I don't understand how RuneScape managed to get the traction it did. 2004 was the same year World of Warcraft came out!

The other comments hit the big ones (didn't have to download, had a free tier, didn't have significant irreversible character choices, had meaningful solo or quasi-social activities, etc), but I think a major contributing factor was it appearing on miniclip.

It was free to play when that wasn’t a popular financial model for games at the time. The memberships were also much cheaper than WoW and accepted different payment methods that would be more available to minors at the time.

As a kid, I didn't have a computer that could run WoW, nor would I have been able to convince my parents to pay for the subscription. I suspect most of the popularity was from kids in a similar situation, probably playing it on library computers when they should've been studying.

MapleStory was also quite popular back then for similar reasons.

It's free and you could play it in the school library, for one. Also it came out a few years before WoW.

RuneScape was very popular at my local public library, and as a kid I only played the F2P content. I knew maybe one or two people around that time that played WoW. The paid subscription made it not a realistic option for me at the time. Though one of those WoW players did once bring his discs over for me to install the game and play on a private server with him. I don't think I kept playing WoW long for whatever reason. I was more into MapleStory, Graal Online, and RuneScape.

Besides what everyone else said, it was a pre-WoW style sandbox MMO with a lot of freedom at the time. Those have their own appeal.

I think WoW was PC-only with an Intel Mac release coming later. Runescape was one of the few MMOs I could run on my parent's PowerPC Mac.

in addition to what others said...

2004 runescape, now "old school runescape", which is actually successor 2001 Runescape "Classic", were both playable in a browser.

and my (parent's) PC couldn't even install, let alone run WoW. despite me trying with all my might.

so I'm sure I wasn't alone.

it was absolutely magical to me.

They were two very different games and target audiences, with the incidental commonality that both are MMOs.

WoW needed a purchase, an expensive subscription, and a good PC. Runescape ran on a potato, was F2P, the P2P was 5$ a month, and you could get started in 2 minutes from Miniclip.

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