Not All That Bad
I started playing Runescape by in 2004 with a few friends. I'm not really good at writing up things so I will just bullet point the main things I like and dislike.
Likes
Can be very fun with friends. My advice with anyone kind of starting out to play Runescape is get a friend to start with you or have a friend that already plays, it's helpful, trust me.
Quests are somewhat interesting and can be fun.
Takes a very long time to max out a skill, which I actually like but I know a lot of people don't, good thing they where not playing back when Runescape first was released.
The Runescape world is massive with a lot of things to do.
Graphics are very good for what the game is played off, a browser using Java. I personally can't think of any browser based game that is as massive as Runescape that looks as good.
Sound is ok music for each area is very different and sometimes rather catchy.
Updated weekly for the most part, the odd time it may be 2 weeks before an update but generally when this happens it's a big update.
Easy to make great friends.
Can play it more or less anywhere on any computer with a internet connection.
A large amount of mini games in the world that are very fun, for example Castle Wars two teams fight to capture each others flag and at the end of 20 minutes whatever team with the higher number of captures wins.
Dislikes
The game lacks helping new players out with what to do, where to go but recent updates have been trying to fix this problem.
New players with low combat level can get abused rather badly by other users.
Rather abusive community in general, there are nice people but generally the nice people keep to themselves.
Gameplay is very repetitive.
Making money (a very important need in Runescape) is generally toadies and lacks fun for the most part.
Some skills are rather useless.