Areas that used to be vacant are now brimming with NPCs, quests and stories fast way to make money rs . Each inch of the world has been full of, or in some cases expanded, in order to incorporate all of the characters, enemies and also features that Jagex are busy stuffing into the match for the past decade. The fact that Runescape is an internet game is currently a bonus as opposed to its main attraction. Jagex could take their match entirely offline and it might still be worth playing.
But that is the biggest gap between Runescape and its still running Old School Runescape counterpart. Both share roughly the exact same amount of concurrent players, but how players interact in each one is quite different.
Old School Runescape might only have roughly 25,000 players at any given moment - hardly a scratch on the numbers it used to reach in 2006 - but its players have understood the game for ages. They have decade-old friendships there, they know the best way to hang out, how to interact and virtually every talking point the game and its storied history has produced. They wander past each other without laughing, don't all converge in the same spots for no motive or attend pretend parties in vacant attics... they simply get on with playing the game.
You will find online experiences to be had there, but those I played were more structured and curated than anything in Old School Runescape. My memories of Runescape in 2006 completely revolve around interacting with others. I was duped or lured into PvP zones and murdered almost daily because I was promised some gift from a top level player, but as frequently as gamers exploited my ignorance that there were also countless times that they offered to help me, taking me under their wing into analyzing boss battles or giving me free gear.
They made the enormous, sprawling Stronghold of Christmas Carnival Security and filled it with unique rewards just to educate players about online safety, they removed free commerce to prevent new players getting conned into unfair deals, and made it so players can only lose a small amount of loot upon perishing at the Wilderness.