omg i remember those commercials

Ahhh Maple Story. My first MMO. Omg I nearly forgot about the horrible community. I remembered how shell shocked I was when I played a different MMO and people weren’t assholes.

i stared maplestory global (MS) just after their first year anniversary, i play for my own reasons and know alot about the game. your review is great and covers all the bases. i personally still view MS as a cheap game pasted onto MSN messenger so you have something to do while your friend is doing chores for 10 minutes. alot of what you say is true but not enough emphasis is put on MS being a continuously evolving game that actually plays like a game more everyday moving further away from just grinding mobs until your chat buddy comes back/logs in.
you can launch the game from the gamelauncher.exe in the MS folder but this method means you have to add the user name and password along with the PIN number each time you log in, why?, because you can move items to other characters on that server through the storage system. these mule characters allow you to store stuff untill you can use or sell them.
even though the game gets new content and editions and upgrades making the characters and game easier and more accessible as time goes on, nexon spends alot of their effort with the endless stream of events. current event is thanksgiving which ends in 11 hours from time writing and after the server maintenance the new cannon shooter character and it’s events will be released along with new cash shop (CS) items. CS items can now be purchased as perminant items sometimes and serious MS players have perminant pets picking up our drops.
the community now consists of long term players like myself (who plays because this game to me is like playing secret of mana SNES) who do what they do solo usually if possible and can either be a greedy jerk or not. there is the mesos ploxers and mesos selling companies who work with and are themselves the games hackers. anyone who asks for mesos stands their all day doing it to collect charity to sell those mesos for real life money. maplestory global is also available in countries where your dollar is worth alot and i myself have bought mesos. the new players being few and far in between are largly ignored by vertran players and have to learn on their own and if you like MS and play through then around lvl 120 you gain a little MS street cred. those players coming in for the MSN blanket to make friends will find that the game is now a game populated by gamers and not friendly. although it is possible to gain and lose friendships in MS.
the economy of MS is fucked up. this game works on fads and limited time only gimmicks. the more valuable items are rare items that were only available during an event or when something was released or an anniversary or other milestone was achieved and will never return, these items are what people have mule characters for. as for grinding equipment or usable from the field and selling them in the free market (FM) that’s a waste of time.
the community of greedy unsupervised and pooly parented children of all ages added to the MSN blanket non-game maple story is with an economic goal of having rare stuff with the best stats led to ignitable savagery (i never saw logans run). nexon was pressured through the game’s forums to force fairness. this is where the who does damage/looting rights came in along with forcing players to share exp points. people had a nasty habit of hitting your monster once to be recognized by the game as you do the bulk of the work, they still can loot the item from that mob. or they might hit 50% of the mobs HP and steal all the exp in an attempt to drive you off the map when all the channels are full, this usually happens during events when lazy high lvl characters did their event requirements in an easy noob area.
now this practice onle helps you level up.
the PvP and monster park are welcome distractions from the bland grinding of endless mobs in the field but another welcome standardiation is the party quest (PQ) dimentional gate. the party quests have better exp than the field and prizes are guarenteed if completed but usually after many times. the PQ’s are alot shorter, like 4 minutes, and having 10 a day limit. the bigbang update also revamped the game to strech the current game to include players over lvl 160. since the original maplestory did not have a 4th job at lvl 120 the game was essentially the same from lvl 70 – lvl 200 with each new level just taking longer. with bigbang and assention, and now legends all character problems and game issues are being addressed. for example the bowman you were playing in the video now has a double jump and a max movement speed possible of 160%. so you don’t have to be swamped by enemies and forced to hit them with the bow doing crap damage. the new party quests also give a set exp verses that of your level so each completed PQ gives 2% of your level. so 4 minutes x 10 runs x 2% = 20% an hour at any level… the aqua pq and hoblin rex pq are worth doing, so that’s 40% in 2 hours or 3-6 levels a month without ever grinding in the field.
the adition of traits to boost character stats is another thing i personally like as it adds to why i play this game. traits like willpower gives you more HP and status resistance. diligence raises the scroll success rate up to 10% more. ambition (mine currently lvl 83/100) drops the amount of xp loss at death from 10% down to 5% at lvl 100… ect. there are 6 traits which can be build up to 500 points day day in a variety of ways including just participating in the PQ.
someone already mentioned the new airplane travels system. there are other short cuts to, like the return to NLC scroll works from amoria which you get to easily from hesey’s so you really only need to take the subway ride on the return from NLC.. little things…
if you are like me and don’t want to waste endless hours playing games because you are 31 years old but still love the fun of RPG character building and if you also like the cute colorfulness of games like secret of mana along with the speed of an non turn based RPG i would recommend MS. but making friends in MS is dealing with children. participating in the economy is banking on fades with no clue or method to nexon’s willy nilly madness.. you never know what is gone for good and what you wasted money on to be given away free next week to be put back to being rare again. i play also because some of the many character verities are fun like the battle mage and healing mage (bishop). and enjoy my custom RPG character that evolves over time.
it is possible for new player to become overnight millionires adding alittle more to that stock market area. players can make items and find items that have a potential (pote) stat to them and anyone can get ones people will buy. these potes are usually adding a % to yor stat like 4% is a good low level equipment pote stat that can be obtained without using any CS items. all the mastry books for high level characters are randomized and players collect mystery mastery books which could be something valuable.
the game appears to be stable. nexon speaks as if they are healthy and going places. i’m sure MS will continuously grow slowly because it is free. but just go in for youself

I agree with most of you complaints. I played Maple A looong time ago before 4th job was. Like most mmos the community was very friendly and being kinda young I had a decent time, mostly spending time with friends since I hate grinding. After Henesys, or Hen PQ came out and The Pirate Job everything went to hell. I still face palm everytime my friends start talking bout maple again. I kinda feel sorry for Maple…but I still only like the Music.. *sigh*

I think the key factor that has kept Maplestory alive despite all of the problems is the chat system. To this day, I’ve never ecountered an MMO where I didn’t wish the chat system was more like Maplestory’s. The chat UI is so easy to use.

Talking to other players is a very important part of the MMO experience but so many MMOs give it low priority, shoving the chat window into a tiny corner of the screen that can only display short messages in tiny text.

No the travel time doesn’t take 25 minutes anymore, they’ve implemented a system where you can buy a plane and get to orbis in 2 minutes with no waiting time. Same with Ludibrium.