Back in 2007 when I started playing (f2p) I was scared to leave Lumbridge, for some reason I thought that the further you go from the castle the more in danger you will be, so my money making methods were gather all sorts of resources around the Lummy castle and then sell them to the general store for a few coins. Back then general stores were very popularly used as a way to buy/sell things. I remember making my first few thousand gold and then camping the store for some random items, stuff like mithril gear and above would hit the general store and instantly be bought by someone, I remember buying my first set of armor that way.
I quit the game sooner after and only came back close to half a year later when Godwars came out. That's around when Youtube montages/videos started to get some traction on Youtube, and sooner after I started following some Youtubers, the first few money making video methods started showing up, I couldn't do them, so I kept on grinding, but this time I got to know about Falador and Varrock (still in f2p).
I remember quitting sooner after again only to come back in 2009 with trade restrictions up. It was a different game now, but it was during trade limit that I learned you could do stuff like turning ores into bars for money, that's how I made my first 100k, I still have pictures to this date of my first few thousand steel bars sold for a tiny bit of profit, the whole game had opened for me. I could now hunt for that 2.5mil guthix set or maybe one day the 5mil Saradomin or Zamorak set. The grinding mindset got to me, it only took me finding a way to make some good coin for Runescape to make more sense to me, sooner after by the end of 2009 I was rocking my full Guthix but already putting my eyes on this item ~20m item called "Blue H'ween Mask" instead of the Zamorak Armor set I wanted at first, and one day I got hacked and cleaned for like 10mil and spent the next day buying harpoons to sell on the GE for profit to help me make my first 1mil back.
I kept on playing on and off, only after Free Trade in 2010 I played in P2p for the first time, I finally had convinced my parents to lend me 10€ to buy a membership card, I was already base 75 combat with 35 Ranged but 55+ magic and some very decent skilling stats 70+. It was funny because I had put my eyes on all these member items I wanted at some point, and the day I paid my membership I was so rich from f2p that I could buy some of them, like day 1 Fury, D boots, Whip and Verac's Skirt. From there on it's history, I just learned to play the game and maxed all sorts of accounts as I got to learn more and more, both RS2 and later in 2013 also OSRS.
I kind of went off topic at some points, but the beauty of Runescape has been kind of what I wrote above. Back in the days, way more people played the game as a "first timer", those people got to know about the game from way different sources than nowadays. A Youtube search back then would show almost nothing "Guide" wise, hell nobody would even attempt to search that to begin with, and older websites gave really rough and unoptimized text based guides on things, which younger me couldn't even read to begin with (I was still a beginner in English Language), so we just had to improvise and do a lot of trial and error and research to find out how the game works.
Nowadays it's very different, you are always 1 click away from being hand fed every little thing that there is to know about the game. If any game mode comes out, there's enough of a database to make the Top 10k of every leaderboard a challenge to even attempt to achieve. We as a community simply had way to much time and tools in our disposition to maximize every bit of gameplay there is to know. (You can go back to 2008 Pking montages to realize people weren't using Gmaul the same way people do these days; no such thing as 3 kinds of tick eating food, people would sometimes even lose ticks while potting up; the list goes on and on).
It's kind of nice to go back sometimes and remember all of these things, even as far back as 2013 when people said "it won't be the same, OSRS will never be 2007", but then 8 years in advance we remember 2013 as a whole different game way more difficult and challenging, but even in 2013 times were different, the Wiki has evolved, we now have Youtubers/Twitch Streamers whose job is literally playing the game, layers on top of layers. There's no going back, and the most we can do at this point in time in 2021 is trying to create account locked accounts and even Jagex themselves coming up with Restricted Game Modes (Group ironman), to kind of give us a taste on how good the old days were.
