Twitch streamer Titus_Furius will go down in history as Runescape Classic's final and arguably greatest legend. On Monday, August 6, the day Jagex closed the Classic servers some 17 years after they opened, Titus completed the game's toughest challenge: the Legends' Quest. Over 1,000 people tuned in to see him clear the quest right at the eleventh hour, mere moments before Classic was shut down for good. Several Jagex employees were in the audience, and they not only cheered Titus on, they also kept the servers alive a little longer than planned, just so Titus could become Classic's final legend.
Titus first played Runescape Classic in 2003. He's taken large breaks from the game in the past 15 years, but when Jagex announced it was shutting Classic down, he knew he had to come back. Thanks to his old account, he had access to the game's 'Veteran Only' servers, so he decided to complete the Legends' Quest, plus all the quests leading up to it, and stream the whole thing.
When the initial timer came up, I thought it was over.
Titus Furius
"I figured it would make interesting content to see the quests played as they were originally released," Titus tells me. Runescape has changed considerably since the Classic days. The most widely known version of the game, colloquially known as Runescape 2, was released in 2004. Runescape 2 received a major update in 2012 which turned it into the mainline Runescape we know today, and the pre-update version was revived in 2013 with the release of Old School Runescape. Frankly, it's a miracle Classic survived as long as it did. But Jagex knew some people still loved the game, so despite mounting technical issues, the studio kept the lights on for as long as possible, right up to the end.
Titus's quest-a-thon wound up taking longer than he expected. Nearly 12 hours into his stream, he was 15 or 20 minutes away from completing the Legends' Quest when a three-minute countdown heralding the end of Classic popped up in-game. "When the initial timer came up, I thought it was over," Titus says. "Which is when I broke down in tears on stream."
I think everyone can relate to Titus mourning the loss of one of his favorite games.
The timer hit zero. But nothing happened. Just then, Jagex moderator Mod Atlas messaged Titus in his Twitch chat. "I might have cancelled the shutdown just for you," he said.
Titus could hardly believe it. "I am very grateful to them for doing that for me," he says. "Some people weren't happy about that because they thought I was getting special treatment. Others were happy because they could hang out with their friends on Classic for longer. The funny thing is, I was super flustered at the end there and trying to focus on what I needed to do to finish, and people were intentionally sabotaging me so the servers could run for longer."
Despite the good-natured trolling of the crowd that had formed around him, Titus managed to slay the demon Nezikchened and complete the Legends' Quest. The crowd followed him to the Legends' Guild to watch him buy and equip the fabled Legends' Cape. He'd done it.
A bittersweet celebration broke out when another countdown timer appeared. There'd be no extension this time. Players around the game poured their grief into the in-game chat while others gave Titus billions of gold to commemorate his achievement. The Runescape Classic servers shut down shortly after at 9:06 am GMT.
Image via Reddit user _poh
"The Classic server closure was halted for a couple of hours when Mod Wolf and Mod Atlas saw that Titus was having a final attempt to finish the Legends' Quest," Jagex confirmed in a statement. "It was awesome to watch his stream, and everyone in the studio was rooting for him to kill the final boss and claim his cape. To our knowledge, he was the final person to complete the quest."
"To every person that watched, I cannot thank you enough," Titus said in a follow-up Reddit post. "I had a blast. It was a truly amazing send-off to the end of an era. Classic will live on in our hearts."
