My personal advice is to buy RS gold membership at lower levels if you intend on playing a lot (several hours/day) or waiting until mid or high levels if you play frequently. In the event of the latter, attempt to 1) Aim towards completing most (or all) f2p quests, two ) Achieving lvl 40+ at most (or all) f2p abilities, AND 3) Accumulating - at the least - 1mil gp before purchasing membership. When you've already achieved all of them and you still have not purchased membership, then you are losing out by continuing to perform f2p. Skilling and money making are easier on p2p and you have access to hundreds of quests. So regardless of what type of player you're, it is definitely worthwhile to have membership in the long term.

It is important for me to note that I am playing with Runescape3, maybe not OSRS. I have never played with the actual OSRS version of the game BUT I was playing RS2 (and, not to mention, RS Classic) from the mid-2000's, of which OSRS was modelled after. While I imagine many things have shifted in the past (almost ) 12 years since I played a version of this game which was even remotely similar to OSRS, I know for a fact that lots of things have stayed the same. With this being so, I would advise anyone playing OSRS OR Runescape3 to follow the urge that I posted in the last paragraph - Use f2p to get through the low/mid amounts and p2p to make it through the mid/high levels, based on how frequently you perform. If you put in 20+ hours/week then I propose getting membership than you would if you just put in 10 hours/week.

My language is Icelandic. I started playing RuneScape in 2004 when I was 7 years old. I recall the very first thing I ever typed on that game from a request from my sister who was 12 years old in at time, she requested me to beg in Varrock. I went around asking people "can you give me money". Since 2004 I've played Runescape off and on because it has gained me a lot and I am thankful for that. When speaking with cheap RuneScape gold tourists visiting Iceland I often get compliments about my emphasis and they couldn't differ my accent from somebody who grew up using English vs me growing up with Icelandic, that is totally different.