Ahh... Spring is here. Flowers are starting to bloom, birds are singing again, and my eyes turn from white to red due to stupid allergies. Even Jagex decided to let everyone know that spring is here by letting us pick some Lilies of the Valley and even perform the "Smell emote" with them.
But our players from Australia and New Zealand are actually just finished with the summer and entering into autumn. This, and I suspect that just having two major national holidays here in The Netherlands recently, is what prompted me to write this article.
Last year saw the first Thanksgiving event, and before that we've had several Halloween events as well. But these holidays are only celebrated in a few countries. While I will admit that Halloween is celebrated in countries where more then 80% of the RuneScape players are from, Thanksgiving is only celebrated in the United States and Canada.
Time for some numbers. I'm taking The Netherlands and the United States as examples, not only because I live there, but also because proportionally to its population, The Netherlands have the most servers per person (not counting the German servers located there). I am also assuming that the number of servers represent the amount of players, whether they are p2p or f2p, and where they are from.
If we can go on those numbers, The Netherlands have three people paying for membership for every two that don't. Almost all other countries have p2p and f2p roughly equal to each other, with only the U.S. and the worlds with their own language having more free servers.
So we can conclude that, for its size, Dutch people are making up a considerable portion of the total RuneScape population, and have the highest proportion of paying members.
The thing I'll be most interested in is what they are going to "give" the Dutch. France and Germany had everything translated for them, but I doubt to see a Dutch version any time soon for several reasons. Since a lot of Dutch people already play RuneScape, Jagex is better off marketing to Spanish or Portuguese speaking people. More then that, a vast majority of especially younger Dutch (and Flemish) people already speak English. They will not need a Dutch version.
So will we see, after Thanksgiving, something to entertain the people from other more specific nations? If so, will it be a country where RuneScape is already widely played, or will Jagex decide to entice people from nations where RuneScape is not yet as popular? I'd like to hear your suggestions and opinions on this, both the country, and what type of event you would expect when Jagex decides to highlight it.
I for one, hope to see more of a Dutch influence in the game itself. After all, even the Nordic Countries are seen somewhat represented by the Fremennik Province.
Source; http://runescape.wikia.com/wiki/Servers