I remember the day pirates were released. Next thing you know it was pirates everywhere for like a week then it all went back to regular classes. Broa Thief & I/L For life!!!
hey man. i don't usually write comments but this video hit so close to home for i can't not say something. there's so many things i relate to in this video. my first memories of maple story were being young (around 10-12) watching my older brothers play maplestory on the family computer. they never let me play, but i didn't care. i would sit and watch them and it was just so fun to watch i loved every minute of it. eventually i created an account and my dad helped me set up an email and stuff like that. i think my first class was a warrior. i remember from even just opening the game and being on the first home screen, the music, the nature asethic , all of it just felt like i was thrown into a entirely different worl. full of peace and vibrant colours, ethereal music and pure bliss. anyways , i could go on forever. i just wanted to tell you that im currently 25 and working 40 hours a week, paying bills, having relationships, and yet i come home from work every night and open up maple story private servers to try and re love the golden age that i hold so dear to my heart. but it never feels the same. and it never will. the end of ur video saying it's time to wake up instead of continuing to dream made me actually cry. i cried so hard because i knew exactly what you meant as soon as you said it. i'm not a kid anymore. i'm not the 12 year old boy sittin on the computer in the living room while my dad is making dinner for us to eat and watch. a movie after. all of that is gone. as much as i come home after work and try to run to my nostalgia escape. i can't anymore. idk why im still crying writing this but this game gave such a fuckin special place in my heart like no other. words just can't express it. thank you so much for making such a long detailed video for the old school maplers to sulk and reminisce to.
your story about Tina is like my story but reverse. for a second i thought you might have been the one that i spent hours talking to, became good friends with, and eventually lost touch with. but i think it was just that kind of game. unless your name is ian… then hello again :)
Nostalgia is the most beautiful form of pain. Everything you said was spot on. Like you, I often felt alienated during middle and high school, and maplestory was my outlet and the one place I felt like I belonged. I remember every friday I would rush to my computer after school and greeted by the numerous "WB"s on friends chat as I logged in. Being in my late 20s, that joy is seldom ever felt anymore. Like you, I also had a special friendship with someone in the game. Even though we've never met up, the connection we had was more real than many relationships I've had. She was the first person that taught me how to love and will always have a special place in my heart. Even though the game is a shell of what it used to be. I am glad I had the chance to play it. I will never forget the good times I had and the friendship and bonds I've formed in the game
As for the nostalgia, I want to say it's *not* just because of your age at the time. I'm about a decade older, and I was an adult by the time MapleStory launched in North America in 2005. It was its art and music which drew me in, creating a tranquil respite for an otherwise tumultuous life. My girlfriend is slightly older than me, and she had the same sort of experiences with the game back in the day, loving its aesthetic - but we wouldn't meet until a decade later, and came to find out we both played and loved MapleStory in our early adult years. We've named all of our animals after MapleStory places or characters. Yes, a lot of my memories are colored by nostalgia, and shaped by my life circumstances at the time - but that's true for *every* period of my life, including today. I really believe what most made MapleStory special was its art and music. If there were ever to be a successful MapleStory sequel, it would really need to capture that same artistic vibe, that same ambiance, or it would just never feel like MapleStory.
Games are no longer made mainly to provide as much fun but get as much profit. It shows in design principles and people feelings about it. What drives them is usually addiction, not "love" to game. It also creates a lot of frustration instead of bliss. There are obviously good games released as well, just not as many.
@@olitheballer There's going to be a subjective element to any experience, gaming or otherwise. When you're a kid, the experience is going to be a bit different. For me, _Super Mario 64_ was the most magical gaming experience I ever had, and that was in large part because it spearheaded a paradigm shift by being the game that set the bar for 3D. I still get really emotional hearing the old-school MapleStory music, especially Ellinia. Back when I played, the game was super grindy because there wasn't that much content, so I would spend hours on new characters grinding in the slime tree in Ellinia. Back then, someone having something as basic as a red triangle shield awed me - although other players who were more "pro" would probably scoff and saw getting something like that was easy even back then. If I recall correctly, when I first played, there was just one server (Scania?), and then eventually we got a second (Bera, I'm pretty sure). I don't even think there were third job classes in the game yet, but honestly it took me forever to ever get to my second class. But I remember feeling so happy getting the skill to increase Warrior accuracy because of how miserable it was trying to hit anything, and everyone said getting too much Dex would gimp you in the long run. tl;dr Maybe it wasn't the same playing as an adult, but I still have huge sentimentality towards the game, especially the art and music.
That was bloody brilliant. 29 years old here and I'm exactly where alot of us are, clinging onto the past and hesitant to move forward. I feel comforted knowing I'm not the only one and that all of us will eventually move onto something better!
Im 25, it brings me comfort to know we all feel the same way, it’s an unspoken shared understanding. I find strength in knowing we share this feeling, I hope your lives work out that you all find love and produce children and be financially stable to be able to enjoy life and create new moments with no stress
19 here, I think I'm one of the younger MapleStory OGs. I was lucky enough to have a cool older brother who let me watch him play, and if I was lucky, let me play myself. I think I was 5 or 6 when he started playing. Hearing the music from MapleStory brings back a huge explosion of nostalgia in a way that nothing else can. I wish there was a way to see how many collective hours my brother, sister, and I had on MapleStory. I wouldn't be surprised if it's in the ballpark of 2000 hours
I played MapleStory from 2005-2009...it was one of the most special times of my life. The amount of friends I made, quests I did and maps I've explored made this game so much fun to play. In a weird way, it didn't feel like I was playing a game...it was like I was experiencing something much more that I can't describe with words. I was 14 when I first played MapleStory...I'm 31 now. To all the younger people reading this, cherish all the moments you have in whatever game or activity you're doing. Time goes by fast.
I played Maplestory when I was 12. There was so much fun to be had. Exploring the dangerous area where high level monsters were at. I remember sleepywood and exploring that dungeon all the way to the end. Kerning PQ was probably the most fun I had in any MMO. Idk how the time past so fast and I'm 31 now as well. It feels weird, I don't feel like I changed that much, way more mature of course but I'd love to relive those moments again if possible.
About once a year I get the nostalgic urge to revisit MapleStory. Invariably I'll look up which private servers are popular at the moment, and spend a few dozen hours in the world. Each time I learn the same lesson: even if the game is preserved as it was in the mid 2000's, the community has changed. The way people play the game has changed. And me, I've changed. It wasn't really the game that was so magical for me, it was exploring the world at a time in my life, my early teens, when the world was as big and new and exciting as Maple World. It was spending time with my friends, both real life and the ones I made in the game. It was never knowing what was around the corner. I'll never be able to feel the way I felt in 2005, and that's okay.
Same, it killed runescape for me. You didn't have to be a member to explore the whole world. As a broke kid, I could fully enjoy the game without begging for cash. Never returned to runescape after maplestory.
Great video man! I actually played an old-school Maplestory server (MapleRoyals) back when lockdown started and I got to re-live a lot of the memories. I started a new character from scratch and I leveled up slowly and trained hard and played PQ with other players and made a few friends along the way. I even completed the goddamn Zakum jump quest and made it to forth job and it was honestly super fun. I felt I had finally achieved my childhood dream and I was glad to be able to had the chance to do so. But I agree with you that this game takes up SOOOOO much time. It was such a pain to level up and there were some levels that were just excruciating to play like from 100-120. And I was already playing on a 4x EXP server. I really have no idea how people managed to do it back then. And once you finally hit higher level you really started to see the flaws of the game. The classes were super unbalanced. You could level up so fast if you are a 4th job mage with full map attack, but if you chose the wrong class then you are just going to suffer. And some classes have such low HP that you can't even join boss runs unless you did HP washing. Which is sooooo expensive and time-consuming to do. And you should be enjoying the game once you reach 4th job, instead you had to go make enough money just to restart another character so you could HP wash it so you could FINALLY boss. I personally think the true joy of this game is in the early levels. When you can choose from exploring the world or doing quests or doing PQs to level up. And you learn new skills that keeps you engaged in the game. Most importantly, you are froced to play with other players because it is just the faster way to level up. Because underneath the surface of the cute game design, this is a time-consunimg, repetitive training, non-balanced game that has a lot of charm. I loved that I got to re-experience it a little bit and I must say the jorney of training was more fun that reaching the detination itself. Thank you Maple for taking up so much of my time in life. But I think it's time for me to let you live in my memory :)
I've been playing MapleRoyals on/off since 2015 and I love it! Other than HP washing, classes were very balanced imo. Mages are absolutely useless at bosses (except for Bishops), so they dominated grinding popular maps. All of the other classes are great at bossing and suck at grinding (compared to mages). I have a Bishop and a Paladin. The Paladin levels up very easily by doing boss fight after boss fight (elementally weak bosses are loads of fun!). The Bishop got boring after I could 1-hit skellies. Also, minimal HP washing was necessary with the Paladin; but, I could see how it would be a pain for thieves and bowmen. Honestly though (especially after playing Maple in its current state), this is the most balanced I've ever seen the game. It's lots of fun to play when I'm bored!
@@________________4924 read up that you average 20-30 HP and can only do it once per day. The forum people did the math and after a year of doing it daily you'd only get around 10k HP which seems like a long time to grind just to boss
I've tired to get back to maplestory but the sense of community and making friends isn't there anymore, it just feels lonely. People just don't cower against the Balrog on the flying ship together anymore.
@@ericleavitt9281 but that is the issue; the community is outside of the game now and if you want to participate in anything you are expected to use this other software... that is one of the leading issues of why these games lost their soul
@pepega clapper I am pretty sure I said "one of the leading issues". I am not trying to pin it down on one thing because there are many aspects such as private servers, which only further helped in splitting up the community. And while private servers would generally have more of that community feeling that I mentioned, the same thing happen. I would say, considering I was born in the 90's, I know exactly what I am talking about.
@@ericleavitt9281 Yeah but bossing makes up like 1-2% of the overall game and has a bunch of extremely annoying, outdated, and unnecessary restrictions which make it fairly frustrating. A majority of the game is the braindead 1 shot grinding which is far easier than grinding was Pre-big Bang and even post big bang through unleashed, requiring no real effort.
Having just watched this video in bed in the dark at almost 2AM, I couldn’t help but cry. Now 28 and hopefully making my 13 year-old self proud, I think back to the absolutely magical relationships and experiences this game gifted us. In retrospect, the game was clearly such an key player in our formative years. Between the delayed gratification of leveling and the community building of guild management to the macroeconomics of the Free Market, I’m truly grateful to have been part of such a movement. Thank you for this, The Cleric
I really hope you see this. While I love Maplestory, I have to compliment YOU on this video. You really captured the whole experience and created a video essay that encapsules why it's impossible to go back to that time with such a good set of arguments and words. The ending really hit a deep spot inside me, and I'm sure it must've already hit that same spot for many players who've kept coming back to maplestory just to realize it will never be the same as it was. I've started suspecting that adulthood and healing have a lot to do with lovingly saying goodbye to the parts of me that can no longer exist, and this feels like one. So thank you for this video. And you're a really good storyteller.
Don't be sad that it's over, be happy that it happened. It was truly the best years of my gaming life. Thank you to everyone I have ever met in the game and I wish I can see and hug you all.
I'm actually a recently returned maple player, got back into it this last summer and been playing it close to daily. The community is actually pretty thriving, just not in the same way that old Maplestory was. Now all Regular servers are comparable empty but Reboot has people chatting, It's just not that often in-game. As with almost all gaming things like discord have taken over and most discourse happens in guild chats/class discords. I regularly just hang out in my guilds discord and chat for hours while playing maple. Now things like PQ's have definitely fallen out of favour but bossing content is actually really amazing right now. Bosses like Will demand that your team knows the mechanics and carefully work together as one person failing certain boss mechanics can reset the bosses health healing a bit or blocking progression. For me personally outside of grinding the core gameplay of Maplestory shifted to Bossing and it is really fun to do. Another thing however is as the game grows and gets more and more content the player base they have kept playing naturally moves to new zones and new areas. Of course, there are ways that games can combat this, but it's also the nature of most MMOs and so as noted in the video a returning player might find that the world feels empty, when in reality the currently active players are just elsewhere. Places like Arcane river have characters asking around for help doing early quests in the area which are increasingly difficult to do for the first time. Monetization is a thing, but I only play Reboot and can only speak for that. Since Reboot is completely about being willing to put the time into the game to progress I haven't once felt pressured or like it was necessary to spend money on the game. The like 25 dollars I have spent over this past year have felt like I got my value out of it as it was just for pets which are nice Reboot is in a great place right now, updates are coming out that keep the increasing quality of life, and there have been a few steps in the right direction towards communicating with the player base. Now there are tons of problems with the game like any other, but I firmly believe that modern Maplestory is an objectively better game than old Maplestory. People wouldn't still be playing it if it wasn't at least an okay game. I do share some feelings of nostalgia with old Maplestory, I have so many memories of when I played it years ago. However, I enjoy the game it has become a lot more. I found a community of players in it, and I love the new content that's getting added. It took me years of coming back to it for a week or a month, but when I stopped playing the game to relive my old memories I found something new to appreciate within it. The core of what I'm trying to say is that what we miss about old maple isn't what we think it is. It isn't that modern games discourage community or that the game has become a lot worse. Just as the gaming market is more saturated, there are more choices that fit an individual niche. Old players have also likely gotten a lot older, have less time to play a game like Maplestory as much as is necessary. The game hasn't changed nearly as much as the person who once loved it. Maplestory has changed in ways that allowed it to survive into the modern day. It's actually still thriving in Korea, like shifting around the top 10 most played.
This is so relatable. You really captured the experience we all had and love for the game! Maplestory login music will always be the most nostalgic thing ever omg.
followed by the awkward login pin where the numbers kept jumping around and sometimes rolling for hours until you got the perfect 4/4 stats on a new character haha
Hey everyone. My name is Ahmed Albastaki, Co founder of TWW gaming studio. We plan to create our own version of classic Maplestory game. might take us 3-5 years. But we feel your pain. I might have watched this video 4 times by now. And I still get goosebumps at the end of it.
I don’t enjoy criticizing stuff like this, but that ending was so cheesy. You can play a game without making it your life. The argument that there’s no market for an old-school MapleStory server is inconsistent. You even stated previously that there are people out there who want a slower more hard-core and methodical grind experience i.e. old school RuneScape. You made great points throughout the video, but in the end undermined it all with a corny “now I’m a grown up” monologue. If what you say is true then people shouldn’t be replaying Elder Scrolls, Final Fantasy, Crash Bandicoot, Super Mario, etc. You don’t have to be a kid to have enjoyed this game in its prime. You don’t need boundless free time to sink into it. If anything Old school Maplestory would be a chill and social game to hop on after work. If you need an example, the private servers doing this exact same thing are a fairly accurate glimpse into what it’d look like. MapleLegends probably being the best example of a modernized old school Maplestory without the needed redesigns for bosses, abilities, and late-game reworking. All those aspects being pretty straightforward and easy to change given the game has already been made. The developers are sitting on 12 years of hindsight. One official poll would clear up whether people want an Old School Maplestory or not. Although it’s pretty clear what the outcome would be.
If you remember hunting for a pan lid from green mushrooms while spending days trying to get one level to finally get magic claw over magic bolt, you grew up in the absolute best time in MapleStory. Edit: honorable mentions include: finally getting a party in Kerning City PQ because you spent hours trying to get a track and spamming it until someone picked you up. Chilling with all the level 50 homies in HHG1, just to show off your damage to all the newbs coming in from Victoria Island. Spamming your crappy scrolls and equips in FM1 before stalls became available. Taking the VIP taxi, wasting all your hard earned mesos, because you thought it was gonna be something fucking amazing, only to end up trapped in Sleepywood and not able to get out because the monsters were too strong and you were too broke to leave. Getting that 2nd job enhancement and finally being able to hang out with up with your more hard-core friends, only to realize that your one SP point in your next skill was worse than your previous attack skill, and going back to the same training area to hopefully gain one level to get that wnd job skill to the point where it actually helped. Finally reaching level 50 and farming horns from the kitties in orbis to sell....or having enough mesos to buy horns so you could powerlevel your newly created character from 10 to 30 instantly. Breaking your keyboard trying to finish stupid fucking jump quests (looking at you, kerning city). Getting to level 50 so you could finally go on a Zakum run, and hiding in the corner with your fingers on every pot available to hopefully survive and get a Zak helmet. Spending an hour to get that PERFECT roll to start out a new character. Finally getting an AoE that attacked multiple monsters (I/L mage lightning, Cleric heal, etc.) Being so jealous of how fucking cool Assassins were, with those throwing stars, regretting the fact that you made a fire mage, but not willing to try and get another character to level 30 so you could throw cool stars. Finally finding a good enough group of people who knew how to beat Ludi PQ quickly. Climbing down all the damn levels in the Orbis tower, then realize there was a way to warp. Making noob friends while on the boat and taking a chance on coming outside and being killed by Balrog. Watching in awe as Clerics completely took over the gold zombie teeth trade with their heal spamming...wondering again why you chose your class. Wondering why the fuck you can't hit Jr Snekis. Hunting Mushmom by tracking and changing channels for hours. Finally being strong enough to travel to El Nath, and hearing that dreadful music when you finally get to the werewolves to hopefully get that sexy Evil Wings staff. Almost breaking out in tears when you watched that equip you've been grinding so hard for, finally fly up from the monster after weeks of grinding. Showing up to your people with a full NX outfit, flexing hard as shit. Getting a Maple girlfriend. Having said girlfriend get stolen by a guy who has more cash shop items. Seeing that "clear" after that PERRECT fucking PQ run. Then losing the track. ______ Fuck man, this game was perfect. Nothing will ever beat that time of my life, and at 37 years old, I've never found another game that has, or will ever, fill that void.
Reading this one year after OP and smirking at every point! I felt all of those. And continued playing until after I hit 120 on my wind archer so my crossbowman could use that one skill. What a grind that was do get damn peridots!!!
wow you just described the feelings of the most old school maplers. I too have not find any similar game till now. Man it was just amazing when you could enter a new higher level map after so many weeks of hard training. The game was rewarding.
Maplestory Pre-big bang was such a nostalgic time, I wish they would just give us a classic server already but I know we will never get that 😢, I am glad this video showed up in my recommendeds.
I remember when Dual Blade came out, the first class that required a microtransaction to fully play. You had to buy the mastery books with real cash instead of finding them in the world like normal. Even 14 year old me knew that this was the beginning of the end :(
I also distinctively remember that they made you skip straight to level.30 if you made a Dual Blade, which was insane to me when I remember grinding the ass out of my magician for 3 months playing on/off just to get to second job.
Evans actually came out before dual blade and required you to purchase some of their important skills as well. Namely Magic Guard. Evans only had 4 purchasable skills then DB was next with 6 purchasable skills. Thankfully that trajectory did not continue, but we got cubes instead which was honestly worse. I would have gladly paid a premium for the new characters than had the entire game unrecognizably destroyed by cubes.
I came back in 2020 and it definitely was a rush of nostalgia and I even found some old friends from pre-big bang. I got to level 250 and quit again in 2021. The game was just incredibly time consuming, but not in a bad way, but in a way where I felt like I was falling back into old habits of my younger childhood and playing endless hours getting lost in it. It just wasn't feasible being an adult and enjoying mindless grinding.
@@saminates2002and then it speeds up at 260 and then slows down later, but at that point no fomo just do dailies and you should be good bc dailies give so much exp at this point.
I was 200 right before BB. I came back around 2016ish to play again but i just couldn’t with the whole pay to win mindset. I only made it to 204 before quitting for good. Definitely felt like a totally different game. Even people were more concerned about sitting on a better chair than hanging out and chatting it out at Henny
For anyone who wants to reexperience the good old maple or even play it for the first time, it is still possible. Private servers (MapleLegends, MapleRoyals) do a pretty good job of bringing that classic experience back. Obviously most of the joy is the nostalgia and memories, but it is possible to have some of that fun again and make new friends again. Even today the old game works as a fun social game, the enjoyment of the game never actually came from the numbers it was the friends and interaction. Definitely worth a try again even today.
Private servers on a good day has a couple hundred players, no where even near where maple story was. "Old" maplestory worked so well because it was played as a social interactive game, and it's massive player population in the early stages of it's life made that concept click. Up to level 50+ which back then was a enormous grind, I would say 90% of the players did PQs, and again that was such a great game mechanic which was enabled by the fact on any given day, any given channel you can easily find hundreds of players also eagerly waiting to join parties to play together with random strangers. That's no longer the game it is today. Especially with the introduction of reboot, which was the answer to pay-to-win changes to the main regular server, maplestory has now become more and more of a solo game until you truly reach end game content and are then forced to party up to defeat high end bosses.
As much as i love this game I can't for the life of me get back to this game because the nostalgia and the fact that my bestfriend or someone id like to call "brother" passed recently who i played this game with everyday just gets to me like a literall punch to the face. It also serves a reminder that playing this can never have the same effect on me again and that if i try im afraid that i will stop 5 minutes in and just go away to cry.
I cannot express exactly how much this video resonates with how I have felt for years since I stopped playing MapleStory. I began and ended my journey in MapleStory about the same time frame as you. The friendships I established with other Maplers, the countless hours I spent sitting in little corners of hidden streets or Maya's house chatting with friends, all the times exploring the Maple world with my friends, and all the events and PQ's will never be forgotten. I remember certain spots that I would always sit and talk with special friends JUST LIKE YOU. Our Maple experience was so similar and I'm so glad I found this video. This video reminded me of a lot of the small little details and quirks that made MapleStory the unique and exciting game it was. Tracking players to see when they would get out of a PQ made me lol because I remember doing that. To hear you talk throughout this video, it sounded like my exact mindset whenever I have nostalgic feelings about MapleStory. Please know that you are not alone in your feelings and I thank you for making this video because it made me truly realize that I am not alone in my nostalgic feelings. MapleStory will have a special place in my heart forever.
Absolutely loved this video, it really encaptures the feeling of nostalgia I and many others have for this game ♡ Before the big bang update and the release of the pirate class, my brother introduced this game to me when I was only 7 years old, I played it actively all the way through until I was 17 years old. Countless of friend groups come and gone, so many unfiltered conversations with strangers at the convenience of anonymity, an incredible amount of fond memories that I will forever hold dear. I basically grew up alongside this game and I do not regret a moment of it, the maple world was so magical to me as a kid. Once a year or so I get that nostalgic itch and log back in again, only to be met with an overwhelming amount of information like you mentioned, I completely understand that feeling. Some of my all-time favorite tracks are: - Happyville: White Christmas - Ellinia: Missing You - Ereve: Raindrop Flower - Maplestory Theme Music - Intro Thank you for creating this video!
I never played MapleStory during its prime and often felt like I missed out on a piece of history. Only last year I got to play with a couple of friends in a private server, MapleSaga. But unfortunately, because my laptop is a Mac, I had to jump through several hoops involving an emulator program to get it to work, which had a limited time free trial. We managed to cheese the trial setting the "first open" date to way in the future (literal troll physics), but eventually I got hit with their backup trial and couldn't play anymore. Sure, the game was grindy as hell, but it was the world to explore and feeling like you're there by your friends in it what made it all feel special. All in all, I'm glad I got to experience it and should I get the chance, I'd go back to it. Also I am convinced the soundtrack was scientifically designed to give you nostalgia cus good lord I felt it hard before even making an account.
I'm glad there are so many other people that have such an intense psychological connection to their memories of this game. Sometimes I feel like it's crazy that I'm as old as I am now and yet still have so many fond recollections of my exploration of Victoria Island and beyond.
Something I've thought a lot about lately, and is relevant to this video, is the idea of just getting older and looking at "them kids these days" and what they're doing. What I did as a kid was absolutely nothing like what my parents did when they were kids. They didn't have games like Maple Story or private Ragnarok Online servers or anything like that to play. They... you know... went outside. My grandparents also went outside. My great grandparents went outside. We were playing with dolls since the beginning of human history, but we only playing Maple Story for one very brief span of time. So I thought maybe I would grow old to watch the children of my generation play MMOs like Maple Story or Runescape or Tibia or Vanilla WoW and all that... and you know what I've realized? Well I've realized just what this video is saying. They aren't playing the same kinds of games as we were. A game like Pokemon Unite, like Fortnite, these free to play with battle passes and monetization schemes designed to get you onto a treadmill that funnels you into the whale hunting grinders to suck cash out of your credit card is NOT comparable to what I did as a kid. I feel no nostalgia at all when I look at "them kids these days" and I doubt anybody younger than me will either. I know I'll never be able to return to my childhood, but I thought maybe I'd be able to reminisce through looking at today's children. I guess not.
You know, there's a lot of truth to this comment. I really, really don't like the implementation of predatory monetization systems taking advantage of kids, it certainly wasn't as figured out when we were growing up on these games, but I think one thing to consider is that a lot of kids these days are also still experiencing their own MapleStory or Runescape era through games like Minecraft and Roblox, and what's really beautiful about that is that gaming has become lot more accessible to all kinds of kids and giving them creative tools like Minecraft is going to inspire an entire generation of future game developers.
i am part of that forgotten generation, X. i was in my late 20s when i first got into MS in 2005. even as an older-than-your-average player, the feelings shared in the vid and this comment are still there in us. the difference being it's weird for me to voice it. maybe because of my hard knock upbringing i was taught to bottle all that mushy feelings up. great vid great comment.
I have to admit, i do feel like i've became a slave to maplestory nostalgia. I felt so much grief for the game being changed to a point where i couldn't recognize it. Because i had to deal with bullying, problems with family, grades at school and social neglect... i used maplestory to fulfill my fantasy, where everything was so bring, colorful and adventurous. Watching this video reminded me how nothing lasts forever. The game changed in every way, and so did i. I played the game since i was 8, now i'm 22. But at the same time, i can accept it, and feel glad that i hard such awesome opportunity to live such a moment
I mean you can download an old school private server to live the original experience but it wont be the same, the main "problem" is we just aren't kids anymore.
@@S.O.N.E I myself don't think so, I think the main issue is the factors that combined to make those gaming experiences possible aren't at all present anymore in this era.
I barely have words to describe how spot-on you are about this game. I had a best friend too.. from old Maple... and I only started (late) in 2009.. so I barely had time to really enjoy MapleStory before Big Bang ruined it. I'm really happy you mentioned RuneScape. I started that game in 2007, when I was like 8 years old.. and it seems like no one likes the types of games I like (MapleStory, RuneScape, Minecraft, Dark Souls, etc.). I've tried a bunch of MMORPGs, because I get tired of "finishing" a game that just dies and never gets any updates.. but then hit a wall with MMORPGs feeling so cloned off each other, boring.. uninviting, exactly as you describe. I was shocked by your conclusion though. I feel very differently actually. I became a Video Game Engineer because I believe that these memories are more than just nostalgia, and that we as adults can RELEARN to slow down and devote time to casually playing a game like old MapleStory with friends, and we relearn how to chill and explore maps like we used to. There's something so obvious and special with MapleStory, that now no longer exists in current MapleStory. I absolutely believe it's not all lost, and that it's possible to reignite the spark we felt for years with this game. I dream that one day, I'll be able to release my own game that has its own charm, encourages players to play and socialize with each other as opposed to a massively single-player game with 1000s of lifeless clones of you running around.. I dream of a game that challenges this all, that hope isn't lost and that it's more than just nostalgia. I know most people don't seem to believe it's possible, and that's why many of them didn't become software engineers like I have. Almost every day since Feb 17, 2015, I've been studying Unity/C# and more and more advanced software engineering to make it more and more possible.. and nowadays trying to get better at rapid prototyping rather than getting stuck. Just because something is really difficult to achieve, doesn't make it impossible. If you have a dream, go for it. Don't let people tell you that you can't.
we’re the same age, with a similar story. im excited by your passion, and i’d love to play your game when it comes out :) good luck my friend, thank you for being so passionate and sharing your ideas with the world
I'm currently a level 255 Explorer Pirate (Cannoneer) on the Reboot server, and while I certainly can't play daily anymore (work and education take up most of my time), I do have a perspective into the modern "endgame" Maplestory player experience that I'd like to share, with my own insights on the gameplay/social aspects of the game and how I've documented the changes therein. Do note that this is my experience in Reboot, and while I used to play in regular servers pre-Big Bang update, I don't engage with modern-day regular servers. TO BE CLEAR, I am not writing this as a rebuttal or anything like that - I heavily agree with the overarching themes and details of your video. I just want to offer my perspective for a more complete understanding of what Maplestory CURRENTLY is. ((1)) How has the social aspect changed? I imagine this is what people miss the most about old Maplestory, and I'd like to announce that this social aspect is still alive and thriving!... Just, not in the same form it used to be. This has a lot to do with where current players perceive the "meat" of the game to be situated at. With things like Tera Burning Events that let you level a character three times as fast until you hit level 200 (which is waaaay easier to reach these days), there is a clear split in the TYPE of communication you receive before and after that breakpoint. Before level 200, there are always a bunch of people willing to help you out with finding training maps for your preferred class, skill point allocation, unique tips and tricks, helpful quests to complete, and so on, but you also don't often get more casual conversation due to the fact that unless you're over level 200, you're seen as either a mule class that's only being made to increase the account's Legion Level (a system where you get account-wide permanent bonuses for trying all of the classes), or just an exploratory character to see if you even like the class, which means there's no guarantee you're going to stick around. And with a player base that sees very few new-bloods enter the game, social consistency is paramount. AFTER Level 200, though, it's like you meet a whole new demographic of people, primarily through GUILDS. Guilds often have their own Discord servers where you can post memes, voice chat while grinding, plan boss raids way more effectively, and organize events like game nights, giveaways, etc. Once players know you're in it for the long haul (to some degree), there is a vibrant social sphere that opens up to you. There are obviously people that aren't going to like that communication is more efficient on a 3rd-party application rather than ingame, and I genuinely sympathize - Nexon's attempts at in-game socialization have been wildly overtaken by the ease of Discord. However, that does not change the reality of the situation: Hit 200, join a guild, and the social options open up to you, but it won't ever be the same as old Maplestory. ((2)) How has the gameplay aspect changed? There's way, way too much to cover in one comment, so I'll limit it to what's directly relevant to your video. Namely, what the hell happened to party quests, and what's the state of things like potentials? Starting with party quests: Levelling to 200 is way easier now, so while back in the day party quests were the best way to gain EXP, now grinding is far more efficient. There used to be party play maps where players gained multiplicative XP boosts based on how many people were in the party, but it was plagued with leechers, griefing and hackers, so the idea was indefinitely shelved much to my infinite anger. Fucking loved party play maps, bring them back Nexon you animal bastards. Anyways, this was the direct cause of PQs falling out of favour before level 200. AFTER Level 200, there... uh, just aren't any party quests for that level range. Instead, all of that development effort has been funneled into a far, far larger selection of BOSS RAIDS. These are the kinds of bosses that you really can't solo early on in a character's progression unless you're a mechanical god or willing to grind gear a good ways past the minimum requirements for a month or two. Therefore, this is where the party play portion of gameplay thrives. This ties in to the guild stuff I mentioned in the previous point, where you can find players to party up with you, or contribute to a guild's global ranking via the Flag Race or Sharenian Culvert challenges to have a stronger player mentor or carry you through the boss. This is also paired with the fact that most of the best rewards are given by bosses now, not party quests. Harder bosses obviously grant better rewards, to the point where the big-daddy bosses require you to create a regular weekly party to consistently beat it, which means you build up a strong rapport with your fellow party members. In a way, this IS kinda the way party quests worked in the past, but it's received such a massive image change that it requires a shift in mentality to get used to. Potentials, I have far less to speak about. The only reason the system is playable for me is because I play in Reboot server, where you can't buy it with IRL currency, only mesos. It's grindy, for sure, but it's a damn sight better than what the poor bastards in the regular servers have to deal with. You'd have to pay me my weight in gold to defend that dumpster fire of a system. There is a LOT I'm leaving out of this analysis, and this comment is still this long. If you have any other questions, feel free to ask as you please.
This is a great comment, I appreciate you being respectful while trying to inform me about these changes rather than being rude about it. I definitely got some insight I would have had to put a lot more time into the current version of the game to fully understand. I'm really glad the social aspect still exists, albeit in a different way.
@@wizawhat The game is a chore now. It takes like 8 hours to hit 200 then you get op skills. Once 200 you unlock new areas every 5 levels, certain areas give u a matching "orb" . Each orb gets a set of daily quests so you can level it up. Once you level it up you need to pay meso. How do u get meso? Daily instance quests. What do u do after you that? daily bosses. Then what you ask? weekly quests. Then what? Grind until the next day to do it again, or do other daily things like commerci for gear. After about 6 months of this you get to fight the first tier of "hard" bosses then you go back into the cycle^^^ until the next phase only for it to take 4-5x as long and more requirements for the next set of gear. You grind so you can be better at grinding.
@@PeachiiWubs do you ever reached endgame of old school maplestory? every level doesnt change almost anything since almost every skill is useless, we didnt had good training areas for higher levels so you wanna grind in the same map 120-200. Yes, modern maple is ALL about grinding, the difference between these two is that you don't need to grind 18 hours a day with a pay to win 2x exp coupoun to get lv 200 in 2 years, instead you need to constantly play at least once per week. Bosses back in the days doesnt give almost anything, every class is extremely TRASH if you're not an bowmaster bishop or NL, you literally is crying because the modern maple is all about grind, but back in the days it was even worse. Lets talk about how easy is to DESTROY your character in oldschool? Wrong builds because you doesn't follow a guide and just play for fun, and for fix it all you need to do is pay2win it. Arcane river dailies literally took under 15 minutes per day if you're not a newbie lol
So I've never played Maple Story, but as a fellow nostalgic 25 year old this very much still hit me in the feels. Great video man. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Loved this so much! I have no experience with Maple Story at all but could really relate to the friendships and experience you had with it through other games and communities over the years. Really beautiful how you spoke about that friendship
Maybe the real MapleStory was the friends we made along the way. I played from the open beta(2005) to maybe early 2007 on Scania. The grind and the rampant hacking due to the grind slowly led to more and more friends dropping off the game. Around that time I got into my first real offline friend group in high school and drifted away myself. Still have lots of good memories from that period though but unfortunately lost contact with everyone I knew from GMS very quickly. Hope you're all doing well out there, Maplers.
i actually got into maple story recently, within the last year. tried the current version and found it to be obnoxiously bad, and then my fiancé introduced me to a private server, maple legends. even as someone trying the game for the first time in 2021, with no nostalgia for it to speak of, i found old maple story to be so much more fun overall. notably, there are so many secret areas to find in old maple story. if you press up on a suspicious rock or like, most instances of "two things next to each other" youll often find a brand new place, a discovery of your own! most if not all of these secret areas have been removed in modern maple story due to how much every map has been overhauled. it really goes to show how much character and charm was lost when maple story became not a game about YOU going on your own adventure, but instead a game about Some Other Character going on an adventure. you dont get to figure out how to navigate the world anymore because it's not your adventure. they might as well just cut to the next action thing.
This is so true. Those areas were supposed to be hidden, they were called hidden streets after all! It was great because showing them to new players was a great way to communicate and meet people, now every 'hidden' area had a glowing portal show up once you get close enough.
I shed a tear; I cherished those moments logging in and seeing my friends. Obtaining the maple llama staff, KPQ, LPQ, LMPQ! It was so much fun and I find myself chasing games trying to find the same feeling I felt long ago. I know that moment won’t ever come back, a moment so pure, untouched by the Big Bang or life’s challenges.
That final line with the music cutting out was really great, this game tears at my heart like nothing else. Always going to take at least 75% of my memories
Its such a brutally dower ending. I hate feeling like it's a mere old timey belief that we could have a game that captures this wonderful mix of typical MMO number building with this intricate social aspect in that one day you're stalking a person to steal their PQ room simply to have them be your most trusted ally the next day, all in this mutual understanding that we all want to "progress" but that's such a lofty goal that we converse and have fun in the meantime while still aiming for that goal.
I commented this in coppersans vid, but a large part of the nostalgia is that maplestory WAS our social media. It wasnt just a game. Now ppl dont play games to socialize with ppl online anymore
True, I played some Black Desert recently for about a month. It's basically a single player MMO and there's almost no reason to party 95% of the time. I'm just glad I got to experience the unique early Maple, nothing will be like it ever again. Every day was like a chat room of my favorite online friends with a game attached.
Just stopping by to say ill never forget the great times on maple, and im grateful for the community you all helped sustain. Some of the best memories of my life. Not all of my best memories are maple related but man, you just had to be there i guess.
The other problem is the expectation of year over year growth by investors, leading to more and more sketchy business decisions by developers & publishers to give that all consuming machine what it wants. This is what has allowed Activision, Ubisoft, EA, and co. to commit all the atrocities that have so recently come to light. If you have a game that has more upfront costs to development, these problems become more likely. And with the immense cost and expectation of new content that MMO's expect means this abusive cycle is both more likely and accelerated.
Yeah I've always been bitter towards Nexon since their business practice changed. Even with Maplestory 2, the game only survived for like 2 years before shutting down which disappointed a lot of players. Especially the ones who spent money on the game.
Huge nostalgia I think most of us that are in our 20's can easily relate to this video. When all you had was free time the grind was so much fun. Thanks for putting in the time for this video and making the inner child smile.
First played around 11years old and I am a Chinese player. The BGM hits me really hard. This video brought back so much memories to me. We have grown up, but the memories are still young. With so many pressure from the life that force me to be "as adult as i can be", I know I was a young kid with my own happniess once.
this is my first ever comment on youtube video, I have to compliment YOU on this video. I played MapleStory from 2005-2008, best childhood moment of my life. i hope MS open new server that like old-school MS. mostly i just play around and chatting with my friends when, and stuck at around level 60 lol i really miss that moment, now i have a family, but i still can remember my memories playing MS. like waiting the ship just for die because i was on the deck and get hit by strong flying monster lol THE BGM is forever stuck in my head, i have playlist on my spotify and i hear it almost everyday when i need to focus on work. again, Thanks for the video!
Beautiful video. Your experiences are 100% what most of us old maplestory players also experienced. I still play to this day, hopped to private servers after big bang, quit multiple times, and came back to reboot, casually, around 2018. I would give anything to go back and play the glory days again, meeting new friends was so common. Skype, and nowadays, discord, have ruined that social aspect of the game and the anonymity that came with it. i'm a shy guy, i don't like vcing with people im not super comfortable with, heck even phone calls are difficult. It was a nice escape for me growing up having these fears, and now its expected to socialize over discord instead of the character we portray ourself as ingame. There's nothing wrong with it, but i do think there were many people like me growing up that found solitude in maplestory and the social aspects that came with it. exploration, pqs, party maps like LHC, all fortified the usefulness of your peers. The game is a ghost town unless you're in a guild spending time in your guild HQ. The memories i have of the good ol' days have brought me to tears because i've lost contact with some of those people when i abandoned the normal servers for the private servers all those years ago. I met new friends there, but we have since kind of split, occasionally dming on discord. It's just not the same nowadays. I will probably continue to play until it gets shut down because my love for this game is unending, i just wish i could go back in time and hear that beautiful login menu screen music for the first time. The joy and drive for adventure that song brings me is unmatched. Never could get into the traditional mmo formula, but maplestory nailed it for everything i wanted out of my true, first multiplayer experience back in the day. I'm forever grateful for that.
You have described my childhood with this game in a way I could never put into words and gave me a return to a simpler time during my time watching this thank you.
The writing in this video is on point. Great video & great story, it's always awesome to hear other people childhood stories with the old MapleStory. And it always seems that we all had really similar experiences & thoughts. Best of luck with your journey
About the "I don't really get MMORPGs" section... I think what to me speaks most about you not getting them, is thinking that they're solely about grinding mindlessly through until endgame. At least the ones I played, including FFXIV, there's a journey and enjoyment to be had along the way until then. That said... old MapleStory is definitely still my favorite of all of them. Edit: Also, I doubt you'll read this comment on this 1 year old video, but, the population does still have nice chats in Reboot, which also deletes P2W because you.. literally can't, cubes are bought with mesos that you grind!
@TroubadorPoet It's definitely not quite the same, but it was a lot better of an experience than the normal servers can give you, these days. None of the early PQs are done in either case anymore though T-T but yeah. I'd say it's worth a shot at least
@TroubadorPoet There actually is one high level PQ people are still doing together, but it's not that interesting of one, sadly. "Hungry Muto", which just helps your gear progression for Arcane Symbols (a level 200+ equipment every class has now) is done with 1-4 people, but most people I see do it in the max group of 4. And, hope you enjoy, whatever class you end up picking up! Edit: Oh, and commerci is there and people still do that last I checked, but that was like last year (my life's been busy)
I dont think I've ever made a real friend from playing a game online. As you say, games allow you to chat anonymously and you can be more social than you would in real life. However, I'm just as socially awkward online as I am in real life.
In certain ways I feel like its become harder to make friends online, but maybe that's just me or a consequence of getting older. I personally find it harder to want to reach out to new people
I never even heard of the game, but from the gist of it, you could have been talking about my "relationship" with WoW. Even your assumptions about how a "classic" version of MapleStory would play out ring true with going back to classic WoW. It took me a while to get to the same conclusions but sometimes, moving on is really the only healthy option.
I wound up going back to MS a couple weeks ago as a 28 year old that remembers how impossible it was to pass level 70 in the old days and got a Bishop to level 185 in 3 days and immediately burnt myself out. The music is absolutely amazing still, the gameplay is smooth and the nostalgia hits so hard. I remember my guild swapping back and forth between MS and Mabinogi for YEARS, holding onto friendships. and I'm so happy to be getting a classic Mushroom enemy tattoo to honor this game! Amazing video
I find it immensely fascinating that so many people who played this game during that golden era have such a strong emotional connection to it. Even though I don't play anymore, every once in awhile I like to watch videos like these to help remind me of the good times . Thanks for sharing your thoughts and making this video, it was really really enjoyable. Also if you ever do get the itch to play a nostalgic server I've enjoyed playing both maplesaga and mapleroyals.
As a person who started playing in RED and is still playing I have to say, f2p is viable even in elysium, it’s just a lot slower. You have to do daily bosses for rp to buy cubes and for random cube drops, also events have cubes too you need to take advantage of. The game also starts at level 200 right now, leveling slows down and I’ve spent a good hundred hours farming from 250-255. Party quests aren’t really relevant anymore and leeching isn’t viable which is why it’s solostory, Korea recently (like last June lol) said they want to make more pq type content and make it viable again, but who knows. But yeah there’s a lot of talking in discord and elysium is relatively dead so it’s hard to get “in” there that’s why I always plug the elysium discord to people and say join and guild when you can, that’s how you find people now. It’s a different game with the same visual style for sure
I'd argue the visual style isn't the same. There's plenty of new areas that have released that feel completely out of place in Maplestory which causes your character to stand out. Pretty much none of the recently released areas feel like Maplestory.
amazing video, it's bizarre to see such production quality put towards this silly little game nobody cares about anymore. this is truly a perfect explanation as to why things are the way they are, and i hope people have the attention and care to watch to the end to understand this isn't just about "old maple good new maple bad". it's a special type of game from a special era of the internet. just be glad you were there for it. i was a little too late for the golden era myself
Such a great way to put it. Happy I stayed til the end because you sum it up perfectly. We can’t log back in and meet up in ellinia and sit with our old internet buddies but we can reminisce on an easier time, when we had the free time (or made the free time) to use this game as a way to chat with our friends, explore the maple world, level up (slowly but gratifyingly) and enjoy the “good ole” internet for what it was back then before discord and all these other platforms we have in 2022. Sometimes I think about maple story and see some game play on twitch but it truly is so different now. We are all out here growing up and figuring it out. Cheers to us young adults with fond memories of a “simpler” time getting on ms to disconnect from the world.
Thank you for this video...... When I first played MapleStory I did not know a lick of English, unironically I learned more English in this game than I ever did in school. It is as you said the community aspects of MapleStory really kept the game alive. Things like training at the different maps, partying up at PQ's, Standing for hours at the FM trying to sell your items or simply chilling in Henesys and showing off your NX, created many small instances which would push you to socialize with other players and create bonds which would last a lifetime. This is something which modern MMORPG's simply lack, you can just queue for Dungeons, there is no need to socialize as most content can be done alone, you can just sell your items at an automated auction house and the difficulty component is gone. All of this is antithetical to a healthy MMORPG that I am not surprised at all that what once was a vibrant MMORPG like MapleStory is simply a shell of it's former self, there is no class variety, they all have the same mobbing abilities now where once all classes filled a specific niche and were needed to fight difficult bosses, warriors would give HP and Defense buffs, Mages would give Mana buffs, Thieves would give Speed Buffs and you would need all of these classes to fight difficult bosses like Pianus, Papulatus and Zakum. Gone are the days where we would sit around Henesys hunting ground chatting on top of the shack or going to Maya's house socializing with players old and new. Taking the Black Taxi accidently and going down the Ant Tunnel with your friends just to see how far you would go before dying out of sheer curiosity. Hiding in the Cargo hold of the Orbis ship because you're afraid the Balrog might get you. going down Orbis tower trying to get to El Nath as a low-level because you wanted to see what the "Pro town" was like. attending a wedding in Amoria between friends because really you just wanted the great couples buff haha. Finding the elusive Pig Beach which was the only hidden map at the time. Competing with other players at the Free market spamming @@@ just so other people could see the item you were selling, and partying up with your friends and guildmates to defeat difficult bosses because that is what it was all about. We will always remember, the first time we disembark the ship at Lith Harbor, experiencing a brave new world not knowing what was in store for us, the friends we made along the way and the memories that will forever be enshrined in our hearts. ;) "We didn't realize we were making memories, we just knew we were having fun." - Winnie the Pooh
This video is a story very well told, you explain every way I felt about maplestory. I was upset about how it turned out but I couldn’t voice why. We share parallels in experience and watching this video was like reliving my own childhood. I also started playing around 12 years old and seeing this video hit all the nostalgia I was looking for. Thank you for making this, I value your story and what maplestory meant to you too. Just like you said in the end, there’s times we just gotta move on and adapt to the changing world around us. Thanks for playing 👍🏾
Haven’t watched it yet, but I also love Maplestory. But I actually still come back from time to time and find myself binging it in those periods. But the game has changed from a social platform to a solo/modern MMORPG endgame grind. So I bet that’s what you’ll talk about. But I hear in South Korea it’s actually still as we once remember it
This video hit me hard. Probably cause I too spent lots of time in Maple Story around that time and also Cause around your age with similar feelings about the world. Ive been really nostalgic for old MMOs, but don't quite enjoy modern MMOs like lots others do, nor do I have the time to sink into them like I used too. But heck, it hasn't stopped me from trying. Ive been playing a modded server of Toontown called Corporate Clash. And its been really enjoyable so far. Thanks for another great video dude.
@@wizawhat it was probably those commercials way back when. If you mood ever strikes you, Toontown Rewritten and Coporate Clash are both free. Rewritten more or less being close to original Toontown and Corporate Clash being a modified version with more traditional RPG elements added.
I was into ragnarok online private servers was my first MMO love. I like you made friends in game, took breaks from grinds by hanging out in peaceful places and just talking. When the private server got shut down, we moved to maple story and did a lot of the same. This was before pirates were a think and tbh, I don’t think I even made it to Bandit haha but I loved the community and exploration
Just stumbled upon your channel and have to say this is an amazing video. It outlines everything I've loved about this game - like the chat box, the PQ and grinding meta, and the beauty of simply logging back in after a day of school - and I'd be lying if I said it didn't cross my mind most days. You worded every struggle and every feeling perfectly! We're coincidently the same age and we started and stopped playing around the same time so this video hit all the right notes with me. Funny enough, I'm in between jobs right now and decided to dive into video essays on Maplestory out of nostalgia and reminiscence of simpler time in my life, and this video was most certainly the one I was looking for so thank you.
Thank you for making a video about how your relationships and life was, and how you felt. I enjoy learning about how other warm-hearted people's lives are actually like and how they genuinely feel.
I still play maple. I have off and on since 2005. It is indeed way different and it is kind of sad how much different it is. I really wish a new game that could give the feel the old MS gave. There was nothing like it.
Wow so much of this hits the same. As the same age as you are, we had so much time back then, I miss my friends when we could just sit there and talk. I’ll never forget my time with Maplestory as well. You’ve done such a good job echoing my feelings. I wish I had said goodbye when I last logged off, but when I did, I never knew it was my last time to do so. It was special and I don’t think we can ever try to emulate that feeling as kids unfortunately. These memories hold a lot of value and sometimes I wonder about it.
@TroubadorPoet haha that’s so cool, I had maybe a chance to meet up with one or two but never did, despite living in the same city. I don’t regret it, but it was a special time to be around.
What a great video. I’m really impressed with the organization. The way it was all tied together from begin to end was extremely satisfying, I’m hoping to see some more videos like this!
Been playing from 2005. Your video is exactly what I feel in all of the aspects. Never had school friends to play with, all of them I met ingame. I’ve always come back to this game and it will never feel the same. But in the end, I cant manage to leave this game and feelings as its was too much part of my life. Trying my best to wake up for my bed finally, but its really hard.
AGHHGHGHH I am working on a video rn about how delightful it was to just, like, be in a game with other people, even if the gameplay was nothing to write home about. This is such a validating video to watch; I'm so glad I'm not the only one who feels this way xD This video is so heckin' cute :)
This hit a lot of the points that resonate with how I feel about Maplestory. In all honesty if I went back to the old, grindy mess the game used to be, I don't know if I'd like it. The shift of the leveling formula in the Big Bang update definitely felt better to me. Even when I was little I'd never had the patience to make it past *maybe* level 50. I think there was possibly a single time I reached 70 or so, but that may just be me misremembering. The SOCIAL aspect though? Absolutely dead in current Maplestory. You're so right about going through the world and all the old hangout areas are just dead. I used to hang out in the potion shop of Henesys all the time because on my server (Windia, I had no idea what servers actually correlated to back then I just liked the wing icon) that was the big hangout spot. I'd chat to people for hours on end. A friend and I actually even figured out once that high level players were totally willing to just hand out gear that to us was incredibly expensive (like a pair of earrings or something that we could sell for 50k mesos). We went around for hours in the game together just looking for high level players to beg from. They probably just thought we were cute noobs (we were), but it's one of my happiest memories from playing that game, even if nowadays I give beggars in games a lot of side-eye. In reality now I realize that the 50k earrings were just a singular high level mob drop to those characters and likely didn't even make a dent in their meso bag. Fortunately, I never got "good" enough at the game to even pay attention to the bossing stuff so I just didn't care about having the "best" gear, so that wasn't as much of an issue for me in terms of the microtransaction stuff. I do remember being upset about the Big Bang update though because they'd moved around / removed a lot of the high traffic hangout spots (another one that comes to mind was the first portal to the left of the main Henesys town with several rows stacked up of the mushroom mobs and players would just hang out on some hay bales at the top). That place was gone and I was upset by that. This video overall gave me a MASSIVE blast of nostalgia though, especially with that into on the login screen. Maplestory is definitely a game that holds a special spot in my heart, but having returned to it now I can't get past the realization that every single character has basically turned into "a mage under the guise of another class" with all of their massive, map-clearing, clearly magical abilities. I think the first one I came to that realization with was the Phantom. He was just using spells, basically. Almost none of his design communicated "thief" to me past his class skill stealing, which also just came across as him being the cool kid on the playground with all of the powers. I don't know that I'd play a classic server at this point unless it was totally rebalanced, and even then I don't know if Maplestory would ever recover the social aspect. Thanks for the video, it gave me a lot of nostalgia and fun memories to think back on.
Damn, this comment really unearthed even MORE memories I didn't recall when scripting this video. I love how new players begging for items and mesos was just a generally accepted part of the MapleStory culture because of how terrible the economy was for them! That map you're thinking of was Henesys Hunting Ground, omg, so many memories there. I remember using an exploit where spamming the potion key let you climb to the very top of the rope without triggering the movement to the next map. You're so right about the class changes too. I definitely realized that they became insanely homogenized but didn't think about how they all became mages, although as a thief player I was severely bent out of shape to see every class get their own flash jump LOL. Thanks for this and I'm so glad you enjoyed the video!
Everyday from 2007 - 2010 afterschool, I would login and just grind, frequent carnival pq. Those were the days, when maplestory was more simplistic. Now, it's different, big bang patch changed the game forever. This game will always be a big staple in my childhood, this was everything in society was just smooth and fun, 2006 - 2012 was the peak in society as it concerns mmorpgs etc
The ending of the video was impactful. I binged watched old MapleStory videos, and other parts of my childhood for nostalgia. I think we are all reminiscing the “good times” of when we had no worries & could get lost into something when we were young. I think our lives right now we aren’t in a positive state so we keep looking back at the past. But ur video made me realize like u said “it’s time to wake up” and stop looking at the past. Let’s enjoy our current lives now and work towards making memories, just like we did when we were younger. If we keep looking at the past, it could cause depression if we get too deep into it. Thank u for this video. “Don’t be sad that it’s over, be glad that it happened”.
I will never forget this game my cousin introducing this game to me. My brothers and me spending countless hours, lost summers, and lost time with family over this game. Maple story will forever be in my heart and I will never play a game like it again. Cloud1583
This has brought up tons of old memories and nostalgia - I started Maple Story back in 2005 right after Beta ended, I remember when cash shop first opened and new server Windia was introduced where I moved from Bera to Windia starting a new journey, I had the time of my life, running around seeing my very first level 50 person sitting in Perion was the greatest thing ever and I aimed to reach that level my self as a level 25 warrior. Later remaking my character to an archer when I saw one using arrow bomb in Orbis tower, I was blown away and wanted to play an archer, thus I made a new character again starting anew, making countless friends along the way, some that became my real life ones, but time is the greatest enemy, we got jobs, we grew up, we went our own ways, bonds broken, friendships lost and the only thing that remain is the memory of a great time, I was lucky I got to enjoy such an awesome game while it lasted, over the last decade I have been looking for something to recapture the feeling MS gave me in the past but there's nothing that even comes close, there's always something missing, always something that doesn't feel right, I don't think i'll ever be able to find something as fun, not because today's games are bad (most are) but because I have changed, I don't have the free time i used to have, I don't have the creative mind that I used to and with that I got nothing else to say but that the memories I made in this game will always remain with me. Thank you for making this video as it has made me remember a lot of things, surge of emotions that i haven't felt in years, remembering all the good and bad times I had, Farewell Old school Maple Story.. you were great.
Such a great video. Believe it or not, everything that you mentioned DOES still exist. Old school private servers are a thing, with thousands of old school players dedicated to them. My server of choice is Maplestory Phoenix. A smaller yet VERY authentic Maplestory experience currently on patch .62. Pirate was just released. The only difference is that small modifications are made in order to fix the balance issues that you mentioned. (They are very easy fixes). You should try doing a video on these servers. I would love to see your reaction. Nexon can and should do an official old school server. It truly is remarkable that they haven't. The demand is certainly there for North America. But since Nexon is based in Korea, I'm not sure if they see this demand and are mainly focusing on the Asian consumers. The other thing that they have cited as an excuse (a lame one at that) for not making an old school server is exactly what patch they should make it. Afterall, the game had an extensive history before big bang. I think most players would be happy with ANYTHING before cubing. Anyway, come on over to old school private servers. You will enjoy it.
Actually, many kms players have spoken out about wanting a classic server as well on their version of reddit called "Inven", It's not just the Western/European audience. There's worldwide appeal to the idea.
I think the phrase "My Favorite Game That No Longer Exists" applies to more than just the game being different in itself, but it also applies to a time period and warmth that can never be replicated or reclaimed. Honestly If I were to play again with my old buds in todays day, even on a classic private server, it wouldn't hit in the same way as it did in my youth. I was a different person then and those events did something special for that version of me that isn't really compatible with the current version of myself. I have very fond memories that are still special to me, but even if I could relive the events 1:1 in current era, idk if it would be the same. It's sad but I think that chapter of my life is done. My biggest pain now is that I haven't found a new thing to swap it out with. All I do now is eat, sleep and work lmao! ='D
Man I honestly wished the game had that community aspect to it. Theses days maps are all empty or a single person leveling. I still have my old account pre-big bang. I do go back every now and again but I always fall back out every couple months. I can never thank Maplestory enough for the great memories I had as a highschooler
Just got back into the game last week and already got level 200. The experience is definitely different than it was back in 2007-2010. You should try logging into reboot, there's A LOT of og players that socialize in henn. There are also reboot discords available so people can party up for bosses, etc. Glad this video showed up in my recommendation, even though our experiences with modern-day maple are different.
The social part hits so hard man, I really get what you said about that girl you played with, I had the same feeling with many people as well we played so much together exploring the world, we even took the ship from Ellinia to Orbis just to chill with new people and include those onto our journey too haha, good old times I wish I could go back. Also, your storytelling skills are insanely good, I was really hooked!
Shout out to my old Pre-BB Khaini friends. Excellent video, I've thought of this exact thing time and time again. I do think Maple had some unique elements that made it more social than other games, but it was also a time-and-place thing. I really wonder if someone can somehow capture even a fraction of that energy for the modern day and make an MMO that hits some of those notes, it can never be what it once was, but it was great while it lasted.
Wow, me and my best friend have the exact same feelings as you regarding Maplestory. We just couldn't adapt to most other mmorpg's, because we were always looking for that experience we've had in Maple. That absurdly hard way to level, but at the same time, fun. The masterful background music (Which i hear often to day), the hours spent at the Market announcing items and looking at the shops (Even when we had no mesos to spend), the chatting while waiting for the boat to arrive in Orbis, and even the thrill of waiting outside to see if the overpowered balrogs would arrive. Very good times indeed, but sadly no games can provide that experience anymore, not that EXACT experience we are looking for..
My Nexon MMORPG of choice was Mabinogi but basically everything you said in this video applied to my experience in that game, too. It was my home-away-from-home because it felt so pure and idealized when I started playing a few months after the North American launch in 2008, yet when I tried picking it up again 10 years later everything felt so comparatively overwhelming and monetized, and out-of-place crossovers (a Sword Art Online one was happening when I returned) and artistic changes destroyed my sense of belief in the world. Nexon in the 2020s feels like a company that wants to focus on cheap-to-produce mobile gacha games, but they're straddled with maintaining a bunch of PC games from the 2000s that whales keep clinging onto
Mabinogi was a weird one. I could never get into it myself but I'll always remember just sitting in the starting area listening to other players performing iconic video game music in game on their own instruments!
The section about the PQs hit me so hard in the nostalgia, you explained that time period perfectly. MS truly wasnt the same after PQs fell out of fashion
If you remember playing before pirate class, and remember it being released, you lived in a good time for Maplestory
I remember the day pirates were released. Next thing you know it was pirates everywhere for like a week then it all went back to regular classes. Broa Thief & I/L For life!!!
Yes!
Did anything come out before pirates? When I first started playing, there were 4 classes and I rolled dice for days.
@@aidenlui1547 no I think it was just 4 classes.
@@aidenlui1547 as far as I remember thief was the 4th class.
hey man. i don't usually write comments but this video hit so close to home for i can't not say something. there's so many things i relate to in this video. my first memories of maple story were being young (around 10-12) watching my older brothers play maplestory on the family computer. they never let me play, but i didn't care. i would sit and watch them and it was just so fun to watch i loved every minute of it. eventually i created an account and my dad helped me set up an email and stuff like that. i think my first class was a warrior. i remember from
even just opening the game and being on the first home screen, the music, the nature asethic , all of it just felt like i was thrown into a entirely different worl. full of peace and vibrant colours, ethereal music and pure bliss. anyways , i could go on forever. i just wanted to tell you that im currently 25 and working 40 hours a week, paying bills, having relationships, and yet i come home from work every night and open up maple story private servers to try and re love the golden age that i hold so
dear to my heart. but it never feels the same. and it never will. the end of ur video saying it's time to wake up instead of
continuing to dream made me actually cry. i cried so
hard because i knew exactly what you meant as soon as you said it. i'm not a kid anymore. i'm not the 12 year old boy sittin on the computer in the living room while my dad is making dinner for us to eat and watch. a movie after. all of that is gone. as much as i come home after work and try to run to my nostalgia escape. i can't anymore. idk why im still crying writing this but this game gave such a fuckin special place in my heart like no other. words just can't express it. thank you so much for making such a long detailed video for the old school maplers to sulk and reminisce to.
your story about Tina is like my story but reverse. for a second i thought you might have been the one that i spent hours talking to, became good friends with, and eventually lost touch with. but i think it was just that kind of game.
unless your name is ian… then hello again :)
Thats so funny, i legit had the same exact experience as well. ironically with a person with the same name as Tina. xD
Nostalgia is the most beautiful form of pain. Everything you said was spot on. Like you, I often felt alienated during middle and high school, and maplestory was my outlet and the one place I felt like I belonged. I remember every friday I would rush to my computer after school and greeted by the numerous "WB"s on friends chat as I logged in. Being in my late 20s, that joy is seldom ever felt anymore. Like you, I also had a special friendship with someone in the game. Even though we've never met up, the connection we had was more real than many relationships I've had. She was the first person that taught me how to love and will always have a special place in my heart. Even though the game is a shell of what it used to be. I am glad I had the chance to play it. I will never forget the good times I had and the friendship and bonds I've formed in the game
As for the nostalgia, I want to say it's *not* just because of your age at the time. I'm about a decade older, and I was an adult by the time MapleStory launched in North America in 2005. It was its art and music which drew me in, creating a tranquil respite for an otherwise tumultuous life. My girlfriend is slightly older than me, and she had the same sort of experiences with the game back in the day, loving its aesthetic - but we wouldn't meet until a decade later, and came to find out we both played and loved MapleStory in our early adult years. We've named all of our animals after MapleStory places or characters.
Yes, a lot of my memories are colored by nostalgia, and shaped by my life circumstances at the time - but that's true for *every* period of my life, including today. I really believe what most made MapleStory special was its art and music. If there were ever to be a successful MapleStory sequel, it would really need to capture that same artistic vibe, that same ambiance, or it would just never feel like MapleStory.
Games are no longer made mainly to provide as much fun but get as much profit. It shows in design principles and people feelings about it. What drives them is usually addiction, not "love" to game. It also creates a lot of frustration instead of bliss. There are obviously good games released as well, just not as many.
@@anonimowelwiatko9811Buddy, MapleStory is the pioneer of many of those predatory practices employed today. I not only know, I was there.
I believe this happened after Wizet was purchased by Nexon. The original F2P Model only had cosmetics and pet. @@rsonic510
I wonder if the nostalgia hits different because you played as an adult while most of us played as a kid
@@olitheballer There's going to be a subjective element to any experience, gaming or otherwise. When you're a kid, the experience is going to be a bit different. For me, _Super Mario 64_ was the most magical gaming experience I ever had, and that was in large part because it spearheaded a paradigm shift by being the game that set the bar for 3D.
I still get really emotional hearing the old-school MapleStory music, especially Ellinia. Back when I played, the game was super grindy because there wasn't that much content, so I would spend hours on new characters grinding in the slime tree in Ellinia. Back then, someone having something as basic as a red triangle shield awed me - although other players who were more "pro" would probably scoff and saw getting something like that was easy even back then.
If I recall correctly, when I first played, there was just one server (Scania?), and then eventually we got a second (Bera, I'm pretty sure). I don't even think there were third job classes in the game yet, but honestly it took me forever to ever get to my second class. But I remember feeling so happy getting the skill to increase Warrior accuracy because of how miserable it was trying to hit anything, and everyone said getting too much Dex would gimp you in the long run.
tl;dr Maybe it wasn't the same playing as an adult, but I still have huge sentimentality towards the game, especially the art and music.
That was bloody brilliant. 29 years old here and I'm exactly where alot of us are, clinging onto the past and hesitant to move forward. I feel comforted knowing I'm not the only one and that all of us will eventually move onto something better!
29 here as well, ill never get over old maple. Everyone trading in perion, party quests & snowboards. Orbis ship ride fighting balrogs. Good times.
Im 25, it brings me comfort to know we all feel the same way, it’s an unspoken shared understanding. I find strength in knowing we share this feeling, I hope your lives work out that you all find love and produce children and be financially stable to be able to enjoy life and create new moments with no stress
19 here, I think I'm one of the younger MapleStory OGs. I was lucky enough to have a cool older brother who let me watch him play, and if I was lucky, let me play myself. I think I was 5 or 6 when he started playing. Hearing the music from MapleStory brings back a huge explosion of nostalgia in a way that nothing else can. I wish there was a way to see how many collective hours my brother, sister, and I had on MapleStory. I wouldn't be surprised if it's in the ballpark of 2000 hours
24 here, miss playing this game so much
Bro are you me?
I played MapleStory from 2005-2009...it was one of the most special times of my life. The amount of friends I made, quests I did and maps I've explored made this game so much fun to play. In a weird way, it didn't feel like I was playing a game...it was like I was experiencing something much more that I can't describe with words. I was 14 when I first played MapleStory...I'm 31 now. To all the younger people reading this, cherish all the moments you have in whatever game or activity you're doing. Time goes by fast.
exact same experience
I played Maplestory when I was 12. There was so much fun to be had. Exploring the dangerous area where high level monsters were at. I remember sleepywood and exploring that dungeon all the way to the end. Kerning PQ was probably the most fun I had in any MMO. Idk how the time past so fast and I'm 31 now as well. It feels weird, I don't feel like I changed that much, way more mature of course but I'd love to relive those moments again if possible.
True when i came back to it a year ago it was full off auto play and just too much nonsense
About once a year I get the nostalgic urge to revisit MapleStory. Invariably I'll look up which private servers are popular at the moment, and spend a few dozen hours in the world. Each time I learn the same lesson: even if the game is preserved as it was in the mid 2000's, the community has changed. The way people play the game has changed. And me, I've changed. It wasn't really the game that was so magical for me, it was exploring the world at a time in my life, my early teens, when the world was as big and new and exciting as Maple World. It was spending time with my friends, both real life and the ones I made in the game. It was never knowing what was around the corner. I'll never be able to feel the way I felt in 2005, and that's okay.
Same, it killed runescape for me. You didn't have to be a member to explore the whole world. As a broke kid, I could fully enjoy the game without begging for cash. Never returned to runescape after maplestory.
Old Maplestory was so amazing the feeling when you got home from school and hopped on Maple. Never forgetting those days
Great video man! I actually played an old-school Maplestory server (MapleRoyals) back when lockdown started and I got to re-live a lot of the memories. I started a new character from scratch and I leveled up slowly and trained hard and played PQ with other players and made a few friends along the way. I even completed the goddamn Zakum jump quest and made it to forth job and it was honestly super fun. I felt I had finally achieved my childhood dream and I was glad to be able to had the chance to do so.
But I agree with you that this game takes up SOOOOO much time. It was such a pain to level up and there were some levels that were just excruciating to play like from 100-120. And I was already playing on a 4x EXP server. I really have no idea how people managed to do it back then. And once you finally hit higher level you really started to see the flaws of the game. The classes were super unbalanced. You could level up so fast if you are a 4th job mage with full map attack, but if you chose the wrong class then you are just going to suffer. And some classes have such low HP that you can't even join boss runs unless you did HP washing. Which is sooooo expensive and time-consuming to do. And you should be enjoying the game once you reach 4th job, instead you had to go make enough money just to restart another character so you could HP wash it so you could FINALLY boss.
I personally think the true joy of this game is in the early levels. When you can choose from exploring the world or doing quests or doing PQs to level up. And you learn new skills that keeps you engaged in the game. Most importantly, you are froced to play with other players because it is just the faster way to level up. Because underneath the surface of the cute game design, this is a time-consunimg, repetitive training, non-balanced game that has a lot of charm. I loved that I got to re-experience it a little bit and I must say the jorney of training was more fun that reaching the detination itself. Thank you Maple for taking up so much of my time in life. But I think it's time for me to let you live in my memory :)
I've been playing MapleRoyals on/off since 2015 and I love it! Other than HP washing, classes were very balanced imo. Mages are absolutely useless at bosses (except for Bishops), so they dominated grinding popular maps. All of the other classes are great at bossing and suck at grinding (compared to mages). I have a Bishop and a Paladin. The Paladin levels up very easily by doing boss fight after boss fight (elementally weak bosses are loads of fun!). The Bishop got boring after I could 1-hit skellies. Also, minimal HP washing was necessary with the Paladin; but, I could see how it would be a pain for thieves and bowmen. Honestly though (especially after playing Maple in its current state), this is the most balanced I've ever seen the game. It's lots of fun to play when I'm bored!
You perfectly described all my feelings about this game in a way that I couldn't even put together in my own head
y'all guys play mapleroyals server, will no regret
@@________________4924 MapleSaga is better dude, Royals has HP washing (unless it's changed since I last played)
@@theletterjoth well with the last update they added a daily HP quest to increase your HP at cap HP 30k , and is infinite
@@________________4924 I'll need to look into it then, thanks homie
@@________________4924 read up that you average 20-30 HP and can only do it once per day. The forum people did the math and after a year of doing it daily you'd only get around 10k HP which seems like a long time to grind just to boss
I've tired to get back to maplestory but the sense of community and making friends isn't there anymore, it just feels lonely.
People just don't cower against the Balrog on the flying ship together anymore.
There is just as much of a community now, it’s just on discord. Bosses are way harder now than the ones in classic.
@@ericleavitt9281 but that is the issue; the community is outside of the game now and if you want to participate in anything you are expected to use this other software... that is one of the leading issues of why these games lost their soul
you could try maplelegends its a oldschool maple server
@pepega clapper I am pretty sure I said "one of the leading issues". I am not trying to pin it down on one thing because there are many aspects such as private servers, which only further helped in splitting up the community. And while private servers would generally have more of that community feeling that I mentioned, the same thing happen. I would say, considering I was born in the 90's, I know exactly what I am talking about.
@@ericleavitt9281 Yeah but bossing makes up like 1-2% of the overall game and has a bunch of extremely annoying, outdated, and unnecessary restrictions which make it fairly frustrating. A majority of the game is the braindead 1 shot grinding which is far easier than grinding was Pre-big Bang and even post big bang through unleashed, requiring no real effort.
Having just watched this video in bed in the dark at almost 2AM, I couldn’t help but cry.
Now 28 and hopefully making my 13 year-old self proud, I think back to the absolutely magical relationships and experiences this game gifted us. In retrospect, the game was clearly such an key player in our formative years.
Between the delayed gratification of leveling and the community building of guild management to the macroeconomics of the Free Market, I’m truly grateful to have been part of such a movement.
Thank you for this,
The Cleric
Well said. Hear, hear! (or something to express agreement, heck idk)
x2 here, but being 33 years old.
Same!!
y'all guys play mapleroyals server, will no regret
Yeah same here. Im 28 now but 12 year old me sank thousands of hours in maplestory. The social aspect of maplestory was what made it so magical.
I really hope you see this. While I love Maplestory, I have to compliment YOU on this video. You really captured the whole experience and created a video essay that encapsules why it's impossible to go back to that time with such a good set of arguments and words. The ending really hit a deep spot inside me, and I'm sure it must've already hit that same spot for many players who've kept coming back to maplestory just to realize it will never be the same as it was. I've started suspecting that adulthood and healing have a lot to do with lovingly saying goodbye to the parts of me that can no longer exist, and this feels like one. So thank you for this video. And you're a really good storyteller.
Don't be sad that it's over, be happy that it happened.
It was truly the best years of my gaming life. Thank you to everyone I have ever met in the game and I wish I can see and hug you all.
I'm actually a recently returned maple player, got back into it this last summer and been playing it close to daily. The community is actually pretty thriving, just not in the same way that old Maplestory was. Now all Regular servers are comparable empty but Reboot has people chatting, It's just not that often in-game. As with almost all gaming things like discord have taken over and most discourse happens in guild chats/class discords. I regularly just hang out in my guilds discord and chat for hours while playing maple. Now things like PQ's have definitely fallen out of favour but bossing content is actually really amazing right now. Bosses like Will demand that your team knows the mechanics and carefully work together as one person failing certain boss mechanics can reset the bosses health healing a bit or blocking progression. For me personally outside of grinding the core gameplay of Maplestory shifted to Bossing and it is really fun to do.
Another thing however is as the game grows and gets more and more content the player base they have kept playing naturally moves to new zones and new areas. Of course, there are ways that games can combat this, but it's also the nature of most MMOs and so as noted in the video a returning player might find that the world feels empty, when in reality the currently active players are just elsewhere. Places like Arcane river have characters asking around for help doing early quests in the area which are increasingly difficult to do for the first time.
Monetization is a thing, but I only play Reboot and can only speak for that. Since Reboot is completely about being willing to put the time into the game to progress I haven't once felt pressured or like it was necessary to spend money on the game. The like 25 dollars I have spent over this past year have felt like I got my value out of it as it was just for pets which are nice Reboot is in a great place right now, updates are coming out that keep the increasing quality of life, and there have been a few steps in the right direction towards communicating with the player base.
Now there are tons of problems with the game like any other, but I firmly believe that modern Maplestory is an objectively better game than old Maplestory. People wouldn't still be playing it if it wasn't at least an okay game. I do share some feelings of nostalgia with old Maplestory, I have so many memories of when I played it years ago. However, I enjoy the game it has become a lot more. I found a community of players in it, and I love the new content that's getting added. It took me years of coming back to it for a week or a month, but when I stopped playing the game to relive my old memories I found something new to appreciate within it.
The core of what I'm trying to say is that what we miss about old maple isn't what we think it is. It isn't that modern games discourage community or that the game has become a lot worse. Just as the gaming market is more saturated, there are more choices that fit an individual niche. Old players have also likely gotten a lot older, have less time to play a game like Maplestory as much as is necessary. The game hasn't changed nearly as much as the person who once loved it. Maplestory has changed in ways that allowed it to survive into the modern day. It's actually still thriving in Korea, like shifting around the top 10 most played.
Well said man, it's important to look at this game from the perspective of a player who also plays current Maplestory.
It's P2W,sht comment.
@@sukmidri Can you at least explain the p2w parts and not call a comment with valid criticism and experience "shit"?
You lost me at modern maplestory being objectively better.
It's not the old maplestory that we miss, it's the good old times when we were kids without responsibilities that we miss.
Watching this literally made me feel sick in the best way. The nostalgia you managed to put into words. ♥ I'll miss you Maple
SAME 😭
private servers :3
This is so relatable. You really captured the experience we all had and love for the game! Maplestory login music will always be the most nostalgic thing ever omg.
main theme is magic one of my top ost of anygame.
followed by the awkward login pin where the numbers kept jumping around and sometimes rolling for hours until you got the perfect 4/4 stats on a new character haha
Yes indeed. I still can't believe how many of us remember it just like him.
y'all guys play mapleroyals server, will no regret
Hey everyone. My name is Ahmed Albastaki, Co founder of TWW gaming studio. We plan to create our own version of classic Maplestory game. might take us 3-5 years. But we feel your pain.
I might have watched this video 4 times by now. And I still get goosebumps at the end of it.
I don’t enjoy criticizing stuff like this, but that ending was so cheesy. You can play a game without making it your life. The argument that there’s no market for an old-school MapleStory server is inconsistent. You even stated previously that there are people out there who want a slower more hard-core and methodical grind experience i.e. old school RuneScape. You made great points throughout the video, but in the end undermined it all with a corny “now I’m a grown up” monologue. If what you say is true then people shouldn’t be replaying Elder Scrolls, Final Fantasy, Crash Bandicoot, Super Mario, etc. You don’t have to be a kid to have enjoyed this game in its prime. You don’t need boundless free time to sink into it. If anything Old school Maplestory would be a chill and social game to hop on after work. If you need an example, the private servers doing this exact same thing are a fairly accurate glimpse into what it’d look like. MapleLegends probably being the best example of a modernized old school Maplestory without the needed redesigns for bosses, abilities, and late-game reworking. All those aspects being pretty straightforward and easy to change given the game has already been made. The developers are sitting on 12 years of hindsight. One official poll would clear up whether people want an Old School Maplestory or not. Although it’s pretty clear what the outcome would be.
If you remember hunting for a pan lid from green mushrooms while spending days trying to get one level to finally get magic claw over magic bolt, you grew up in the absolute best time in MapleStory.
Edit: honorable mentions include:
finally getting a party in Kerning City PQ because you spent hours trying to get a track and spamming it until someone picked you up.
Chilling with all the level 50 homies in HHG1, just to show off your damage to all the newbs coming in from Victoria Island.
Spamming your crappy scrolls and equips in FM1 before stalls became available.
Taking the VIP taxi, wasting all your hard earned mesos, because you thought it was gonna be something fucking amazing, only to end up trapped in Sleepywood and not able to get out because the monsters were too strong and you were too broke to leave.
Getting that 2nd job enhancement and finally being able to hang out with up with your more hard-core friends, only to realize that your one SP point in your next skill was worse than your previous attack skill, and going back to the same training area to hopefully gain one level to get that wnd job skill to the point where it actually helped.
Finally reaching level 50 and farming horns from the kitties in orbis to sell....or having enough mesos to buy horns so you could powerlevel your newly created character from 10 to 30 instantly.
Breaking your keyboard trying to finish stupid fucking jump quests (looking at you, kerning city).
Getting to level 50 so you could finally go on a Zakum run, and hiding in the corner with your fingers on every pot available to hopefully survive and get a Zak helmet.
Spending an hour to get that PERFECT roll to start out a new character.
Finally getting an AoE that attacked multiple monsters (I/L mage lightning, Cleric heal, etc.)
Being so jealous of how fucking cool Assassins were, with those throwing stars, regretting the fact that you made a fire mage, but not willing to try and get another character to level 30 so you could throw cool stars.
Finally finding a good enough group of people who knew how to beat Ludi PQ quickly.
Climbing down all the damn levels in the Orbis tower, then realize there was a way to warp.
Making noob friends while on the boat and taking a chance on coming outside and being killed by Balrog.
Watching in awe as Clerics completely took over the gold zombie teeth trade with their heal spamming...wondering again why you chose your class.
Wondering why the fuck you can't hit Jr Snekis.
Hunting Mushmom by tracking and changing channels for hours.
Finally being strong enough to travel to El Nath, and hearing that dreadful music when you finally get to the werewolves to hopefully get that sexy Evil Wings staff.
Almost breaking out in tears when you watched that equip you've been grinding so hard for, finally fly up from the monster after weeks of grinding.
Showing up to your people with a full NX outfit, flexing hard as shit.
Getting a Maple girlfriend. Having said girlfriend get stolen by a guy who has more cash shop items.
Seeing that "clear" after that PERRECT fucking PQ run. Then losing the track.
______
Fuck man, this game was perfect. Nothing will ever beat that time of my life, and at 37 years old, I've never found another game that has, or will ever, fill that void.
I'm more of an esther shield guy :D i spent months at platoon chronos.
Reading this one year after OP and smirking at every point! I felt all of those. And continued playing until after I hit 120 on my wind archer so my crossbowman could use that one skill. What a grind that was do get damn peridots!!!
as a former F/P mage, i was in love with my vocation but hated that i couldn't boss with every fiber of my being
wow you just described the feelings of the most old school maplers. I too have not find any similar game till now. Man it was just amazing when you could enter a new higher level map after so many weeks of hard training. The game was rewarding.
Maplestory Pre-big bang was such a nostalgic time, I wish they would just give us a classic server already but I know we will never get that 😢, I am glad this video showed up in my recommendeds.
There is supposed to be a new community made remake of Pre-big bang maple! It's called Selene but it's still in early development ):
@@michaelathompson4250 there are a ton of pre bb maple private servers already, like maplelegends and mapleroyals
Private servers my friend
just play pservers pre-bb, my top pick is phoenix
Learn from the WoW community and the old favorite quote:
"No man steps in the same river twice."
I remember when Dual Blade came out, the first class that required a microtransaction to fully play. You had to buy the mastery books with real cash instead of finding them in the world like normal. Even 14 year old me knew that this was the beginning of the end :(
Yeah they got rid of all that pay to progress on all characters
I also distinctively remember that they made you skip straight to level.30 if you made a Dual Blade, which was insane to me when I remember grinding the ass out of my magician for 3 months playing on/off just to get to second job.
Evans actually came out before dual blade and required you to purchase some of their important skills as well. Namely Magic Guard. Evans only had 4 purchasable skills then DB was next with 6 purchasable skills. Thankfully that trajectory did not continue, but we got cubes instead which was honestly worse. I would have gladly paid a premium for the new characters than had the entire game unrecognizably destroyed by cubes.
I came back in 2020 and it definitely was a rush of nostalgia and I even found some old friends from pre-big bang. I got to level 250 and quit again in 2021. The game was just incredibly time consuming, but not in a bad way, but in a way where I felt like I was falling back into old habits of my younger childhood and playing endless hours getting lost in it. It just wasn't feasible being an adult and enjoying mindless grinding.
wow me rn
Yeaaah that’s how I feel right now, my Kaiser is lvl 245, I’ll probably slow down considerably once I hit 250. It’s too time consuming
@@saminates2002and then it speeds up at 260 and then slows down later, but at that point no fomo just do dailies and you should be good bc dailies give so much exp at this point.
I was 200 right before BB. I came back around 2016ish to play again but i just couldn’t with the whole pay to win mindset. I only made it to 204 before quitting for good. Definitely felt like a totally different game. Even people were more concerned about sitting on a better chair than hanging out and chatting it out at Henny
For anyone who wants to reexperience the good old maple or even play it for the first time, it is still possible. Private servers (MapleLegends, MapleRoyals) do a pretty good job of bringing that classic experience back. Obviously most of the joy is the nostalgia and memories, but it is possible to have some of that fun again and make new friends again. Even today the old game works as a fun social game, the enjoyment of the game never actually came from the numbers it was the friends and interaction. Definitely worth a try again even today.
thank you for that knowledge
Private servers on a good day has a couple hundred players, no where even near where maple story was. "Old" maplestory worked so well because it was played as a social interactive game, and it's massive player population in the early stages of it's life made that concept click. Up to level 50+ which back then was a enormous grind, I would say 90% of the players did PQs, and again that was such a great game mechanic which was enabled by the fact on any given day, any given channel you can easily find hundreds of players also eagerly waiting to join parties to play together with random strangers. That's no longer the game it is today. Especially with the introduction of reboot, which was the answer to pay-to-win changes to the main regular server, maplestory has now become more and more of a solo game until you truly reach end game content and are then forced to party up to defeat high end bosses.
Royals is a very corrupted server. Legends is good.
@@moonchipss Other way around
As much as i love this game I can't for the life of me get back to this game because the nostalgia and the fact that my bestfriend or someone id like to call "brother" passed recently who i played this game with everyday just gets to me like a literall punch to the face. It also serves a reminder that playing this can never have the same effect on me again and that if i try im afraid that i will stop 5 minutes in and just go away to cry.
I cannot express exactly how much this video resonates with how I have felt for years since I stopped playing MapleStory. I began and ended my journey in MapleStory about the same time frame as you. The friendships I established with other Maplers, the countless hours I spent sitting in little corners of hidden streets or Maya's house chatting with friends, all the times exploring the Maple world with my friends, and all the events and PQ's will never be forgotten. I remember certain spots that I would always sit and talk with special friends JUST LIKE YOU. Our Maple experience was so similar and I'm so glad I found this video.
This video reminded me of a lot of the small little details and quirks that made MapleStory the unique and exciting game it was. Tracking players to see when they would get out of a PQ made me lol because I remember doing that.
To hear you talk throughout this video, it sounded like my exact mindset whenever I have nostalgic feelings about MapleStory. Please know that you are not alone in your feelings and I thank you for making this video because it made me truly realize that I am not alone in my nostalgic feelings. MapleStory will have a special place in my heart forever.
Absolutely loved this video, it really encaptures the feeling of nostalgia I and many others have for this game ♡
Before the big bang update and the release of the pirate class, my brother introduced this game to me when I was only 7 years old, I played it actively all the way through until I was 17 years old.
Countless of friend groups come and gone, so many unfiltered conversations with strangers at the convenience of anonymity, an incredible amount of fond memories that I will forever hold dear. I basically grew up alongside this game and I do not regret a moment of it, the maple world was so magical to me as a kid.
Once a year or so I get that nostalgic itch and log back in again, only to be met with an overwhelming amount of information like you mentioned, I completely understand that feeling.
Some of my all-time favorite tracks are:
- Happyville: White Christmas
- Ellinia: Missing You
- Ereve: Raindrop Flower
- Maplestory Theme Music - Intro
Thank you for creating this video!
y'all guys play mapleroyals server, will no regret
Played the game from 2006-2012 and truly I think so fondly of it till this day. THE BGM is forever stuck in my head.
I never played MapleStory during its prime and often felt like I missed out on a piece of history. Only last year I got to play with a couple of friends in a private server, MapleSaga. But unfortunately, because my laptop is a Mac, I had to jump through several hoops involving an emulator program to get it to work, which had a limited time free trial. We managed to cheese the trial setting the "first open" date to way in the future (literal troll physics), but eventually I got hit with their backup trial and couldn't play anymore.
Sure, the game was grindy as hell, but it was the world to explore and feeling like you're there by your friends in it what made it all feel special. All in all, I'm glad I got to experience it and should I get the chance, I'd go back to it. Also I am convinced the soundtrack was scientifically designed to give you nostalgia cus good lord I felt it hard before even making an account.
I'm glad there are so many other people that have such an intense psychological connection to their memories of this game. Sometimes I feel like it's crazy that I'm as old as I am now and yet still have so many fond recollections of my exploration of Victoria Island and beyond.
The music of Victoria Island locations are forever burned and etched into my mind :')
Maple is always the first game that pops in my mind when thinking of nostalgic good times.
y'all guys play mapleroyals server, will no regret
Something I've thought a lot about lately, and is relevant to this video, is the idea of just getting older and looking at "them kids these days" and what they're doing. What I did as a kid was absolutely nothing like what my parents did when they were kids. They didn't have games like Maple Story or private Ragnarok Online servers or anything like that to play. They... you know... went outside. My grandparents also went outside. My great grandparents went outside. We were playing with dolls since the beginning of human history, but we only playing Maple Story for one very brief span of time. So I thought maybe I would grow old to watch the children of my generation play MMOs like Maple Story or Runescape or Tibia or Vanilla WoW and all that... and you know what I've realized? Well I've realized just what this video is saying. They aren't playing the same kinds of games as we were. A game like Pokemon Unite, like Fortnite, these free to play with battle passes and monetization schemes designed to get you onto a treadmill that funnels you into the whale hunting grinders to suck cash out of your credit card is NOT comparable to what I did as a kid. I feel no nostalgia at all when I look at "them kids these days" and I doubt anybody younger than me will either.
I know I'll never be able to return to my childhood, but I thought maybe I'd be able to reminisce through looking at today's children. I guess not.
You know, there's a lot of truth to this comment. I really, really don't like the implementation of predatory monetization systems taking advantage of kids, it certainly wasn't as figured out when we were growing up on these games, but I think one thing to consider is that a lot of kids these days are also still experiencing their own MapleStory or Runescape era through games like Minecraft and Roblox, and what's really beautiful about that is that gaming has become lot more accessible to all kinds of kids and giving them creative tools like Minecraft is going to inspire an entire generation of future game developers.
@@wizawhat Yeah, games like fortnite existing does not mean that actually great games like minecraft etc do not exist.
Don't reminisce in the activity, but in the happiness that it brings!
i am part of that forgotten generation, X. i was in my late 20s when i first got into MS in 2005. even as an older-than-your-average player, the feelings shared in the vid and this comment are still there in us.
the difference being it's weird for me to voice it. maybe because of my hard knock upbringing i was taught to bottle all that mushy feelings up.
great vid great comment.
y'all guys play mapleroyals server, will no regret
I have to admit, i do feel like i've became a slave to maplestory nostalgia.
I felt so much grief for the game being changed to a point where i couldn't recognize it.
Because i had to deal with bullying, problems with family, grades at school and social neglect... i used maplestory to fulfill my fantasy, where everything was so bring, colorful and adventurous.
Watching this video reminded me how nothing lasts forever. The game changed in every way, and so did i. I played the game since i was 8, now i'm 22.
But at the same time, i can accept it, and feel glad that i hard such awesome opportunity to live such a moment
I mean you can download an old school private server to live the original experience but it wont be the same, the main "problem" is we just aren't kids anymore.
@@S.O.N.E I myself don't think so, I think the main issue is the factors that combined to make those gaming experiences possible aren't at all present anymore in this era.
I needed this more than anything. I've been playing with my sister since pre-bb and this video was everything. Thank you for sharing your story.
I barely have words to describe how spot-on you are about this game.
I had a best friend too.. from old Maple... and I only started (late) in 2009.. so I barely had time to really enjoy MapleStory before Big Bang ruined it.
I'm really happy you mentioned RuneScape.
I started that game in 2007, when I was like 8 years old.. and it seems like no one likes the types of games I like (MapleStory, RuneScape, Minecraft, Dark Souls, etc.). I've tried a bunch of MMORPGs, because I get tired of "finishing" a game that just dies and never gets any updates.. but then hit a wall with MMORPGs feeling so cloned off each other, boring.. uninviting, exactly as you describe.
I was shocked by your conclusion though.
I feel very differently actually.
I became a Video Game Engineer because I believe that these memories are more than just nostalgia, and that we as adults can RELEARN to slow down and devote time to casually playing a game like old MapleStory with friends, and we relearn how to chill and explore maps like we used to.
There's something so obvious and special with MapleStory, that now no longer exists in current MapleStory.
I absolutely believe it's not all lost, and that it's possible to reignite the spark we felt for years with this game.
I dream that one day, I'll be able to release my own game that has its own charm, encourages players to play and socialize with each other as opposed to a massively single-player game with 1000s of lifeless clones of you running around..
I dream of a game that challenges this all, that hope isn't lost and that it's more than just nostalgia.
I know most people don't seem to believe it's possible, and that's why many of them didn't become software engineers like I have.
Almost every day since Feb 17, 2015, I've been studying Unity/C# and more and more advanced software engineering to make it more and more possible.. and nowadays trying to get better at rapid prototyping rather than getting stuck.
Just because something is really difficult to achieve, doesn't make it impossible.
If you have a dream, go for it.
Don't let people tell you that you can't.
we’re the same age, with a similar story. im excited by your passion, and i’d love to play your game when it comes out :) good luck my friend, thank you for being so passionate and sharing your ideas with the world
I'm currently a level 255 Explorer Pirate (Cannoneer) on the Reboot server, and while I certainly can't play daily anymore (work and education take up most of my time), I do have a perspective into the modern "endgame" Maplestory player experience that I'd like to share, with my own insights on the gameplay/social aspects of the game and how I've documented the changes therein. Do note that this is my experience in Reboot, and while I used to play in regular servers pre-Big Bang update, I don't engage with modern-day regular servers.
TO BE CLEAR, I am not writing this as a rebuttal or anything like that - I heavily agree with the overarching themes and details of your video. I just want to offer my perspective for a more complete understanding of what Maplestory CURRENTLY is.
((1)) How has the social aspect changed? I imagine this is what people miss the most about old Maplestory, and I'd like to announce that this social aspect is still alive and thriving!... Just, not in the same form it used to be. This has a lot to do with where current players perceive the "meat" of the game to be situated at.
With things like Tera Burning Events that let you level a character three times as fast until you hit level 200 (which is waaaay easier to reach these days), there is a clear split in the TYPE of communication you receive before and after that breakpoint. Before level 200, there are always a bunch of people willing to help you out with finding training maps for your preferred class, skill point allocation, unique tips and tricks, helpful quests to complete, and so on, but you also don't often get more casual conversation due to the fact that unless you're over level 200, you're seen as either a mule class that's only being made to increase the account's Legion Level (a system where you get account-wide permanent bonuses for trying all of the classes), or just an exploratory character to see if you even like the class, which means there's no guarantee you're going to stick around. And with a player base that sees very few new-bloods enter the game, social consistency is paramount. AFTER Level 200, though, it's like you meet a whole new demographic of people, primarily through GUILDS. Guilds often have their own Discord servers where you can post memes, voice chat while grinding, plan boss raids way more effectively, and organize events like game nights, giveaways, etc. Once players know you're in it for the long haul (to some degree), there is a vibrant social sphere that opens up to you. There are obviously people that aren't going to like that communication is more efficient on a 3rd-party application rather than ingame, and I genuinely sympathize - Nexon's attempts at in-game socialization have been wildly overtaken by the ease of Discord. However, that does not change the reality of the situation: Hit 200, join a guild, and the social options open up to you, but it won't ever be the same as old Maplestory.
((2)) How has the gameplay aspect changed? There's way, way too much to cover in one comment, so I'll limit it to what's directly relevant to your video. Namely, what the hell happened to party quests, and what's the state of things like potentials? Starting with party quests: Levelling to 200 is way easier now, so while back in the day party quests were the best way to gain EXP, now grinding is far more efficient. There used to be party play maps where players gained multiplicative XP boosts based on how many people were in the party, but it was plagued with leechers, griefing and hackers, so the idea was indefinitely shelved much to my infinite anger. Fucking loved party play maps, bring them back Nexon you animal bastards. Anyways, this was the direct cause of PQs falling out of favour before level 200. AFTER Level 200, there... uh, just aren't any party quests for that level range. Instead, all of that development effort has been funneled into a far, far larger selection of BOSS RAIDS. These are the kinds of bosses that you really can't solo early on in a character's progression unless you're a mechanical god or willing to grind gear a good ways past the minimum requirements for a month or two. Therefore, this is where the party play portion of gameplay thrives. This ties in to the guild stuff I mentioned in the previous point, where you can find players to party up with you, or contribute to a guild's global ranking via the Flag Race or Sharenian Culvert challenges to have a stronger player mentor or carry you through the boss. This is also paired with the fact that most of the best rewards are given by bosses now, not party quests. Harder bosses obviously grant better rewards, to the point where the big-daddy bosses require you to create a regular weekly party to consistently beat it, which means you build up a strong rapport with your fellow party members. In a way, this IS kinda the way party quests worked in the past, but it's received such a massive image change that it requires a shift in mentality to get used to.
Potentials, I have far less to speak about. The only reason the system is playable for me is because I play in Reboot server, where you can't buy it with IRL currency, only mesos. It's grindy, for sure, but it's a damn sight better than what the poor bastards in the regular servers have to deal with. You'd have to pay me my weight in gold to defend that dumpster fire of a system.
There is a LOT I'm leaving out of this analysis, and this comment is still this long. If you have any other questions, feel free to ask as you please.
This is a great comment, I appreciate you being respectful while trying to inform me about these changes rather than being rude about it. I definitely got some insight I would have had to put a lot more time into the current version of the game to fully understand. I'm really glad the social aspect still exists, albeit in a different way.
@@wizawhat The game is a chore now. It takes like 8 hours to hit 200 then you get op skills. Once 200 you unlock new areas every 5 levels, certain areas give u a matching "orb" . Each orb gets a set of daily quests so you can level it up. Once you level it up you need to pay meso. How do u get meso? Daily instance quests. What do u do after you that? daily bosses. Then what you ask? weekly quests. Then what? Grind until the next day to do it again, or do other daily things like commerci for gear. After about 6 months of this you get to fight the first tier of "hard" bosses then you go back into the cycle^^^ until the next phase only for it to take 4-5x as long and more requirements for the next set of gear. You grind so you can be better at grinding.
@@PeachiiWubs thanks for explaining every mmo. Old maple was also just as much of a chore.
it's going to take you alot longer i know :P to get 200 it's not going to take u 8 hour
@@PeachiiWubs do you ever reached endgame of old school maplestory? every level doesnt change almost anything since almost every skill is useless, we didnt had good training areas for higher levels so you wanna grind in the same map 120-200.
Yes, modern maple is ALL about grinding, the difference between these two is that you don't need to grind 18 hours a day with a pay to win 2x exp coupoun to get lv 200 in 2 years, instead you need to constantly play at least once per week.
Bosses back in the days doesnt give almost anything, every class is extremely TRASH if you're not an bowmaster bishop or NL, you literally is crying because the modern maple is all about grind, but back in the days it was even worse.
Lets talk about how easy is to DESTROY your character in oldschool? Wrong builds because you doesn't follow a guide and just play for fun, and for fix it all you need to do is pay2win it.
Arcane river dailies literally took under 15 minutes per day if you're not a newbie lol
So I've never played Maple Story, but as a fellow nostalgic 25 year old this very much still hit me in the feels. Great video man. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
y'all guys play mapleroyals server, will no regret
Loved this so much! I have no experience with Maple Story at all but could really relate to the friendships and experience you had with it through other games and communities over the years.
Really beautiful how you spoke about that friendship
I would pay so much to go back and be able to play with all my friends again it makes me so sad that this was definitely my most favorite era
Maybe the real MapleStory was the friends we made along the way.
I played from the open beta(2005) to maybe early 2007 on Scania. The grind and the rampant hacking due to the grind slowly led to more and more friends dropping off the game. Around that time I got into my first real offline friend group in high school and drifted away myself. Still have lots of good memories from that period though but unfortunately lost contact with everyone I knew from GMS very quickly.
Hope you're all doing well out there, Maplers.
i actually got into maple story recently, within the last year. tried the current version and found it to be obnoxiously bad, and then my fiancé introduced me to a private server, maple legends. even as someone trying the game for the first time in 2021, with no nostalgia for it to speak of, i found old maple story to be so much more fun overall. notably, there are so many secret areas to find in old maple story. if you press up on a suspicious rock or like, most instances of "two things next to each other" youll often find a brand new place, a discovery of your own!
most if not all of these secret areas have been removed in modern maple story due to how much every map has been overhauled. it really goes to show how much character and charm was lost when maple story became not a game about YOU going on your own adventure, but instead a game about Some Other Character going on an adventure. you dont get to figure out how to navigate the world anymore because it's not your adventure. they might as well just cut to the next action thing.
This is so true. Those areas were supposed to be hidden, they were called hidden streets after all! It was great because showing them to new players was a great way to communicate and meet people, now every 'hidden' area had a glowing portal show up once you get close enough.
I shed a tear; I cherished those moments logging in and seeing my friends. Obtaining the maple llama staff, KPQ, LPQ, LMPQ! It was so much fun and I find myself chasing games trying to find the same feeling I felt long ago.
I know that moment won’t ever come back, a moment so pure, untouched by the Big Bang or life’s challenges.
That final line with the music cutting out was really great, this game tears at my heart like nothing else. Always going to take at least 75% of my memories
Its such a brutally dower ending. I hate feeling like it's a mere old timey belief that we could have a game that captures this wonderful mix of typical MMO number building with this intricate social aspect in that one day you're stalking a person to steal their PQ room simply to have them be your most trusted ally the next day, all in this mutual understanding that we all want to "progress" but that's such a lofty goal that we converse and have fun in the meantime while still aiming for that goal.
I commented this in coppersans vid, but a large part of the nostalgia is that maplestory WAS our social media. It wasnt just a game. Now ppl dont play games to socialize with ppl online anymore
True, I played some Black Desert recently for about a month. It's basically a single player MMO and there's almost no reason to party 95% of the time. I'm just glad I got to experience the unique early Maple, nothing will be like it ever again. Every day was like a chat room of my favorite online friends with a game attached.
Just stopping by to say ill never forget the great times on maple, and im grateful for the community you all helped sustain. Some of the best memories of my life. Not all of my best memories are maple related but man, you just had to be there i guess.
The other problem is the expectation of year over year growth by investors, leading to more and more sketchy business decisions by developers & publishers to give that all consuming machine what it wants. This is what has allowed Activision, Ubisoft, EA, and co. to commit all the atrocities that have so recently come to light. If you have a game that has more upfront costs to development, these problems become more likely. And with the immense cost and expectation of new content that MMO's expect means this abusive cycle is both more likely and accelerated.
I'm always going to be bitter towards Nexon for this reason
Yeah I've always been bitter towards Nexon since their business practice changed. Even with Maplestory 2, the game only survived for like 2 years before shutting down which disappointed a lot of players. Especially the ones who spent money on the game.
Loved this so much. It was such a great insight into a game I never got to play but had always heard about
y'all guys play mapleroyals server, will no regret
Huge nostalgia I think most of us that are in our 20's can easily relate to this video. When all you had was free time the grind was so much fun. Thanks for putting in the time for this video and making the inner child smile.
y'all guys play mapleroyals server, will no regret
First played around 11years old and I am a Chinese player. The BGM hits me really hard. This video brought back so much memories to me. We have grown up, but the memories are still young. With so many pressure from the life that force me to be "as adult as i can be", I know I was a young kid with my own happniess once.
this is my first ever comment on youtube video, I have to compliment YOU on this video.
I played MapleStory from 2005-2008, best childhood moment of my life. i hope MS open new server that like old-school MS.
mostly i just play around and chatting with my friends when, and stuck at around level 60 lol
i really miss that moment, now i have a family, but i still can remember my memories playing MS. like waiting the ship just for die because i was on the deck and get hit by strong flying monster lol
THE BGM is forever stuck in my head, i have playlist on my spotify and i hear it almost everyday when i need to focus on work.
again, Thanks for the video!
Beautiful video. Your experiences are 100% what most of us old maplestory players also experienced. I still play to this day, hopped to private servers after big bang, quit multiple times, and came back to reboot, casually, around 2018. I would give anything to go back and play the glory days again, meeting new friends was so common. Skype, and nowadays, discord, have ruined that social aspect of the game and the anonymity that came with it. i'm a shy guy, i don't like vcing with people im not super comfortable with, heck even phone calls are difficult. It was a nice escape for me growing up having these fears, and now its expected to socialize over discord instead of the character we portray ourself as ingame. There's nothing wrong with it, but i do think there were many people like me growing up that found solitude in maplestory and the social aspects that came with it. exploration, pqs, party maps like LHC, all fortified the usefulness of your peers. The game is a ghost town unless you're in a guild spending time in your guild HQ. The memories i have of the good ol' days have brought me to tears because i've lost contact with some of those people when i abandoned the normal servers for the private servers all those years ago. I met new friends there, but we have since kind of split, occasionally dming on discord. It's just not the same nowadays. I will probably continue to play until it gets shut down because my love for this game is unending, i just wish i could go back in time and hear that beautiful login menu screen music for the first time. The joy and drive for adventure that song brings me is unmatched. Never could get into the traditional mmo formula, but maplestory nailed it for everything i wanted out of my true, first multiplayer experience back in the day. I'm forever grateful for that.
You have described my childhood with this game in a way I could never put into words and gave me a return to a simpler time during my time watching this thank you.
Maplestory used to be my social life back in highschool. Me and my cousin actually met up people from our guild irl.
The writing in this video is on point.
Great video & great story, it's always awesome to hear other people childhood stories with the old MapleStory.
And it always seems that we all had really similar experiences & thoughts.
Best of luck with your journey
About the "I don't really get MMORPGs" section... I think what to me speaks most about you not getting them, is thinking that they're solely about grinding mindlessly through until endgame. At least the ones I played, including FFXIV, there's a journey and enjoyment to be had along the way until then. That said... old MapleStory is definitely still my favorite of all of them.
Edit: Also, I doubt you'll read this comment on this 1 year old video, but, the population does still have nice chats in Reboot, which also deletes P2W because you.. literally can't, cubes are bought with mesos that you grind!
@TroubadorPoet It's definitely not quite the same, but it was a lot better of an experience than the normal servers can give you, these days. None of the early PQs are done in either case anymore though T-T but yeah. I'd say it's worth a shot at least
@TroubadorPoet There actually is one high level PQ people are still doing together, but it's not that interesting of one, sadly. "Hungry Muto", which just helps your gear progression for Arcane Symbols (a level 200+ equipment every class has now) is done with 1-4 people, but most people I see do it in the max group of 4. And, hope you enjoy, whatever class you end up picking up!
Edit: Oh, and commerci is there and people still do that last I checked, but that was like last year (my life's been busy)
I dont think I've ever made a real friend from playing a game online. As you say, games allow you to chat anonymously and you can be more social than you would in real life. However, I'm just as socially awkward online as I am in real life.
In certain ways I feel like its become harder to make friends online, but maybe that's just me or a consequence of getting older. I personally find it harder to want to reach out to new people
@@wizawhatSame. I've also gotten more paranoid too, because since 2020 more and more child predators and pedophiles exposed.
Damn, maplestory took up so much of my time in high school lol. Banger video wiz, thanks for sharing this.
I never even heard of the game, but from the gist of it, you could have been talking about my "relationship" with WoW. Even your assumptions about how a "classic" version of MapleStory would play out ring true with going back to classic WoW. It took me a while to get to the same conclusions but sometimes, moving on is really the only healthy option.
Hearing about others experiences going back to classic WoW definitely played a factor in my feelings there
I wound up going back to MS a couple weeks ago as a 28 year old that remembers how impossible it was to pass level 70 in the old days and got a Bishop to level 185 in 3 days and immediately burnt myself out. The music is absolutely amazing still, the gameplay is smooth and the nostalgia hits so hard. I remember my guild swapping back and forth between MS and Mabinogi for YEARS, holding onto friendships. and I'm so happy to be getting a classic Mushroom enemy tattoo to honor this game! Amazing video
I find it immensely fascinating that so many people who played this game during that golden era have such a strong emotional connection to it. Even though I don't play anymore, every once in awhile I like to watch videos like these to help remind me of the good times . Thanks for sharing your thoughts and making this video, it was really really enjoyable.
Also if you ever do get the itch to play a nostalgic server I've enjoyed playing both maplesaga and mapleroyals.
it was a lot of fun! the interactions with other maplings made the game ...it was hard and fun.
and if I look at some ages I was old than
Thank you. This was…is bittersweet. But I’m glad Maple will always be a part of my life..The people I met and lost. This really hit me.
As a person who started playing in RED and is still playing I have to say, f2p is viable even in elysium, it’s just a lot slower. You have to do daily bosses for rp to buy cubes and for random cube drops, also events have cubes too you need to take advantage of. The game also starts at level 200 right now, leveling slows down and I’ve spent a good hundred hours farming from 250-255. Party quests aren’t really relevant anymore and leeching isn’t viable which is why it’s solostory, Korea recently (like last June lol) said they want to make more pq type content and make it viable again, but who knows. But yeah there’s a lot of talking in discord and elysium is relatively dead so it’s hard to get “in” there that’s why I always plug the elysium discord to people and say join and guild when you can, that’s how you find people now. It’s a different game with the same visual style for sure
I'd argue the visual style isn't the same. There's plenty of new areas that have released that feel completely out of place in Maplestory which causes your character to stand out. Pretty much none of the recently released areas feel like Maplestory.
@@bumbertyr Agreed.
amazing video, it's bizarre to see such production quality put towards this silly little game nobody cares about anymore.
this is truly a perfect explanation as to why things are the way they are, and i hope people have the attention and care to watch to the end to understand this isn't just about "old maple good new maple bad".
it's a special type of game from a special era of the internet. just be glad you were there for it. i was a little too late for the golden era myself
Such a great way to put it. Happy I stayed til the end because you sum it up perfectly. We can’t log back in and meet up in ellinia and sit with our old internet buddies but we can reminisce on an easier time, when we had the free time (or made the free time) to use this game as a way to chat with our friends, explore the maple world, level up (slowly but gratifyingly) and enjoy the “good ole” internet for what it was back then before discord and all these other platforms we have in 2022. Sometimes I think about maple story and see some game play on twitch but it truly is so different now. We are all out here growing up and figuring it out. Cheers to us young adults with fond memories of a “simpler” time getting on ms to disconnect from the world.
Thank you for this video......
When I first played MapleStory I did not know a lick of English, unironically I learned more English in this game than I ever did in school. It is as you said the community aspects of MapleStory really kept the game alive. Things like training at the different maps, partying up at PQ's, Standing for hours at the FM trying to sell your items or simply chilling in Henesys and showing off your NX, created many small instances which would push you to socialize with other players and create bonds which would last a lifetime.
This is something which modern MMORPG's simply lack, you can just queue for Dungeons, there is no need to socialize as most content can be done alone, you can just sell your items at an automated auction house and the difficulty component is gone. All of this is antithetical to a healthy MMORPG that I am not surprised at all that what once was a vibrant MMORPG like MapleStory is simply a shell of it's former self, there is no class variety, they all have the same mobbing abilities now where once all classes filled a specific niche and were needed to fight difficult bosses, warriors would give HP and Defense buffs, Mages would give Mana buffs, Thieves would give Speed Buffs and you would need all of these classes to fight difficult bosses like Pianus, Papulatus and Zakum.
Gone are the days where we would sit around Henesys hunting ground chatting on top of the shack or going to Maya's house socializing with players old and new. Taking the Black Taxi accidently and going down the Ant Tunnel with your friends just to see how far you would go before dying out of sheer curiosity. Hiding in the Cargo hold of the Orbis ship because you're afraid the Balrog might get you. going down Orbis tower trying to get to El Nath as a low-level because you wanted to see what the "Pro town" was like. attending a wedding in Amoria between friends because really you just wanted the great couples buff haha. Finding the elusive Pig Beach which was the only hidden map at the time. Competing with other players at the Free market spamming @@@ just so other people could see the item you were selling, and partying up with your friends and guildmates to defeat difficult bosses because that is what it was all about.
We will always remember, the first time we disembark the ship at Lith Harbor, experiencing a brave new world not knowing what was in store for us, the friends we made along the way and the memories that will forever be enshrined in our hearts. ;)
"We didn't realize we were making memories, we just knew we were having fun." - Winnie the Pooh
This video is a story very well told, you explain every way I felt about maplestory. I was upset about how it turned out but I couldn’t voice why. We share parallels in experience and watching this video was like reliving my own childhood.
I also started playing around 12 years old and seeing this video hit all the nostalgia I was looking for. Thank you for making this, I value your story and what maplestory meant to you too. Just like you said in the end, there’s times we just gotta move on and adapt to the changing world around us.
Thanks for playing 👍🏾
This is the video that no one asked for, but what everyone needed. Thank you for making this video, the nostalgia factor was insane.
Haven’t watched it yet, but I also love Maplestory. But I actually still come back from time to time and find myself binging it in those periods. But the game has changed from a social platform to a solo/modern MMORPG endgame grind. So I bet that’s what you’ll talk about. But I hear in South Korea it’s actually still as we once remember it
This video hit me hard. Probably cause I too spent lots of time in Maple Story around that time and also Cause around your age with similar feelings about the world. Ive been really nostalgic for old MMOs, but don't quite enjoy modern MMOs like lots others do, nor do I have the time to sink into them like I used too. But heck, it hasn't stopped me from trying. Ive been playing a modded server of Toontown called Corporate Clash. And its been really enjoyable so far. Thanks for another great video dude.
Funnily enough Toontown was another game I always wanted to try as a kid but never did due to the paywall!
@@wizawhat it was probably those commercials way back when. If you mood ever strikes you, Toontown Rewritten and Coporate Clash are both free. Rewritten more or less being close to original Toontown and Corporate Clash being a modified version with more traditional RPG elements added.
I was into ragnarok online private servers was my first MMO love. I like you made friends in game, took breaks from grinds by hanging out in peaceful places and just talking. When the private server got shut down, we moved to maple story and did a lot of the same. This was before pirates were a think and tbh, I don’t think I even made it to Bandit haha but I loved the community and exploration
Just stumbled upon your channel and have to say this is an amazing video. It outlines everything I've loved about this game - like the chat box, the PQ and grinding meta, and the beauty of simply logging back in after a day of school - and I'd be lying if I said it didn't cross my mind most days. You worded every struggle and every feeling perfectly! We're coincidently the same age and we started and stopped playing around the same time so this video hit all the right notes with me. Funny enough, I'm in between jobs right now and decided to dive into video essays on Maplestory out of nostalgia and reminiscence of simpler time in my life, and this video was most certainly the one I was looking for so thank you.
Man this brought back so many memories
Thank you for making a video about how your relationships and life was, and how you felt. I enjoy learning about how other warm-hearted people's lives are actually like and how they genuinely feel.
I still play maple. I have off and on since 2005. It is indeed way different and it is kind of sad how much different it is. I really wish a new game that could give the feel the old MS gave. There was nothing like it.
Wow so much of this hits the same. As the same age as you are, we had so much time back then, I miss my friends when we could just sit there and talk.
I’ll never forget my time with Maplestory as well. You’ve done such a good job echoing my feelings. I wish I had said goodbye when I last logged off, but when I did, I never knew it was my last time to do so. It was special and I don’t think we can ever try to emulate that feeling as kids unfortunately. These memories hold a lot of value and sometimes I wonder about it.
@TroubadorPoet haha that’s so cool, I had maybe a chance to meet up with one or two but never did, despite living in the same city. I don’t regret it, but it was a special time to be around.
What a great video. I’m really impressed with the organization. The way it was all tied together from begin to end was extremely satisfying, I’m hoping to see some more videos like this!
I loved listening to this. It reminds me of a lot of relationships I've been able to make and that I've lost throughout the years
Maplebae lore
Now I never have to explain myself again, I'll just refer people to this video LOL
Been playing from 2005. Your video is exactly what I feel in all of the aspects. Never had school friends to play with, all of them I met ingame. I’ve always come back to this game and it will never feel the same. But in the end, I cant manage to leave this game and feelings as its was too much part of my life.
Trying my best to wake up for my bed finally, but its really hard.
I miss the days of spamming for recruiting party members for Kerning and Ludi PQ, then eventually Orbis but that one sucksssss
I cant believe you didnt discuss the hackers that kept ruining the level grinding places by warping all enemies off screen
Oh man the vac in the corner of the screen!
AGHHGHGHH I am working on a video rn about how delightful it was to just, like, be in a game with other people, even if the gameplay was nothing to write home about. This is such a validating video to watch; I'm so glad I'm not the only one who feels this way xD
This video is so heckin' cute :)
This hit a lot of the points that resonate with how I feel about Maplestory. In all honesty if I went back to the old, grindy mess the game used to be, I don't know if I'd like it. The shift of the leveling formula in the Big Bang update definitely felt better to me. Even when I was little I'd never had the patience to make it past *maybe* level 50. I think there was possibly a single time I reached 70 or so, but that may just be me misremembering. The SOCIAL aspect though? Absolutely dead in current Maplestory. You're so right about going through the world and all the old hangout areas are just dead. I used to hang out in the potion shop of Henesys all the time because on my server (Windia, I had no idea what servers actually correlated to back then I just liked the wing icon) that was the big hangout spot. I'd chat to people for hours on end. A friend and I actually even figured out once that high level players were totally willing to just hand out gear that to us was incredibly expensive (like a pair of earrings or something that we could sell for 50k mesos). We went around for hours in the game together just looking for high level players to beg from. They probably just thought we were cute noobs (we were), but it's one of my happiest memories from playing that game, even if nowadays I give beggars in games a lot of side-eye. In reality now I realize that the 50k earrings were just a singular high level mob drop to those characters and likely didn't even make a dent in their meso bag.
Fortunately, I never got "good" enough at the game to even pay attention to the bossing stuff so I just didn't care about having the "best" gear, so that wasn't as much of an issue for me in terms of the microtransaction stuff. I do remember being upset about the Big Bang update though because they'd moved around / removed a lot of the high traffic hangout spots (another one that comes to mind was the first portal to the left of the main Henesys town with several rows stacked up of the mushroom mobs and players would just hang out on some hay bales at the top). That place was gone and I was upset by that.
This video overall gave me a MASSIVE blast of nostalgia though, especially with that into on the login screen. Maplestory is definitely a game that holds a special spot in my heart, but having returned to it now I can't get past the realization that every single character has basically turned into "a mage under the guise of another class" with all of their massive, map-clearing, clearly magical abilities. I think the first one I came to that realization with was the Phantom. He was just using spells, basically. Almost none of his design communicated "thief" to me past his class skill stealing, which also just came across as him being the cool kid on the playground with all of the powers. I don't know that I'd play a classic server at this point unless it was totally rebalanced, and even then I don't know if Maplestory would ever recover the social aspect.
Thanks for the video, it gave me a lot of nostalgia and fun memories to think back on.
Damn, this comment really unearthed even MORE memories I didn't recall when scripting this video. I love how new players begging for items and mesos was just a generally accepted part of the MapleStory culture because of how terrible the economy was for them! That map you're thinking of was Henesys Hunting Ground, omg, so many memories there. I remember using an exploit where spamming the potion key let you climb to the very top of the rope without triggering the movement to the next map. You're so right about the class changes too. I definitely realized that they became insanely homogenized but didn't think about how they all became mages, although as a thief player I was severely bent out of shape to see every class get their own flash jump LOL. Thanks for this and I'm so glad you enjoyed the video!
@@wizawhat glad to have unearthed more memories! I forgot about that potion glitch! I think someone taught me it back in the day too!
Everyday from 2007 - 2010 afterschool, I would login and just grind, frequent carnival pq. Those were the days, when maplestory was more simplistic. Now, it's different, big bang patch changed the game forever. This game will always be a big staple in my childhood, this was everything in society was just smooth and fun, 2006 - 2012 was the peak in society as it concerns mmorpgs etc
y'all guys play mapleroyals server, will no regret
The ending of the video was impactful. I binged watched old MapleStory videos, and other parts of my childhood for nostalgia. I think we are all reminiscing the “good times” of when we had no worries & could get lost into something when we were young. I think our lives right now we aren’t in a positive state so we keep looking back at the past. But ur video made me realize like u said “it’s time to wake up” and stop looking at the past. Let’s enjoy our current lives now and work towards making memories, just like we did when we were younger. If we keep looking at the past, it could cause depression if we get too deep into it. Thank u for this video. “Don’t be sad that it’s over, be glad that it happened”.
I will never forget this game my cousin introducing this game to me. My brothers and me spending countless hours, lost summers, and lost time with family over this game. Maple story will forever be in my heart and I will never play a game like it again. Cloud1583
This has brought up tons of old memories and nostalgia - I started Maple Story back in 2005 right after Beta ended, I remember when cash shop first opened and new server Windia was introduced where I moved from Bera to Windia starting a new journey, I had the time of my life, running around seeing my very first level 50 person sitting in Perion was the greatest thing ever and I aimed to reach that level my self as a level 25 warrior.
Later remaking my character to an archer when I saw one using arrow bomb in Orbis tower, I was blown away and wanted to play an archer, thus I made a new character again starting anew, making countless friends along the way, some that became my real life ones, but time is the greatest enemy, we got jobs, we grew up, we went our own ways, bonds broken, friendships lost and the only thing that remain is the memory of a great time, I was lucky I got to enjoy such an awesome game while it lasted, over the last decade I have been looking for something to recapture the feeling MS gave me in the past but there's nothing that even comes close, there's always something missing, always something that doesn't feel right, I don't think i'll ever be able to find something as fun, not because today's games are bad (most are) but because I have changed, I don't have the free time i used to have, I don't have the creative mind that I used to and with that I got nothing else to say but that the memories I made in this game will always remain with me.
Thank you for making this video as it has made me remember a lot of things, surge of emotions that i haven't felt in years, remembering all the good and bad times I had,
Farewell Old school Maple Story.. you were great.
Such a great video. Believe it or not, everything that you mentioned DOES still exist. Old school private servers are a thing, with thousands of old school players dedicated to them. My server of choice is Maplestory Phoenix. A smaller yet VERY authentic Maplestory experience currently on patch .62. Pirate was just released. The only difference is that small modifications are made in order to fix the balance issues that you mentioned. (They are very easy fixes). You should try doing a video on these servers. I would love to see your reaction.
Nexon can and should do an official old school server. It truly is remarkable that they haven't. The demand is certainly there for North America. But since Nexon is based in Korea, I'm not sure if they see this demand and are mainly focusing on the Asian consumers. The other thing that they have cited as an excuse (a lame one at that) for not making an old school server is exactly what patch they should make it. Afterall, the game had an extensive history before big bang. I think most players would be happy with ANYTHING before cubing. Anyway, come on over to old school private servers. You will enjoy it.
Actually, many kms players have spoken out about wanting a classic server as well on their version of reddit called "Inven", It's not just the Western/European audience. There's worldwide appeal to the idea.
For me it was Ragnarok Online 18 years ago. But a good reminder for the times is the soundtrack of the game. Brings back memories :)
I think the phrase "My Favorite Game That No Longer Exists" applies to more than just the game being different in itself, but it also applies to a time period and warmth that can never be replicated or reclaimed.
Honestly If I were to play again with my old buds in todays day, even on a classic private server, it wouldn't hit in the same way as it did in my youth. I was a different person then and those events did something special for that version of me that isn't really compatible with the current version of myself.
I have very fond memories that are still special to me, but even if I could relive the events 1:1 in current era, idk if it would be the same.
It's sad but I think that chapter of my life is done.
My biggest pain now is that I haven't found a new thing to swap it out with.
All I do now is eat, sleep and work lmao! ='D
I didn’t expect to find such profound closure like this this morning 😭
Thank you for this.
Man I honestly wished the game had that community aspect to it. Theses days maps are all empty or a single person leveling. I still have my old account pre-big bang. I do go back every now and again but I always fall back out every couple months. I can never thank Maplestory enough for the great memories I had as a highschooler
Just got back into the game last week and already got level 200. The experience is definitely different than it was back in 2007-2010. You should try logging into reboot, there's A LOT of og players that socialize in henn. There are also reboot discords available so people can party up for bosses, etc. Glad this video showed up in my recommendation, even though our experiences with modern-day maple are different.
I have very similar feelings to a game called Well of Souls
was good stuff ;)
I have very similiar feelings about Club Penguin :)
@@TheMAciusiowaty 😭
I had like 3k hours clocked in WoS. Surprised to see someone else mention that hidden gem.
I feel the same way about-get this-Animal Jam.
The social part hits so hard man, I really get what you said about that girl you played with, I had the same feeling with many people as well we played so much together exploring the world, we even took the ship from Ellinia to Orbis just to chill with new people and include those onto our journey too haha, good old times I wish I could go back.
Also, your storytelling skills are insanely good, I was really hooked!
Shout out to my old Pre-BB Khaini friends.
Excellent video, I've thought of this exact thing time and time again. I do think Maple had some unique elements that made it more social than other games, but it was also a time-and-place thing. I really wonder if someone can somehow capture even a fraction of that energy for the modern day and make an MMO that hits some of those notes, it can never be what it once was, but it was great while it lasted.
Ayyy I think I was in the guild laundry
I was in a guild called Celestial. There were a few guilds named Celestial that got together, broke up, got back together, etc. It was great.
Wow, me and my best friend have the exact same feelings as you regarding Maplestory. We just couldn't adapt to most other mmorpg's, because we were always looking for that experience we've had in Maple. That absurdly hard way to level, but at the same time, fun. The masterful background music (Which i hear often to day), the hours spent at the Market announcing items and looking at the shops (Even when we had no mesos to spend), the chatting while waiting for the boat to arrive in Orbis, and even the thrill of waiting outside to see if the overpowered balrogs would arrive. Very good times indeed, but sadly no games can provide that experience anymore, not that EXACT experience we are looking for..
Amazing video.
Did you play maplestory? Was a huge part of my life, as well as cod zombies and your channel. :)
My Nexon MMORPG of choice was Mabinogi but basically everything you said in this video applied to my experience in that game, too. It was my home-away-from-home because it felt so pure and idealized when I started playing a few months after the North American launch in 2008, yet when I tried picking it up again 10 years later everything felt so comparatively overwhelming and monetized, and out-of-place crossovers (a Sword Art Online one was happening when I returned) and artistic changes destroyed my sense of belief in the world. Nexon in the 2020s feels like a company that wants to focus on cheap-to-produce mobile gacha games, but they're straddled with maintaining a bunch of PC games from the 2000s that whales keep clinging onto
you are speaking my language nuff said...
Mabinogi was a weird one. I could never get into it myself but I'll always remember just sitting in the starting area listening to other players performing iconic video game music in game on their own instruments!
The section about the PQs hit me so hard in the nostalgia, you explained that time period perfectly. MS truly wasnt the same after PQs fell out of fashion
I would pay money for nexon to give us a OG Maplestory server with some minor adjustment for improvement