Reviewing Maplestory

Hello MMORPG.com'ers!

This is my first post, and it's an unbiased (attempted) review on Maplestory.

Some background info about me to help you decide whether I'm a blubbering idiot or a cartoon MMORPG guru.

I'm 16, I've been playing Maplestory for roughly.. 10 Months now, I've had 3 characters, NL, Bish, and BM, and I finally quit MS today. So I went to MMORPG.com in search of a great MMO to take up my time again, but not before looking at the Maplestory section. Then when I saw that Maplestory lacked a more in-depth review, that would sway possible new players, I decided to make an account and write this LONG ASS REVIEW.

If you don't want to read, scroll down to the part where I list the hazards of Maplestory and follow the directions. If you WANT to read, voila!

For the people that don't know, Maplestory is a 2d side-scrolling MMORPG created by Nexon. The game has lots of features, with tons of monsters to kill, items to claim, bosses to defeat, quests to finish, skills to learn, classes/jobs to experience, and I could go on and on with this.

When I give that personal/public rating thing, personal is MY rating, based on my experience. Public is the rating that I anticipated the rest of you guys would give.

Anyway, to the points of the game.

Graphics: Personal: 10/10 Public: 5/10

I LOVE the Maplestory graphics because it gives off that "anime charm," and I am an AVID anime watcher. People would say that this deserves a 5/10 because of the cartoony-ness of the game, and unrealisticness (is that a word), but it really depends on what the user prefers. A cartoony game? Or a super awesome almost real-life graphics game. Another point is.. the way the character moves across the screen and the way the background subtly changes, is really another reason why I love the graphics. But you'd have to play Maplestory in order to understand what i'm talking about.

User Playability: Personal: 10/10 Public: 10/10

Coming from a 5 year+ Runescape AND Starcraft veteran, Maplestory is EXTREMELY easy to play. If you've played Counterstrike, you can play Maplestory. It's that simple. Maplestory characters are controlled through the arrow keys on the keyboards, with the skills/attacks hot-keyed. The mouse is used, but not as much as Runescape. (It's not a click-to-attack game.) Class Playability can be challenged though. I've only got experience in playing a Night Lord (Rogue), Bow-master (Archer-type), and Bishop (Healer type). All three are VERY easy to use, because you just face the direction you want to attack, and cast whatever spell/skill/attack you want. But I haven't used a melee character as much, so I don't know how hard it would be to grind thousands of Gobies (VERY ANNOYING MONSTERS) for hours. Also as an added bit, if you're pro at Mario, you're probably going to be pro at Jump quests.

Gameplay/Features: Personal: 5/10 Public: 5/10

I'm ASSUMING that most of the public is with me on this one. I'm one of the people who are still looking for the perfect mmorpg, so I'm very critical about the Gameplay and Features. Maplestory is unfortunately, and IN MY OPINION, the typical Korean Grind-Fest. SORRY! But after going 36 hours with my 4 beloved party members on a map killing un-dead skeletons, and only gaining 3 levels, yes, Maplestory, is no doubt a grind-fest. Now, some people argue that the quests take away from the grinding and offer great experience. This is partially true! When I advanced to my 4th Job on my Night Lord, I had to do a quest to get a new skill. This quest gave me 10% of my TNL (to next level) experience, which helped tremendously. But how many quests do this? VERY FEW.  A typical Maplestory quest is: Get X number of Y to get Z. Some of these quests are repeatable, so grinders have a bit more motivation to kill these monsters nonstop. I personally love the grind, that's why I don't bash it as much as others do. In fact, on my Bishop, I've only done around 10 quests, excluding the ones that I had to do for the big chair.

Next part of Gameplay, this is why I gave the features such a low score. For me and several other people, PVP is HALF the mmo. This was probably why I was so addicted to Runescape. After getting a "maxed pure," and having that certain feel of victory, then killing several people so I could claim their items, teleport to them and wear it in front of them, I realized how important PVP was to me. UNFORTUNATELY, Maplestory is pure PVE, adding to the grinding element. True, there are bosses, Guild Quests, side quests, parties, and all that, but I'd pick killing a noob over killing a cute mushroom any day.

NEXXXXT part of features: The stuff you can do!

Now, Maplestory may fail in its PVP element, but there are still tons of features. You can get married (at a price), own a pet (at a price), own a guild (at a price), travel on a boat that requires 15 minutes of your time to get to the other continent (I LOVE THAT BOAT), Attempt Party Quests and Mini-Games, change your character's looks (at a price), buy clothes (at a price), fight in the infamous smega war (at a price), ks people, beat your individual quests, level up, buy/sell items in the massive market, spends a LOT of REAL money (at a price :]), chat with friends, take part in Maple-drama, Maple-love, Maple-music videos, Maple-series, Maple-politics, Maple-economy, Oh and did I mention get married? (at a price)

Now that's A LOT of stuff to do right? Yeah, until you do them OVER AND OVER again. I'll try to go through all of those points later.

Moving ONN

New Player Friendliness: Personal: 7/10 Public: 10/10

Although most of us live by that saying, "you were once a noob," I didn't. Or at least not in Maplestory. I started out with around.. 100Million Mesos, given to me by some rich guy . But anyway! I still think Maplestory is fairly helpful to the newbie breed. They have a pretty large island, Maple Island, that was created to help out the noobs. But to be honest, Maplestory is just way too simple to need an island. Once you learn the hot-keys, you're good to go. Also, the game supplies you with the necessary equipment to get started, so it's easy for new players to gain an understanding of the game while having fun, without having to worry about getting "necessary equipment." OKAY NNNNNNNNNEXT

Cash Shop/Item Mall Dependence: Personal: 100/10 Public: 50/10

I couldn't think of a witty line to start this off with, so i'll just get to the point. I'm one spoiled S.O.B, even though I work, I still get a fairly decent allowance, (Goin towards that M.I.T Fund and BMW M3 Fund :],) but what I'm trying to say is, I've spent WELL over 2 Grand on this game. People just reading this thread for fun are probably like WTF? While some Maplestory veterans would scoff at this miniscule amount of money. I had a friend who smega'd the alphabet forwards and backwards, with several smegas aimed to make fun of me in between. So, a smega (This is a message broadcasted to EVERY player in the server) costs ROUGHLY with severe rounding, a dollar per smega. There's 42 letters forwards and backwards, + the 8'ish that she wasted to call me a nub, so 50*$1= $50 wasted in almost 2 minutes. What did she get from this? Some epic LULZ, some hate mail, a spot on the permanent ks list for several guilds, and a kick in the shins from me ^_^. My point is, Maplestory LIVES on the money generated from the Cash Shop. The players also live on the items sold by the cash shop. Although the items are not NECESSARY to game play, they are certainly beneficial, helpful, and hella more fun to the game. On my quest to get my 3rd jobbers to 4th jobbers, I bought SEVERAL SEVERAL SEVERAL double experience cards. These cards would give me twice as much experience as I would normally get from killing monsters, for a set amount of time. They sell a 30 day one for 20k Nexon Cash, which is $20. Next on the Cash Shop list, weddings can be bought for $25, in order to bound the Maple-loved ones . If you want to invite more people to the wedding you can pay $30 instead, and if you're not in love yet, but you have a crush on someone, you can send them a love ring that costs $6, and glows with different lovey symbols when the two of you are close to each other. WHY am I telling you this garbage? Because I was once captivated by this game's charm, and I'm trying to get you out of it.

Next topic: Pets

Pets can be bought through the cash shop with prices varying from $2-$6.

As an IMPORTANT side-note, ALL permanent (eye color, face type, hair color, hair type, skin color) changes bought by the cash shop will last FOREVER. HOWEVER, all NON-Permanent (clothes, rings, pets, etc) UNLESS SPECIFIED, WILL EXPIRE AND DISAPPEAR WITHIN 90 DAYS OF PURCHASING IT.

Back to Pets. Pets last 90 days, their name can be changed by spending more Nexon Cash, they can have cute little outfits with more Nexon Cash, and you can own even more pets at a time, with guess what, more Nexon Cash. As an incentive to buy more pets, Nexon encourages the "trendy" Maplestory playing to purchase several pets so that a cheesy "pet effect" appears, making that player stand out from the rest.

Sidenote again: Maple Popularity: One of the reasons why Maplers continue to play. Fame through recognition, Fame through Level, Fame through E-style, Fame Through wealth in Nexon Cash, Fame Through wealth in Mesos, and Fame through fame level are all ways to become popular in Maplestory. But why would the average Maple desire to become one of the pros so badly? Because the pros aren't celebrities. They're just like everyday people, and when you see them as everyday people, you'll try to be better than them. Liiiiike me! When I was level 40, I was Ks'd by a lvl 90. So I leveled to 100 assuming I would never be ks'd, and I was ks'd by a lvl 120. Soo I got to 130 and was ks'd by one of the top 10 players on my server. Then I said SCREW THIS, i'm not going to become Zezima of Maplestory just to be happy. (Little RS joke for you runescapers.)

Anyway, I'm gonna STOP rambling about the ridiculousness of the cash shop.

Player Relations: Personal: 1/10 Public: 5/10

I must say, player to player, Maplestory is NOT very strong. The ages of the people playing Maplestory range from 5-66. SOME very nice people are always in every game, these people like to help newbies. But I'm not blaming the community for not helping newbies, it's just that Maplers are very busy. Items to sell, levels to gain, friends to meet, quests to finish, guild quests to lead, parties to make, etc etc. On the other hand, there are Maplers that enjoy AFK'ing in game, sometimes without a message above their head showing that they are not there, which leads unfortunate newbies to wonder, WTF why isn't he/she answering me? T_T F4. THENN. There's the HXC Mapler. This Mapler is decked out in the latest Cash Shop fashion who looks either very silly or like a bad cos-player. These Maplers stick to their exclusive cliques of other HXC Maplers, only to F6 and F2 often, in order to act cute. BUT, WHY am I still ripping on these Maplers? BECAUSE THEY DON'T HELP YOU UNLESS YOU'RE ALSO AN HXC MAPLER!!! Okay i'm done with them. NEXT

GM/ In Game Security/Hacking/Macros: Personal: 0/10 Public: 6/10

Don't even GET me started on the security of Maplestory. The reason why I gave this section a whopping 0, is because my Bishop was hacked IN-GAME! How dumb is that? Apparently some obsessive hacker was able to obtain my password, pin, and login name, just by talking to me in game. (Something with my personal packets being sent to the server and then they examined them or something.) But not only that, I IMMEDIATELY sent them an e-mail explaining my situation, in which they IMMEDIATELY put me as #1299 on the player help list. So, I IMMEDIATELY quit that character, and burned a $25 Nexon Cash Card to show my anger, which led me to IMMEDIATELY start bawling because I wasted $25. See what happens?

On to the Gm's. I've seen about 3 GM's during my Maplestory career. For the most part, they stop those idiots from "holding the altar," they do a fair amount of bot banning/hacking banner, and scammer banning. So I don't really complain that much here. But about that whole PG HACK era, I'm not going to start ranting about that.

ANOTHER for the record, they were able to stop that hacker from getting anymore information by examining packets, but I'm still pissed nonetheless.

Side-note: Unless you're a complete idiot, the chances of you getting hacked is very slim. In my case, that was BS, because that guy chose ME out of every other Mapler. If you can keep your password to yourself, your pin to yourself, and not visit strange sites, while maintaining a strong AND updated defense against mal-ware, you're probably not going to get hacked ^_^.

LAST TOPIC! Because my hands are getting tired and I want Chipotle >_>.

Uniqueness! Personal: 10/10: Public: 9/10

Maplestory=Unique. End of Discussion. There IS no other MMORPG like it. But is this uniqueness actually that great? Well it's up to the player. My point is, it's unique. Not to mention, I LOVE how you can press one of the F1-F12 keys and make a face. Especially when someone walks by and you give 'em a pissed off face and they're like WTF?!

WAIT WAIT LAST TOPIC

Hazards of the Game:

If you play Maplestory, you will

1. Spend a great amount of money upgrading your character.

2. Fall in Maple-Love, get Maple-Married, or take part in some sort of Maple-Drama.

3. Start to type F1-F6 at the end of your sentences.

Example:

iTotalDeath22 has logged in

x3HugzNKizzes3xxx33<333: WBbbbbb ^_^ <33333

Dylan99: Wb. F3

TomodachiPurple: WBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB

iTotalDeath22: TY! F2 ILY ALL <333333 LULz!

4. Start to accept and learn about Asian culture.

5. Possibly start to say Kawaii.

6. Lose several friends, unless they play Maplestory as well, then you will probably get married and have Maple children and a Maple family, up up.

Closing! Yes more #$!@ to read.

Maplestory was a fun game. But, don't get obsessed with it like I did. It's definitely WORTH PLAYING, and could definitely STAY ON YOUR DESKTOP, because once in a while you'll want to bash in a cute crab's head with your massive Renji Bankai'd sword while wearing your ducky hat and chewing gum.

However, if you're looking for a long term, lasting MMORPG, with PVP, I do not recommend Maplestory at all. After getting roughly 370~ levels in total, on 3 characters, I can safely say that this was a total waste of time, since I ended up deleting two of them and letting the third one die. BUT, it wasn't a total loss, I met several other people my age who were interested in the same things, and now we're all looking for a new game to play.

Okay that's all.

If you want, just TL/DR this (Too long, didn't read, from Encyclopedia Dramatica) and tell me to castrate myself.

But if you wanna recommend a good MMORPG to me, that includes a grind fest, a cash system, AND PVP, but not a monthly fee, that go ahead!

Oh and helpful comments always help those people that can't decide whether they want to play Maplestory or not.

-mike