But there comes a time when the original version is gone, and only lives in memories (+ YouTube videos)…

RS has always been a live-service game and one month may be different from the last. You never get the same experience.
RS3 and OSRS are have carried on the torch but are far away from the original release version of RS2, and Jagex has now been sold to another investment company (again). Of course both games will continue to be developed and grow, and the developers clearly care regardless of how the management/player base makes decisions.

This project exists to try and save the old game as best as we can. It isn’t about fame, money, or stealing potential revenue. Some members think we may be risking a C&D using their trademarks, on the website especially. However, the nostalgia of seeing an unadultered RuneScape is a huge part of the experience...

But I think they may be onto something - with any change in ownership there's a good chance we could see them protecting their newly acquired (£900m!) assets - at least initially. For that reason I think we might need to rebrand some things on the website away from "Play RuneScape" to "Play 2004Scape," but we can still mention RuneScape in my opinion. Like "Why Play RuneScape?" or the old Varrock letters - it still describes the game perfectly fine. Doing a global replace for RuneScape->2004Scape seems overkill.

1. Starting, I've gone ahead and changed some of the $5 membership references to either have an explicit "This is a historical archive" message or mention that everything is free to experience here.

2. I've also been updating the titles on some pages to improve SEO a little bit.

I don't think it's necessary to change the in-game messages, logos, or interfaces. None of that is indexed on search engines and it’s very much representative of the old experience: not misrepresenting anything. It's meant to be a complete recreation as if you took a time machine back to 2004. If you log in and you're greeted with a private-server message like "Welcome to 2004Scape." that’s just bad taste. We spend so much time making sure everything is pixel perfect in every dialogue, I’d only go the next mile if we were told to.

With that said, expect a few more changes to the website for clarity/legality reasons. You’ll see me changing text or adding crystal clear "historical archive" banners. It should be perfectly clear that this is in no way, shape, or form RuneScape as it is today nor have we seen any of Jagex’s engine code for their servers. Everything is recreated through observations, and taking the original client caches off of old computers to make it into a workable format.