Yes, that's right. There was a game before the Runescape that you now know. It did not have nearly as good graphics as Runescape does now. In fact, they looked like pieces of paper.

Originally, in Runescape Classic when you were starting out, you got to pick from five major classes. Each class got their own specialty when starting out. These classes were

Ranger - Started with a shortbow and arrows.
Adventurer - Started with a Bronze Axe, Tinderbox, and one piece of Cooked Meat.
Miner - Started with a pickaxe, which at that time were the only ones available.
Warrior - Started with a Bronze Short Sword and a Wooden Shield
Necromancer - Started with a Wizard Hat and a regular Staff.

This feature was taken out early July 2002.

They also allowed at one point to be able to duel anywhere in the world. You could just walk up to someone, right click, and click duel. Players liked this idea for more than one reason. For one, you could get to Lumbridge fast because as long as you didn't stake anything, you wouldn't loose any items. They liked this feature because if they were training and a person walked up, they could duel over the training spot. This saved players a lot of time because they didn't have to switch worlds to find a less crowded area. They removed this feature because players could run away and the duel would not end, and players could bank the staked items. So, to fix this problem, Jagex built the Dueling Arena.

Player Killing in Runescape Classic was a whole different world. In the beginning, you could be killed everywhere except Lumbridge, or if you designated yourself as NPK which stands for Non-Player Killers. Along with that, There was no running in Runescape Classic, so catching your pray was much easier. In addition, you could not eat during a battle, and you could not run until 3 turns of attacks happened. So more than often, did PKers catch unsuspecting players in the old days?

Runescape Classic had their own type of notes as well. Instead of having noted items, they had Certificates. Also known as certs. These certs equaled five of every item. Therefore, instead of one note per one item, they had one cert per five items. The Banks were very hard to use, as only one player could talk to one NPC at a time. So people often sat in a bank for long periods of time just waiting to be able to even get into their bank. After they finally got in, there was a withdraw and deposit limit! So trading large amounts of items took even longer.

Here are some random facts about Runescape Classic:

When a person tried to say something offensive, the censors would change it to say Cabbage.

There was a skill called Tailoring that was near-useless and very hard to gain experience points in, they later removed it and made it an add-on to Crafting.

Influence was basically like Quest Points. The only way to get it was to complete quests. A person with high Influence level could sell their silk to the silk trader for more coins than the normal amount.

Prayer was split into 2 different categories, Good Prayer and Evil Prayer.

I played Runescape Classic one time, but not very long. After Runescape 2 came out, Runescape Classic became out of date. I believe there are still some players on Runescape Classic. All of the Free to Play members of Runescape Classic had to either upgrade to Pay to Play, or loose their accounts. This of course made a lot of players angry; because they had played the game for a long time and did not find it right to be forced into paying. Happy Playing.