomin, so they went back to West's prototype designs and made a few adjustments.

And then, a hero emerged: legend_arts, a talented and well-known Runescape fan artist. Driven from the memes and inspired by elements of West's designs along with other players' ideas, legend_arts made a hybrid armor layout so good it not only silenced the memes, it got the attention of West himself.

"Exactly what the memes attracted"

"When I pitched it to the neighborhood over Twitch, rs 3 gold was expecting a bit of a response," West says. "Because when you are revealing best-in-slot items, you've either got no response--which is exactly what you are aiming for really because that means they're happy--or else you receive an extremely loud response which, as we've all seen on Reddit, is exactly what happened. Obviously, what I didn't anticipate was for another artist to pop up in. But when Legend_Arts posted his concept where he left it bright and shiny, it got like 10,000 upvotes on Reddit, which is why I then went onto the livestream to let them watch me build it"