[Archive] The Unveiling of Masteria

 Spoiler

*returns*

Ok, give me a moment to get caught up, and we'll get some answers...

Firstly, I was curious as to some of the process that goes into making Maple Story. What programs do you use to create the backgrounds and characters, and the programming behind it. I can understand if it's a trade secret.^^

Actually, I think Min (aka best boss ever), has an interview on Gamasutra where he talks about some of that. I can say that on our end, whenever we design something for a new area, we use a lot of common tools, quest scripts in word, that sort of thing.

Second, I have a quest from Maple Island that is uncompleteable under my "In Progress" tab on the quest log, is there any way that it can be removed? I'm a bit of a completionist and it's really bugging me to have it on there, especially since the quest no longer exists. xD

I'm fairly sure I know which one you're talking about. We're doing some more work in terms of both bugs and hackers, so we can get down to the more fun stuff.

Thirdly...ah yes! Captain Latanica. I'm sure you hear thousands of questions about the guy, but is what's currently happening with the portal intentional or accidential? You know, the portal basically "locking" after entry until a server check.

See above. We know it exists, and we're working on it. Sit tight, all that waiting won't be in vain.

Will this change and the classes be more balanced when it comes to making areas and designing and/or translating content?

Well, I'm sticking to what I said, essentially, some of the classes that didn't see as much of a benefit will be needed in the future.

Does "reporting" actually work?

Yes. Our GM's investigate them, just realize that its thousands of requests. =)

I am from New Zealand but find it very hard to relate to many things in the game due to timing. I heard there will be Maple story released for New Zealand and Australia coming soon but I have been playing since beta - will there be a way to transfer your account when this is released as I don't want to start all over again.

Can't say anything about what region is getting what version, as that's not my area.

So many people in NZ play Maple story but we dont have the itcg cards and other products that you sell - will we ever see these in NZ?

Not my area, although I personally want to see our games and products everywhere.

As you can see, my questions are to the prevention of hacking, and to the banning of hackers. Hackers are ruining MapleStory, and it's frusterating to see this.

Completely understandable. While I can't say anything about a timeline, we are looking into a few different solutions.

As a quester my ETC inventory is pretty much full, are we going to need the Omni Key or Sand Bandit Badge down the road at all, or am I safe chucking them xD?

You can toss the Omni Key.

What happened to Content Testing? Many people are wondering about it. Why did you close Tespia, and will it open again anytime soon? Testing contents before they were released on the Main Servers not only was funny, but it was also useful because we could report bugs and let you guys fix them before patching the official servers. I know you're hiring testers right now, but why doing it when you could've opened Tespia again for the latest patches and let users test the contents for you, and for free? Please reply to my question, because I'm asking myself that for a long time now. You can see I also made some posts about the question. <<< My question

Well, here's the deal with Tespia. When we opened it, our original thinking was that we'd be able to catch a lot more with the community involved and reporting things. So, typically, we'd get a few thousand reports. However, when we actually went through them individually, we got stuff like:

"OMG. I got selected."
"How do I become GM?"
"fix it"
"My ticket didn't get answered."

So, for every useful bug that we did get, we'd get around 40-50 bugs like above. So, we looked into it more, and found that only a handful of people were actually testing. So when you're dealing with thousands of potential reports, the return has to be enough for you to keep maintaining it. It takes manpower to maintain essentially 2 servers every test period, and the bottom-line is we didn't get enough legit reports for us to continue--at that point, we already knew that CWK would be experienced by everyone at once, so we made a decision to close it for the time being. Will it ever come back? Don't know for sure, but that's why its closed for now. Hope that clears things up.

Are you guys going to put The Knights of Cygnus into Global MapleStory THIS year?

No comment. =)

Q: Why did Nexon release a Lunar Event(mind of maple) that would require NX use in order to upgrade an item(Mind of maple necklace) which expires after what I think is a short time...I thought the events were meant to offer players WITH or WITHOUT NX to join in the fun of the event??

You still can do the quests, etc so far as I know.

Q: When can we expect to see the expansion of Masteria's CWK?

Soon. I'll say this now, past the actual madness we have planned for the adventure within, there's plenty of other stuff there, both overt and covert. And its not as big as the first expansion, but it is more intense.

1) Don't want to be mean but what was up with the animation "gltiches" with just about every monster in Crimsonwood Mountain/Phantom Forest? I'm mean look at it, Firebrand, Windraider, Strombreaker, Nightshadow, Elderwriath, Bigfoot, Crimsonwood Guardian all had (and still have....) animiation errors. But were some of them intentional? I mean it's annoying at times, like Elderwrith, Hit it, takes a long time to respond(compared to just about any monster outside the area) and is invincible when getting knocked back. The Curupted soilders (E.X Windraider) all react to knockback later than they should.

Well, let's just say we wanted to try something different, and obviously, it hasn't worked quite the way we envisioned it, so these will be addressed shortly. =)

2) Have you taken trainning spots into concideration when it comes to making content? I mean, Crimsonwood Mountain/Phantom forest does have some spots (Notable Crimsonwood Gaurdian, Leps, Windraider after exp buff and Typhon) but there really isn't much after that, especially with the mixed spawns with the monsters having different experience and hp. Heck, does Crimsonwood guardian drop equips? (never heard of this that's why I'm asking) Your doing a nice job adding the platforming element to Maplestory but don't forget about trainning spots too (which are lacking as a player approaches the Newtie/Skelegon level).

Of course =). Now that there's been some time, I've seen guides pop up (like SimplyBowman's) that explain how to train for the different monsters there to get the best exp. The two main things we wanted in that area were more fun training/gameplay, and being able to both solo and group for exp. Looking back on it, we accomplished that with some areas, while others might need a tweak or two to make them more functional.

1) In regards to Pirates, can we expect to see GMS made equips (weapons at least)? If so, how far off could it be before we set eyes on them?

Heh, you'll see.

2) With many of the equips being released through iTCG, with some being non-weapon (Face Stomper is not a weapon D Could we be seeing newer non-weapon equips later on as well?

There's some items that were never released that are pretty nice, and will be out soon enough.

3) In the CWK II expansion, many things and stories we have come to learn from the CWK I expansion should be coming to a close, but will there be any over-arching story points that will not be finished completely with this expansion? Such as the story behind Christopher Crimsonheart.

Yes. You can already learn quite a bit via the quests, but there's two threads in particular that will be wrapped up. Also, I'd say to do some of the Magatia quests, they'll help explain parts of it. The world is built to encourage speculation, and sometimes, we like to let you put 2 and 2 together. I've seen plenty of other threads that have some speculation right, and other speculation wrong, but that's all part of the fun. That said, you'll get some more answers soon enough.

Before I go... How are we getting into that 7th day market? a NPC pops out of nowhere on Sunday?

Mimi will be to the left of the Free Market. Also, I saw all of your questions about the Monster Book, just not answering for the time being. =)

I just hope that as a 12x archer I'll actually be able to take damage from the monsters inside (unlike Crimson Guardians)

You'll be fine to a point--the deeper you go, the harder it gets. The amount of friends you'll have to bring will make sure you're fine. =)

I'm having a really hard time getting the Ancient Storybook to obtain the Concentrate skill. The book is really rare, and the only monster it comes from is Sharks...Is there any chance that Storybooks might drop from Crimsonwood Keep monsters, or we could have an event like the chest one which so greatly helped in lowering the prices of skill Mastery Books?

Well, I'll say that we know there are Mastery/Storybooks that are simply hard to get, and we'll be addressing some of that.
So here's a question for you guys, what kind of prizes do you like? We've given out a lot over the past few years, but does stuff like concept art appeal to you guys and gals?

Here's the last NxJoeW's Q&A. Wow, I'm surprised he replied on Sunday.

EDIT: Hah, you beat me on it.