Oh boy, Hostile takeovers! First Ubisoft and now our beloved Jagex is faced with the same situation.
I'm not worried about the fact that this a mining company, No, They're branching out to something that works, A smart business strategy. The Chinese mark is what's the worry here, it's a mess, it's dangerous, this could end horribly, not because of this new company, but because of the market it exists in, it's not exactly a stable market compared to the UK.
And if this new company goes down, Jagex goes with them, as I believe they would hold the intellectual property of runescape, even if they didn't it would be a blow I don't think Jagex could recover from that, coming fresh from Being owned by the collapsed company.
Not to mention, this game and eastern audiences? That could turn out pretty bad if you ask me, The appeal to this game is found within the audience that plays it, The same appeal is not a big thing in these countries, Nostalgia won't work here, Sure the sense of achievement is something, but take away those nostalgia googles we have glued to our face and we see something that is just grinding. Sure, the quests are awesome, they work, they're good, anyone can appreciate the quests, But the mindset is different for these potential players, they want to be maxed, rich, or professional. And they want 16 hours of doing that to bring them 1/4 closer to there end goal, Runescape doesn't work like that, 16 hours isn't going to get you much, maybe a few levels in each skill at best? 10 levels In a single skill maybe?
Let's not forget the brand new ever present language barrier this creates, This will change so much about the community. Of course language barriers already exist, that's why L mods exist, But the problem is, These are considerably small portions of the active player base on almost any given sever. An eastern playerbase will be big, and all of a sudden communities in each respective part of the world will hold different ideas for the game, this is not only cause a disconnect between the new player bases, but it is be willing to bet these new players could cause a disconnect between Jagex and the players. They'd have to deal with and Western half of the player see, and an Eastern Half, and that could be problematic in terms of keeping up with both, moderating another few forums because of the new players speaking different languages, something L mods wouldn't be enough, Therefore drawing Jagex's attention away from the small things.
This will bring on a whole new wave of hackers, botters, and general runebreakers, Sounds racist, Yes, But it certainly will, This will require more constant moderation of players, Further removing Jagex's connection with its playerbase.
In the end, this could be bad, real bad.
Best thing we can hope for Jagex to do is buy back parts of there company so this new company can't hold a majority share. Even so, them owning a big part of the company will bring on pressures to move towards this.
Worst thing would be if this hostile takeover happens, and this new company starts forcing Jagex to make changes to the game, then it'l would probably be time to say goodbye people, this company would kill the game, and ruin there own investment, Like a nitroglycerin merchant!