This is entirely secondhand from people I knew who worked there, but: developers treated well, support staff not so great. They've struggled to make a success of anything since Runescape.

There were also rumours of an internal scripting metalanguage for RS, that had no local variables and all the other hallmarks of something put together in a hurry that ends up being a success and then a burden.

my busted computer barely ran Runescape when I was growing up, I played The Realm Online instead since it ran on basically anything at the time.

I'd save Christmas and birthday cash to pay for my subscription annually.

Then World of Warcraft came around...looking back, that was the end of the Realm.

It's still around, believe it or not. The player count is usually ~20 people. Sometimes I get nostalgic and install it just to hear the music when it launches.

Ahh, memories. Damn shame the game is owned by a private family now instead of actual developers, the game would be a massive hit on mobile with a f2p model.

> It's still around, believe it or not. The player count is usually ~20 people. Sometimes I get nostalgic and install it just to hear the music when it launches.

At least you can still log in and meander around. I'd love to be able to do that with MxO, hyperjump around the city a bit and just enjoy the sounds and settings. Alas, the servers get shut down by SOE and that's the end of that. A shame when I reckon you could run it off a sodding azure box for sod all cost these days.