zomg the population of New York has halved over the last 7 years:

 

The game will go on for years to come, but the real question is "Will it still be worth playing?"

 

With the exception of the rare nice update like Branches or ROTM, the quality of updates in the last six months has taken a nosedive. Bots are out of control and the problem only seems to be escalating. I think it's a reasonable guess to say that in a couple years, RS might end up like those crappy Korean MMOs where you have twenty bots to every one real player.