the CHAIR state of maple legends and why CHAIRS matters

hello.

i am here to talk about chairs.

index
1. why chairs matter!
2. how chairs are THREATENED.
3. what can we do about this? suggestions, thoughts, the beginning of a discussion.

WHY CHAIRS MATTER

"A work of art is useless as a flower is useless. A flower blossoms for its own joy. We gain a moment of joy by looking at it. That is all that is to be said about our relations to flowers. Of course man may sell the flower, and so make it useful to him, but this has nothing to do with the flower. It is not part of its essence. It is accidental. It is a misuse."

Oscar Wilde​

at first, this may seem like a shallow concern. what is the point of chairs? they do not help ur damage! how are we gonna hit big monster with chair!

indeed, we cannot hit big monster with chair. but that does not mean they are not important.

what is the point of chairs?

simply put, chairs are art. art does not have to be useful. chairs do heal you, which i interpret as a metaphor to how art and self care soothe and heal your soul, but above all, they are art. furthermore, chairs are meaningful because they are one of the few in-game long lasting cultural heritage of this digital community.

in a way or another, we ALL engage with an artifact of the past and digital history regularly. old version mushroom game IS an artifact of the past, and to keep it alive is a valuable effort and a form of digital archaeology. digital preservation is not easy; links become broken, files go missing, information gets lost.

but what about the history INSIDE game? a digital world lives in eternal stasis, but people inhabit it, and where there are people, there IS a history. how can we reminisce or glimpse our past as a community? there are forums and whatnot, but that is external to game, not inside. inside game, where does the past survive?

in CHAIRS! many chairs even have descriptive text listing the name of the designer, when it was released (in which event), the year, et cetera. unfortunately, not all of them. beyond that information that comes attached, they represent the aesthetic of their time period through their unique designs.

THE THREATS TO CHAIRS

unfortunately, many chairs are becoming increasingly rare to see in the wild.

unlike other things which you can farm, chairs are NOT farmable. they are unique and limited, which means that, if someone stops playing or is banned, they dwindle in numbers. in fact, someone could go and drop chair and they would disappear forever and FOREVER decrease the number of existing chairs. there is no way to know how many chair exist these days (i Think... i would like to know if game staff know the amount of chairs that exist in people's inventories).

since chairs are art and heritage, this is very concerning and sad to me. a chair could theoretically go extinct and there is no preservation mindset in regards to them. furthermore, this is worsened by the fact that certain people use them as a method of financial speculation (chair stocks) and hoard chairs in their inventory, which deprive people of art and mushroom history, which i imagine they care little about. many sad noobs have never seen some of the cutest, rare chairs. this is very sad to me, because cuteness bring joy. personally, i only play this game because it is cute, and i know cuteness is vital to many other players. i could go and play other mmorpgs with ugly designs and ugly stuff, but i am here playing a cute game, and cuteness is THREATENED.

HOW WE KEEP CHAIRS ALIVE AND PRESERVE OUR CHAIR HISTORY

the first step:

- keep CHAIRS tradeable, but make ALL of them one of a kind. there is literally no need for someone to have more than one of each chair per character other than long term financial speculation that damages mushroom cultural heritage. chairs should also NOT despawn, ever. it should be impossible to throw a chair out / make it despawn somewhere. trades and storage only.

i don't know what to do about the damage that's already been done in regards to the chairs that are already gone forever, and i would like solutions for that. i do think that unique chairs from the past should return in future event raffles and such, which would tank their meso value and make them circulate in the market again. some people might be upset about losing some exclusive status. to account for that, maybe returning chairs shouldn't be as bountiful as regular event chairs, but i believe losing exclusivity for a short period is ultimately okay. art and cuteness should be for all the people. i say that as someone who has purchased some expensive old chairs.

suggestion for future and past chairs:

- i also think the texts of all chairs should be way more detailed. who designed them? what were they thinking? where are they from? which version of maple story? what year and event? that should be the bare minimum... not all chairs have even those pieces of information, and i imagine it would be quite simple to add.

and here is a far-fetched suggestion that would be lots of work but would be rly cute:
a MUSHROOM MUSEUM.

ia museum with all the chairs and perhaps cute snapshots of past events and other historical things, maybe. i think training camp is a good template for how it should look inside, but beyond that, perhaps examples of each chair would be there too, locked on a certain spot, and you could sit on them just like you can sit on random benches (though not pick it up).

i think orbis perhaps is the ideal place for this, because it is quite classic looking and historical.

i do realize that is a crazy suggestion that requires lots of work and effort, it is low priority and nobody probably cares that much, though. but it would be cute.

FINAL THOUGHTS

i want to hear about other chair enthusiasts, digital history thoughts and suggestions that can be made to improve the state of chairs in mushroom game.

thank you for reading. go drink water.