I, sadly, missed out on the original RuneScape gold, joining in 2004 when Runescape 2 went live (which attracted 3D graphics and other substantial updates ), back when I was a teenager in school. I do not even want to learn the amount of hours and friends lost to Runescape across multiple accounts -- it'd be well into the thousands.
The beauty of Runescape then was the low system demands and incredibly addictive grind-like gameplay. The MMORPG makes full use of a power system that needs experience points (EXP) to increase in amounts up to a total of 99 in each skill. Skills protect many areas, from battle to prayer, wood cutting into fishing, and smithing to crafting. There was enough content to keep us entertained, no matter which ability you preferred.
The neighborhood was enormous. Servers were always filling up and mini-games had more than sufficient players for many rounds to be enjoyed. You could even hang out with different players and simply discuss a load of nonsense whilst spending hours at a time mining iron for this succulent 100,000 gold coin to get 1,000 units of ore trade. We enjoyed PK'ing (player killing), questing (occasionally ), and general activity grinding to find out who would be among the very first to buy OSRS gold hit 99 in a skill.