Notice My current state and mood for MapleStory (Post from 2019)

Hi,

As I've promised before the Anniversary Event, I will be writing another Kim-style topic for you to enjoy, and the longest one yet. In this one I will be trying to write down the feeling for the game past month or two, my motivation to still work on it, as well as trying to give my reasoning behind it. I will also re-write a bit of the history, for those that wish to re-listen to that.

There will be 3 sections:

1) History time again
2) My current mood of MapleStory
3) Some GunBound stuff

Section 1: History, again (skip to next section for the more recent stuff)

MapleLegends is a project I have created with Navi in middle August of 2014, to create a successor to NobleStory and ClassicMS. NobleStory was a server attempting to be GMS-like but because the lack of users had a lot of custom additions. Such additions being buyable mastery books, 2x EXP cards that were permanent, as well as a couple of things more I slightly forgot about right now, but I wasn't a big fan of them. However, pretty much everything coded there was custom, due to lack of 'packet decoding', as well as other things that are now more or less the norm, making a server much more GMS-like compared to old days.

ClassicMS is the first server I've played since my return in 2014ish after I left Private Server GunBound Classic for many years playing there. Before that, I played LocalMS in 2008 who was under the management of Diabllo/Zilch/LeoTheFox who also was the owner of GunBound Classic. He was the one that exposed me to MapleStory at the time.

I have not many memories of myself playing in 2008 anymore, but I was quite new to the game as expected. I played a very little MapleStory Europe during the beta, and ironically left after level 12 or so because it was too hard and boring. I can kinda see why Neckson did what they did just wish they didn't overkill the issue as they did on today's MapleStory.

Anywho, MapleLegends was an attempt at creating a new home for users at ClassicMS, and thus it became a server that is 2x/1x/1x. The reason why it's 2x/1x/1x was that 2x EXP cards were removed, unlike there. 2x is basically permanent 2x cards on 1x EXP, which was the complete intentions of the rates.

Later during closed beta, someone suggested the Quest EXP be raised. The suggestion can still be found here.

This was completely unheard of back in 2015. There was EXP rates, DROP rates, and Meso rates, that's it. We approved the suggestion eventually and thus MapleLegends became 2x/1x/1x/3x where 3x was the quest exp. This change was a good change and made us more special in a way.

Now a bit more about myself,

During 2014 (beta) I did a couple of .wz edits. I already added areas we had planned in our mind to add in the future. Such areas are ToT, Ulu City, Magatia, Ellin Forest, and a few more. I also did an insane amount of testing, because I love to test things. We also came to the idea to create custom boss HP bars and images to bosses, because Neckson for some reason missed on a lot of them. Navi designed a lot of them, and some are even used in other Private Servers today.



I like to be a community figure. I am a socialize person (not IRL LOL don't get me to there), and thus I always saw myself as a community manager. The goal of MapleLegends for myself was that I hanged out with the community, caught on feedback, suggestions, etc. Navi would be the one doing database stuff, coding, and so on. I do not code, and database stuff is not really my thing.

This was going well from 2015 into 2016. Of course, I made mistakes, but I also tried talking to people that had fights, try to get feedback on users that quitted, and so on. I was very involved with the community and I had a lot of fun doing so.

In 2016 Navi slowly started to get burned out. I don't blame him looking now, he did an insane amount of sleepless nights of coding, from August 2014 to pretty much that day, solving every single thing wrong with XiuzSource, which trust me, is a lot. Navi requested for someone to code with him, because doing it alone burns you out, and it just wasn't fun not being able to experience talks together about similar things. I, unfortunately, had massive trust issues, and based on past experience wouldn't trust someone the code, to get it all potentially taken away. heh

A bit later, unfortunately, a staff-wide disagreement happened. About what is not really important, but it caused the last blow on Navi where he more or less completely left for good when it came to coding. He's still around behind the scene, but as.. Navi. A support assistant giving feedback and suggestions on staff, and some administration. But coding was pretty much done.

Suddenly instead of doing community, I had to do community AND database stuff. It gave me a lot of work onto me, and I was too spoiled with my Administration in GunBound. We had an extremely fancy Admin Panel, which as expected did everything you wanted it to do. For MapleStory? Manual queries. As expected, I wasn't experienced with this whatsoever and knew basically nothing. But I also didn't want to put effort learning it, because as I've stated earlier in this is that I didn't enjoy doing it. To this day I am still not enjoying it, but I at least know some basic queries now.

Anywho, it was middle 2016 and it wasn't going well with MapleLegends. 20~60 users online, and the server people kept compare us with, MapleRoyals, started peak with 2000 online. On top of that, a few people started to cause chaos on MapleLegends, basically putting me on the lowest point of the server, almost close to just give up completely. Why do something that you no longer enjoy nor make you happy?

On the way home where I really was close to throwing it out, I got a PM from a person. Who, is not really important, but it was a very sweet message. I realized that there are still people around enjoying the server regardless of the mess, and giving up on it would only disappoint those users as well.

However, it was clear we needed to make plans because the server wasn't growing. People came, saw how 'dead' it was, compared it with the other server, and just joined to there instead. On top of that, we had the big disadvantage of being lower rates. Unfortunately, even in 2016 the market for low rates just wasn't great. Not only were we low rates, but we also had a lack of users, and thus people had nobody to talk to.

A bit before 2017 we decided to lift the multiclient block in place. In MapleLegends we didn't allow multiclient. Some liked this and made the server look 'special' some hated how it was only a roadblock because some people could still use 'VMWARE' to bypass the block. Sandboxie, however, was blocked as well. If the block was still intact I could block VMWARE as well.

The reason why we decided to remove it altogether is that it gave an unfair advantage to people with multiple PC's, VMware, and so on. It was to us better giving everyone the same advantage compared to giving only a few users it. Furthermore, it affected our user count, which unfortunately is something a lot base a server on.

Begin 2017 is when the server started to grow. This happened due to multiple reasons, but the main reason was that 'big' Twitch streamers and content creators from another Private Server started to expose our server. This caused a huge amount of users to join and suddenly revive our server. To some this revived the server, to some this was the beginning of the end, where the community was no longer as tight. To me, it was a good thing, because I was really done with how the community was in 2016 on some parts

In the summer of 2017 was when most users came, and likely when most current users joined. Summer of 2017 was the peak of Legends, and I embraced it completely. Unfortunately, it didn't last long, because someone decided to shoot massive DDoS attacks towards our way. To this day, as a tradition with those attacks, we don't know who. The matter, however, is that this lasted for a long while, and unfortunately struck the server in a state that was never as recovered anymore since. This was extremely frustrating behind the scene as well as even in public, and of course, the emotion came out due to it. To this day I still think DDoSing is such a coward way to defeat your enemies, but it is what it is.

After that, MapleLegends more or less stayed stable. Nothing too exciting, and thus ends the history again for now.

Section 2: My current mood on MapleStory

The very last sentence is actually the main point of my mood. I have a personal feeling that MapleLegends feels complete. Of course, there are still some things uncoded, some tweaks that can be made, and some balance that can be done, but when it comes to the user market I feel there's nothing to be made anymore. Things start to slowly become stale and boring. There are no users coming because of existing flaws, and people are much more interested in high rate servers. I am starting to feel burned out, like Navi.

I also feel that MapleStory Private Servers are currently in a very weird position. It's becoming more difficult satisfying big chunk of users because every year new 'features' come into the scene, which splits up the community more and more. Some of these features are impossible for us to fix, because of how old we are. This is what new servers take huge benefits on, and even 'taunt' those old servers that they fixed 'flaws' that we did not 'fix'. We do not do it because we do not want to, but because we can't, fairly anyway.

Even if we could, some embrace those flaws. After all, we are an Old School server. MapleLegends in 2015 vs 2019 already changed a shit ton of stuff, and not everyone agreed on those changes.

Basically, what I try to say is that I feel trapped with MapleLegends. I cannot make changes without at least making a huge chunk of users upset, or myself upset, because even though a lot of users feel those things are crap, it doesn't mean everyone does.

One thing I wanted to do for a long time is to attempt a second world. However, this costs a lot of time, our current source does not support second worlds (I believe), and it's a huge risk. The unfortunate mindset people have is that they feel the need to completely give up on the first world because a new one is being made. If everyone gives up on the first world, and the second one fails, it's basically game over for both.

So in end, I am here with MapleLegends. I love MapleLegends, I especially love the community. I still love this community much more compared to what I see in other servers. However, I am not completely happy with what MapleLegends is and offers, and feel stuck with it forever. Trying something new would mean to a lot 'giving up' on the current, even though in my eyes it would mean trying to get another market to play our server while keeping the other completely managed as well. This is how I feel for a while already, and I hope it's not seen as negative I openly talk about it. I think it's important for users to know how an owner feels, so they understand what goes on when decisions happen, or things don't happen, or just want to know how one generally feels.

Section 3: GunBound

GunBound is a game I played from 2006 until 2014, almost non-stop. I played it a lot, administrated it for a bit, and spend countless hours enjoying it. When I quitted in 2014 I didn't play it anymore for many years, and it's the longest break I ever took from the game. To be more specific when I played after 2008, it was on a 'classic' private server, as stated in section 1.

Unlike MapleStory, GunBound is unfortunately in a much worse position right now. GunBound started in as early as 2008 already becoming a pay2win game. Everyone that played GunBound after 2008 has a horrible experience playing the game, likely. GunBound due to those problems got a horrible reputation. Instead of fixing those initial feedback of people seeing its becoming pay2win the developers, Softnyx only made the problem worse. It became so bad that the official servers are currently completely empty, while it was still one of the biggest free online games in 2004~2007.

Since 2010 I would say Private Servers were much bigger than the official servers. This is also the year I met phnx. phnx? Yeah, you may have seen him on forums as admin. Who is phnx? phnx is a GunBound guy and developed the first and only GunBound emulator completely from scratch. I helped him a shit ton with that and basically was around since it started, and also finished.

phnx is also our network administrator. phnx handle all the server and firewall stuff. phnx never plays MapleStory nor is interested in it. phnx is basically around because I am his friend, and he knew about me starting a MapleStory server, and didn't mind helping out. However, he still never played MapleStory. I believe he only logged in once ever, and that was during closed beta. This didn't change since.

in 2014 phnx and I basically polished up the GunBound emulator to near finish. This emulator ran on the very last version of 'Thor's Hammer' which basically in MapleStory terms is v92 GMS, which is the latest version before the big bang version. For GunBound it was the last version before the 'World Champion' version.

Before that, not a single server has ever run a server running on that version, so it was a huge accomplishment and goal. During that time GunBound Classic, which was the biggest 'nostalgic' private server still ran, but they ran on an earlier version, which lacked on a lot of things, and missed on features.

GunBound Classic recently closed, however that was after my topic here to bring GunBound back. I actually do miss GunBound, and want to play it again, and them closing wasn't why we wanted open one again too.

Right now, not counting us, only 1 private server still exists. This one server runs the 'World Champion' version, and not Thor's Hammer, and peaks with 200 online, and is non-English.

In short, this game is dying, and dying horribly. phnx and I spend a lot of hours building an emulator, and its been eating dust since 2014. So in 2018 I offered to bring the project back, and have it run with MapleLegends as a side game.

Especially now I feel responsible for trying reviving this game, and that's my goal and last attempt with the new Gunbound server currently in the works. It has the goal to run for many years like MapleLegends, and hopefully, with enough exposure, it gives people a place to play again. This is something we still need to see. If not, we tried, and I will deeply miss the game.

MapleStory is still in a great position, which is also why my focus lately is more on GunBound. I want to do my best trying to revive this game, and it would be a big shame if this game will be gone for good.

For now, this is where I end my big wall of text. I think this is my longest post yet. I won't be surprised if only 1% of the people will read all of it. However, that 1% is likely also the people that leave me useful feedback or understand the way I feel about the game and position I am in.

Thank you