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29	November 2018

MapleStory gets an additional life having a mobile game and 3D sequel

Logging onto MapleStory last 2004 was like entering some other world, one stuffed with magic, community, and ridiculously cute child-like avatars. Today you will find dozens of games offering a similar, and quite often better, experience. But in early 2000s, the free-to-play, casual multiplayer MapleStory was singular, attracting fan videos, art, and later on on YouTubers. By 2009, MapleStory had reached a terrific 92 million MapleStory 2 Mesos players. A notable 36 percent of the players were under the age of 18, and plenty of of them likely grew out of the sport over time.

While millions still play the sport, its audience is often a fraction of the items it was previously. Today, a cult following of 14 million players remains, and Nexon, MapleStory�s parent company, did not lure in new recruits and retain them. But the players that remain can in fact spend money and help the action stay lucrative. The vast majority (70.three percent) on the user base is actually aged 18 through 30, meaning many of these now have jobs and may fund their characters� stylish clothes, gear, and battle prowess through buying prepaid cash cards or swiping their cards, which can be what I did for any spell.

The problem is that while South Korea received MapleStory 2 way back in 2015, it hasn�t yet come on the US market. Now, Nexon has launched the sequel in a very closed beta inside the Americas, Europe, and Oceania, and briefly showed a MapleStory M mobile game in beta on Android. The original release could be waning, these two games contain the promise of reviving an existing but beloved franchise. They might even inspire a fresh generation of MapleStory fans.

Nexon America President Jungsoo Lee tells The Verge in a email interview how the long delay for MapleStory 2 coming to your US market was due to your time involved with �testing and localizing the overall game through a combination of closed betas per region.� It may seem strange for such an existing game to obtain this form of attention from your large company like Nexon, but Lee says that his company knows �the power of playing the long game.� MapleStory 2�s closed beta moving on May 9th, but there�s not official release date yet correctly or MapleStory M.

As the main MapleStory aged, its daily active users were overtaken by cheaters and spammers. If you stroll in the town called Henesys where many characters stand idly while their real-life counterparts get up for any walk or even get a beverage, or on the Free Market where people trade, you�ll see that spam uses up most on the general chat, plus it�s hard to have a word in edgewise. When hunting bosses that drop rare items, you'll find cheaters running third-party programs to automatically go ahead and take items simply uses reach them. Both of these unpleasant occurrences, which grew more established as the overall game got older, contributed to MapleStory�s steady decline.

For now, the beta versions of MapleStory M and MapleStory 2 are bot-free and trading between players isn�t allowed yet, so there�s no chance of obtaining scammed on the deal. During the January beta, I tested out Maplestory M using a Samsung Galaxy S8 and located a much more streamlined version on the original desktop game. Instead of the need to use the whole QWERTY keyboard and memorize chain combos for characters, you should only need to press several buttons. As is true with all kinds of other mobile games, your character moves on it's own to quest destinations and in some cases auto hunts monsters to enable you to level up without lots of effort.

According to Lee, they realized grinding on mobile wasn�t ideal in order that they created your vehicle play mode �so that players can continue to enjoy MapleStory mobile despite if many hours of playing having a smaller screen.� Still, the car mode is less efficient than a lively player so you do have the possibility to manually kill monsters and level up, when you�re nostalgic for grinding.

If MapleStory M looks like Nexon just ported a far more manageable version from the original game onto mobile, then MapleStory 2 would be the company turning the sport into a totally animal. The director from the MapleStory 2 team, Minseok Shin, says that �MapleStory 2 isn't just a 3D conversion from the original MapleStory. While both games share some similarities, for MapleStory 2 we actually went back to your drawing board and reimagined the sport.�

Like a great many other recent massively-multiplayer role-playing games being subtracted from Asia including Blade and Soul or Twin Saga, MapleStory 2 has beautiful graphics, an overwrought storyline about saving the universe from evil, and distinct classes to experiment with. Familiar characters are redrawn to become enticing and adorable in three dimensions. The sequel also takes away the initial game�s gender-locked classes and limited variety of looks inside the character creation page. (If you chose to learn a demon slayer inside original, you�d ought to spend actual money or forage to get a beauty coupon when you wanted to eliminate the character�s natural gray skin and red eyes.) I thought we would create a warrior-type Berserker, a dude who may have a pretty angry and competitive backstory, but I was competent to customize his appearance being feminine and wear pink curls and multi-colored eyes.

The game emphasizes customization and individuality over generic defaults. It has an obsession with asking should you want to screenshot any section of the experience, also it automatically saves screenshots inside a designated folder within your computer. Perhaps the biggest indication of the sport�s ambitions is basically that you finally get those own house. I never noticed this while playing the initial game, but old Maplers are essentially nomads. MapleStory 2 fixes this matter by giving that you simply big old house in order to craft your own personal little corner of the overall game.

Despite the shift to 3D, MapleStory 2 smartly retains critical factors of the overall game and storytelling that made the first so distinctive. Certain towns such as the mushroom-filled, cheery huts of Henesys, plus the cool, urban thief hideout that is certainly Kerning City, are kept and theme music plays after you enter, bringing back a solid sense of nostalgia. The storyline has evolved and added a multitude of new characters, nevertheless the core on the tale continues to be the same: it�s the evil Dark Mage versus the gorgeous goddess. The ever-popular thief class remains available and are generally wizard, knight, priest, archer, heavy gunner, and assassin. Some less-welcome elements on the original remain in-place, such as notoriously glitchy Nexon game launcher.

Still, once you�re in the experience, a great deal can be forgiven, given how it�s town that really definitely makes the experience fun. At its core MapleStory is definitely an online destination for friends to assemble, similar to Club Penguin or Neopets. I unexpectedly met my current boyfriend of nearly 36 months through MapleStory when an idle summer drew us both back into the experience, and possess met several Maple friends in person from across the nation. We keep in contact, even when none of us participate in the old game much anymore. The people of MapleStory 2 seem nice enough for the moment. When I died and also got pinned with a tombstone, I entered chat for help, and someone actually walked over and revived me, before telling me he hadn�t forced me to be earlier as he thought I was an non-playable character because of my suspiciously simple username.

It�s tough to predict where MapleStory 2 go, whether or not this will capture that same dedicated audience as the predecessor, or if it is going to fall in the same traps that triggered its demise. Some in the things that plagued the first game, for instance DDOS attacks during one winter and random lag, are due to age and outdated infrastructure. The game has a limited level of meaningful end-game content, which may bore veteran players who burned over the main story.

Worst of most, the existing MapleStory a pay-to-win streak by using a feature aptly named the Cash Shop. I was responsible for spending almost $4,000 about this game over a year playing my character Mercedes, an elf queen who wields dual bowguns. Each seemingly minor upgrade to my wardrobe and battle stats added up after a while, contributing to that significant amount. And I wasn�t alone. Players who spend a real income in the action are at a severe advantage when compared with unfunded players. Challenging bosses like Lotus, who is able to shoot lasers coming from all angles, while rocks fall through the sky, require multiple players with funding to synergy and defeat. (Luckily, I was capable to re-sell a great deal of that gear, recouping in close proximity to half products I spent in the overall game.)

Lee admits that it was a worry with the initial game. �We have rightfully earned a history of publishing pay-to-win games,� he tells. �With our upcoming slate of titles developed for the Western audience, we're attempting to turn more than a new leaf, creating games which might be truly free to learn.� He says that to help keep MapleStory 2 and MapleStory M from becoming pay-to-win, Nexon is �not requiring players to repay to get certain elements needed for winning,� also it will disclose loot crate rates upfront, a more and more common practice.

MapleStory M and MapleStory 2 will have certain features which might be eased by premium currency, for instance getting special haircuts and eyes, quicker transportation across towns, and additional skill pages. But players aren�t at any significant disadvantage should they don�t pay money for those features. People have debated on Nexon forums regardless of if the Korean version of MapleStory 2 is pay-to-win plus they haven�t arrive at any true consensus.
There�s additionally a chance for important changes that Nexon can introduce in their mobile and 3D iterations of MapleStory. The developers for MapleStory M have declared that, while the action currently doesn�t help you marry other players, if marriage is added you will have support for LGBTQ weddings. That�s a pace up on the original Maple, which didn�t allow same-sex marriage, paralleling South Korea�s real-life refusal to legally recognize gay marriage. Similarly, specific jobs and is no longer gender bound, even though the experience still only offers two genders. These MS 2 Mesos shifts are as meaningful as updated graphics, assisting to move a 15-year-old game in to the modern day.

Recently, I go to MapleStory 2�s main city, Tria, along with the square looks so bustling with life, it lags if a person jumps. But it�s the favorable kind of lag that shows the server is alive. Someone is playing all of the greatest hits on the 90�s, from Aqua�s �Barbie Girl� towards the Backstreet Boys� �I Want it That Way� around the keyboard, a fresh feature included with MapleStory 2. From this vantage point, MapleStory is looking the furthest from dead so it�s been since 2009.