RuneScape devs have now announced that RuneScape Classic, the very first version of RuneScape that released all the way back in 2001, will be shutting down on the 6th of August. Before anyone starts panicking, allow me to just mention that the shutdown will have absolutely no ramifications on Old School RuneScape (OSRS) - that will continue onward as planned.

"With advancements in technology helping to further support both RuneScape and Old School RuneScape, our tools are no longer compatible with Classic," reads the brief announcement. "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."

"We've not fully supported RuneScape Classic for years, so why are we suddenly seeing it as a problem now? The truth is that bots and lack of community safety tools are serious problems, however, we also feel that we can no longer offer long term service reliability due to the growing risk of unrecoverable game breaking bugs. The number of bugs is getting worse, and we're gradually seeing the game breaking. It's important to highlight that these are bugs which we can't fix due to the unsupported nature of the game. "

"As such, rather than have the game break indefinitely without any warning, we wanted to give everyone the opportunity to have their last goodbyes."

While it's always unfortunate to see servers get shut down, I honestly can't blame the developers here. They've supported RuneScape Classic for way longer than anyone could've ever anticipated, and it seems like the only reason they're shutting it down is because of the overwhelming amount of bugs. I suppose they could take the time and fix those bugs, but given the incredibly low population I can't imagine they have the extra resources or manpower in order to do that.

So if you would like to give RuneScape Classic a proper sendoff, now would be a really good time to do so as the playerbase has undoubtedly been increased by this announcement. You'll be able to play through all of the content up until 8am BST on August 6th, after which the servers will be going down for good. Have fun with the trip down memory lane!