My little rant, share your opinions

tldr: wish we can return the game back to when, if an iron pig spawns in your map, youre f**cked, but seriously, if you're too lazy to read, that means you probably dont care much and i probably dont even want you to read it then, the game is the way it is now, because of OUR fault, not nexons

other than the obvious fact it went super downhill to "pay to win", there's something drastic I noticed

a little bit about me: i've started playing maplestory ill say 2007~2008 on the Taiwan server until i got ip cockblocked and had to move to GMS server cuz i immigrated to Canada. so i played on the MARDIA server, now known as YMCK (4 servers combined) because my cousins played in Mardia

can't remeber the exact date when i joined gms, but i know it was give or take 3 days from an "independence day" event, monsters dropped indepedence hat like crazy and u could sell them to npc for 3000 mesos each with was a ton load, and also could hunt bbq and trade them to cody for a flag, this was before fangblade 200

Even non-"popular" servers had a decent amount of people you can play with and interact with and it felt like everywhere u go, every hidden map, every monster map theres always someone there

i quit about 2012~ May, just about 2 days ago, i decided to hop on again and see whats up, i decided to just play on Scania for no reason other than there was the most people there. so for nostalgia purposes i hopped back on to Mardia(ymck), and omg, to my actual surprise the server was practically dead, LITERALLY

Fm room 3~6 weren't even full

i remeber very clearly that when i was quitting, (wasnt even prime time of mardia) all fm were pratically full, there were alot of people, and now it looks like the 2014 november scania cant even compare to the 2012 ymck server, i can only imagine what it was like 2012 in popular servers, or even prime time such as 2009~2010 i would believe. It breaks my heart seeing my childhood game become such a noname game. Check the website, just loaded with what u can buy with nx.

Heres an example of why the game went downhill
my first lv 100, was my dual blade, i made the dual blade when it very first came out, and i hit 100 on it about 1month before bigbang
that was July 21st - around december, 6 months, and that was when when things like gallo where still popular
i can still remeber the grind in kpq, lpq, lmpq, cpq, obq and each and every event was meaningful and filled with memories, and each and every pq i joined, i met a new person i can just instantly become best friends with, the list will go on forever if i just keep recalling "old old maple"

As i mentioned earlier, started fresh new on scania 2 days ago, i hit lv 100 just now, i played like 2hours a day, if u were to count my total grind hours it would 5 hours
from 1-25 i did quests, 25-30 grind evil eyes, 30-45 quests? 45-50 grind drakes, 50-57 quests, 57-60 grind drakes, 60~65 grind sleepywood place 65~70 lpq 70~100 took 3 romeo and juliet pq but wait, there was absolutely and almost no interaction with people, it was just straight up power leveling, infact it almost felt like that there was no system to communicate with others, pq just feels like rush grind, no longer where u hang out and the way the pq are designed now is just no fun

see the difference?? but heres what actually makes the difference, because leveling was so hard back then, and that everyone had the same items, no one really cared about level or damage, they just cared to have fun..

now? its super easy to level up, infact a bit way too easy, but heres the catch, we can't get items, especially those who dont pay, and straight up 500$ wont even cut it, has to be like 3000~4000$ at least. So Nexon's buisness plan is that from the get-go they drive us into a system where we need to buy NX so that we can match up for our level

technically its our faults, but nexon fueled it, wait... so that means won't we be able to revert it? yes we can
here is why its our fault.... a bit before big bang came out there were surveys nexon put up, stuff like "what would u rather have" faster transportation, lving, mesos making, etc,

and our general ideas were faster transportation (you would understand if you played back then) and faster leveling, and guess what? nexon gave it to us like the good company they are. but heres the thing, by asking for faste transportation we deprive ourself from one of the major place where people meet,
example is: victoria to orbis, everyone would gather in the cabin and usually everyone would go to channel 1 because there were most people, if i were to estimate 40~50 people in popular servers, maybe 15~20 in less popular. and the thing was, both pro and noob players use the same exact boat, because there were no other ways of transportation, so by providing us things like hyper rock (more nx) and planes and other ways of method (d-mirror) to travel faster, we actually dont get to interact as often

leveling - It was PQ and more PQ, because you never really reached past the point where u dont do pq, and pq = people, people to interact with, but it was slowwww
so people asked for faster ways, so we moved on to a more systematic way of leveling, grinding. and we all ditched pq. and we just kept on asking for more and more, faster and faster. and eventually no one wanted to pq, it was just solo grind, cc this, change channel that, ks me, defame you etc
and when we all noticed that we were lacking interaction, we asked for a pq revamp, because pq was way too lacking in exp. so, like the good guy nexon is, they listened to us and revamped pq. but no one liked it, it was never like it was before.

see the pattern here? we ask nexon, nexon responds with what we want, we ask nexon, nexon responds with what we want, SO ITS NOT FREAKING NEXON, ITS US

another short example are damage cap, better equips and eventually it becomes pay to win, im sure the rest is explanatory.

so eventually this game went from interact, have fun, great way to kill time, just d1ck around

to

go on, grind, buy nx to get higher gear equipment, grind some more, boss, #4everalone

and for those who argue there are still ways to have fun, i agree too, but it is way to restricted and limited and has to many exceptions that, realistically, unless you're a hyper naruto-mode optimistic friendship of power person, its pretty much impossible

heres something you might now have noticed, and that its guild, it used to be that a noname guild would have 10~15 active people online at the same time constantly chatting and talking and that there were no real "famous" guilds and that guilds were meant as a system to just have fun

now guilds are mostly a symbol of collection of good players, and that there are no more real what i would call a "family" guild, a guild that truly makes you feel like family, and all the noname guilds with 10~15 active players on at the same time dies

Another thing is that the massive contents, there are way to many maps that people are spread out and its hard to find people, even popular spots like henesy park or henesy pot shop are empty, heck even the hospital at kerning city, did you know?

ant tunnel 1, hhg1, remeber going 1 or 2 maps left of henesys to go farm ribbon pigs? the real 4 crossways seperating perion, henesys, kerning and ellina. the what felt like an endless mini portal in each ellina mosnter map. even faraway maps such as the bathhouse in showa was filled with people at random.

but the next thing is that because we have so many maps, not only does it spread out people but, it limits people in a very practical way, maplestory is now what? 6~7gb on a 2d game? not everyone can afford to run this, also maplestory doesnt feel as innocent as it used to be, where we can tell our little cousins or siblings to go, hey! check out this awesome game called maplestory, without having to worry about the toxicity they might recieve or the sexual content they might be exposed to.

Do you guys miss the mini-maplestory series on youtube? that used to come out at a constant pace? our legacy by sogetsin? maple kombat by dray? and more? i sure do

TBH: i dont think this game can ever go back to the way it was before, some of it might not even have to do with the game itself, it might just be economy changing and that the age of "mmo-rpg" is over.

but i believe we might be able to make a difference in the upcoming game maplestory 2, even tho it would be undoubtedly different, that it wouldn't even resemble 2006~2010 maplestory, i believe that we can push that game into a more positive direction to a not so pay-to win

cuz heck, everybody would be surprised when they hear that a maplestory 2 existed and would try it from nostalgia, so there would be lots of people, we can't afford to screw up like we did this time,

i could seriously go on typing for the next 24hours about all the stuff we can, and should not do, all the nostalgia but ill leave it at this, if you guys could, pass the message along to the people who plan on playing maplestory 2, dont be so greedy and just have a heck fun of a time