Originally, the Justicar armor was bulkier and part of a trio of armor sets, West tells me, but since the Theatre of Blood moved from obscure concept to real RuneScape gold, the armor changed with it. Participants said there was sufficient DPS gear but not enough tank gear, so it was narrowed down to just 1 armor set. And if they were only going to use one group, Jagex guessed they might also make a new one based on the armor worn with the raid's big bad.
"We thought changing it up a little made sense," West says,"but players weren't quite on board with the first proposal we shared on stream. And , well, Reddit went wild."
The memes came out hard and fast. Others believed the new armor did not look tanky enough and liberally provided a few alternatives, with some calling for a more drastic redesign.
It 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 who made the prototypes had left Jagex. But then something amazing happened. Even as memes blotted out the sun, gradually but certainly serious suggestions began to glow through. It began with crude Photoshop jobs, but soon proper examples and fan art began to crop up. Players rallied around the idea of a bulkier, blessed armor group inspired by the Runescape god Saradomin, so they went back to West's prototype designs and made some adjustments.
And after that, a hero emerged: legend_arts, a talented and famous buy RS gold fan artist. Inspired from the memes and motivated by elements of West's designs along with other players' ideas, legend_arts created a hybrid armor design so great it not only silenced the memes, it got the attention of West himself.