Better than what people say. At least people with dial up can play it...
Within the game, you design your own character (which they recently further detailed) and it's a complete sandbox game. You can do whatever you want, ranging from killing monsters, doing quests, mining, fishing, cooking, etc. With only 32 quests, and a fraction of the skills being unlocked in the demo, if you think you would enjoy it, consider a membership. You get all the new updates, new quests, and more importantly new skills, and most activities done get rather addicting. One of the bigger plus sides about this game is the fact that it's dial up-friendly, unlike the WoW and Guild Wars juggernaut.
As much as i like this game, i can't say that these rants are completely false. There are many errors with it. Let's start with the one people complain about the most: Graphics. Yes, the graphics are down-right pathetic compared to what we've seen today in games like Gears of War and Call of Duty 4, and MMOs like Tabula Rasa. At times, it feels like your in pixel land on the low detail setting of the game. But in defense, WoW's graphics are low for 2000's MMO standards. And, like WoW, runescape's owners, Jagex, are working to improve it, and they're not doing that bad of a job. But c'mon, this game is completely web-based, it's not going to be the next Bioshock.
And with the graphics, there are the people. Good Lord, the people. Many of the 'kids' on runescape are immature, insensitive, uncooperative, disgusting, scamming, stupid, annoying, and simply degrading to the purpose of life. But, if you notice, they do have abilities to make runescape as public or as private as you want to. And there are SOME decent people on there, people that do have intelligence. If you find them, it makes runescape a decent gem.
Overall, the game is not good if you've already taken up on WoW, Guild Wars, Tabula Rasa, X-box live, etc. But if you're just looking for an online game to play, this is a good starter. It's designed to fit everyone and, for being a game purely on the web, it's rather immersive.