Runescape is an addictive game, regardless if your a Free to Play or Pay to Play member, one massive game!
You start of in a half hour tutorial, which covers the basics of what you need to know, like how to mine, battle using various combat techniques like range and magic, and how to cook. Other skills like Thieving, Slayer, Construction can only be accessed once you become a Pay to Play member, which is quite a bit of a downfall.
The membership isn't alot, compared to the likes of the bigger World of Warcraft. Runescape if you pay by Debit/Credit Card, is only £3.49 a month, and £4.99 via SMS.
The skills you can do are very creative or time consuming, not always in a good way. Summoning, the latest skill is very time consuming, and yet really not worth it, due to the fact that the proper rewards come from when you can summon more powerful stuff at level 80. You can get skillcapes once you reach level 99 in a certain skill, gaining 2 level 99 skills will get you a trimmed version, with a special emote. It also boosts your stat to be 100/99, meaning you might not get hit as much or caught as much. The only problem though is actually sticking to your goal, as some can and will take you 2-3 years to even get to level 93, and thats only half way there!
I used to play Runescape, but quit a year and a half back after I got bored. The mini games can be a bit repeptitve, the graphics aren't nearly as good as a PS2 (even with the new graphics it's not much like a standard PS2 game). It's good if your willing to give up the majority of your free time away to this, otherwise just stick to home consoles or internet games.
Overall Runescape is a fun and addictive game, that doesn't cost too much, and you don't even have to download the extra content added. Coming from a Ex-Runescape player, if you can't play WoW just yet, at least give this a shot for the time being.