I forgot when I started to play Runescape. But I see that it has been changing a lot during the days.
The largest changes of Runescape for F2P players in my opinion:
The Grand Exchange, which grants a large market on rune trading and easy equipment obtaining. And the price of everything went off a remake as well.
Explorer ring 3. The ring has INFINITE teleport to cabbage patch, not only making life much easier, it also made wilderness easier to explore. Ring 4 adds some functions...... while I later realize Jagex has later made lots of updates rendering the ring 4 useless. Shame.
The disestablishment of PK system. The life in Wilderness became more difficult, and players lost the enjoyment of being hunted and hunting others beings. The PvP world is somehow too dangerous either, and yield too little rewards. Now it seems the old PvP is back but real player have decreased in population... Oh well we have PvP worlds.
Stronghold of security. It was also featured for the bury bone random event glitch. (now fixed) Shame that Ejection of Combat is forcing into place. We cannot farm on Flesh crawlers anymore!
Fist of Guthix. Powerful equipments and runecrafting gloves.
Runespan. Effectively outruns runecrafting gloves. No more rune running!
The things I think are not important at all:
Cockroach soldiers. They are not good to be fought, due to their extreme defense and THAT spit attack.
The triangle formations of mining rocks. Once you get to mine coal, it's not important at all.
Runecrafting staves. Don't seem to lose weight if you are wielding these. And costly.
Skull spectre. Fighting an hour for 5 teleports?
The remake of armors. Jagex tried hard but failed finally.
Tasking the achievements. If someone is deemed a beggar, you cannot make him work. 100k or even 1M isn't enough.
Squeal of Fortune and Solomon's Store and LoyaltyEdit
What Jagex claims:
These matters are separate. Solomon's store is in no way associated with competitive advantage.
What fact lies:
Jagex ignored the fact the concepts of SoF and Store are identical: Item mall features, easily found in most MMORPGs. Simply said, you CAN buy competitive advantage indirectly, although Jagex refuses the idea. Also it is possible to inject bonus like special weapons, albeit not directly bought as it goes through some random process. This is like buying boxes which contain randoms, but each box costs fixed amount of real cash.