Information The past and future of MapleLegends

Over the past months, I had many people ask me what my directions are with MapleLegends. Some point out how it changed so much from 2015 to the present.

In this topic, I try to address what MapleLegends tried to be, what it became, and how we try to make it moving forward.

Users from 2015 or even earlier that still play MapleLegends know for sure MapleLegends changed a lot. Some are nostalgic about how MapleLegends used to be (ironically, seeing the purpose of the server is being nostalgic), and some liked the changes overall. Even users that joined MapleLegends in 2017 would point out it changed a lot.

As with everything, MapleLegends changed over the years, and here I try to explain what MapleLegends was and what it tries to be now, in a very long typical Kimmy post.

2014~2015: Development era

When MapleLegends started development, there was barely any server that tried to replicate GMS, and even less so servers that actually decoded the game's packets and coded things in their authentic way. For example, Fredrick was usually an 'NPC script' instead of how Fredrick is meant to be, which is inside a UI. Owl of Minerva was not coded by any 'v0.62' server. Another server for example had an Owl of Minerva that was 100% by NPC scripts, which showed your results in a very disgusting NPC window instead of the Owl interface you are used to.

While there were people around that knew how to decode packets, it was usually servers that just did it for fun, instead of public servers. v0.62 was extremely behind, and the only public emulators available at the time were OdinMS, Project Throwback aka argonMS, or XiuzSource, which was basically OdinMS with a little bit more working.

The goal of MapleLegends at the time was to create an authentic experience that mimics how GMS was at the time, almost exactly. That meant authentic NPC dialogues, scripts, features, code, etc...

Sometimes we would be looking hours for dialogues just to find what some NPC is supposed to say, and implement it.

Navi, which was the main coder at the time knew how to decode packets, so unlike every v0.62 server at the time we were adding features that were unheard of at the time. Minigames were nowhere coded, but they were at MapleLegends. Balrog ships worked exactly like GMS, some very obscure Cash Shop items such as passed gas were coded, etc... Smokescreen was nowhere coded and straight up didn't work. Up to date servers were pretty well coded though. It was mostly a problem with Old School Servers (v0.62, v0.83, etc) that were still very far behind.

MapleLegends had tweaks even at the begin

One thing MapleLegends stood up for is how it tried to fix the small screw-ups that Neckson made at the time. MapleLegends already made tweaks very early in development, such as fixing ladders, adding boss bars/boss icons, and fixing typos in items. Servers usually added a '@bosshp' command for bosses that had no HP bar, where we did it 'properly' and added boss bars instead, which were designed by Navi at the time.

While .wz editing was already done by other servers at the time, no server really took it upon themselves in trying to fix the game, making it feel more polished.

When MapleLegends released it was almost exactly like base v0.62. No skill tweaks, no additional maps, no additional content, multiclient blocks were still in place (which people bypassed anyway with VMWare), etc

People were all very low level, and things felt very nostalgic. It was a very innocent and peaceful era

2016: The era where 'v0.62 flaws' became visible

When it was 2016, the flaws of MapleLegends, or v0.62 in general, became visible. People were around 15x and had no motivation to level anymore. Skeles were the end game mobs, and grinding them at such a high level became extremely unrealistic and slow. Horntail was slowly getting released, but because of bugs, it was still kind of jank.

MapleRoyals started to introduce new areas a bit earlier, such as Ulu city, ToT, and more. MapleLegends didn't have additional content yet and thus was more or less vanilla v0.62. Slowly the high-level users started to request additions such as ToT.

On top of that, Gachapon was only obtainable from the Cash Shop, which you could only get by voting (5.000 Vote Cash every 24 hours). Items obtained from Gachapon were almost impossible to get, and due to population decrease less and fewer Gachapon items came into the server, which caused end game users to get stuck because there were no chaos/white scrolls in the server. They had no way to 'perfect' their items.

Slowly more suggestions came to make MapleLegends custom, such as adding them to drops like Horntail and Zakum, which were both rejected.

Around this time, a not-so-popular opinion happened, Which was making Gachapon tickets drop from mobs. These were known as the Hunting Gachapon Ticket (now changed to Rare Gachapon Ticket).

When those released, the rates were extremely bad. People now had sort of a way to grind for tickets, but they were so bad, it changed barely anything regarding people's motivation. People rather just hunt the scrolls directly, which was also a popular suggestion at the time.

Maplelegends was at 20~80 online at about august of 2016 and was laughed at by Royals members for being a dead server.

Removal of the multiclient check (near the end of 2016)

Near the end of 2016, one big change which is probably one new era by itself happened: The multiclient check was completely removed. Similar to most servers, you could now double click your client and you can boot it up as many times you want.

Previously, the game client would not boot up, and you had to use VMWare to multiclient instead. This change was very controversial and had many disagreements within the staff.

However, in my view, it was very unfair how some people were able to multiclient, and some were not. Sure, it didn't make everyone multiclient, but it didn't make the people that were not able to happy at all, which also contributed to why the server was just dying.

When the multiclient check was removed, the user count went up by a little bit, but not a lot.

This was also when we started adding new areas outside of GMS such as Shanghai.

2017: The 'New Source' era

At the very begin of 2017, one of the biggest changes happened at another server: The 'New Source' release. Still in my view as the most overhyped and disappointing thing of all time in the MapleStory scene. I don't say this because of competitive reasons. I say this because it's just what it was. It was hyped for 3 years and released with absolutely nothing working. Things such as 'Never before seen things in any server' were promised, and nothing of any sort happened. It was just a v0.83 with nothing working.

MapleLegends at that time was still not in a great position. However, because we were always high on GTOP, this situation made more users try MapleLegends out during their downtime. Big YouTubers such as BangHero/Liny started to make MapleLegends videos, and to this day stuck around.

MapleLegends saw for the first time in a good while getting 100~200 users online again. Users started noticing the server is reviving and were happy, but at the same time concerned.

The era of 'casual users' making feedback threads

So one thing I really remember when we had a lot of users from another server try out the server was the increasing amount of feedback threads. I still remember to this day of our users calling it the 'x server casuals that want make Legends easier'. Basically, we had much more users, but we had constantly users trying to make Legends easier; generally feedback threads to make Legends feel like that other server. They liked the gameplay of the other server, but they didn't like how the management was, and more importantly how broken 'New Source' was. At this time they also stripped away things such as FM button, ships became forced, and a few other major changes.

Users from the said server were upset because it was losing its 'identity', and tried 'too hard' to become GMS-like, which is something we were already doing. Users generally replied to that with "If we want GMS-like gameplay we would have played MapleLegends".

This was also the era for MapleLegends to actually become easier. We started to accept that GMS isn't perfect, nor is v0.62. Personally myself I felt Maplelegends was 'complete' and in order to keep evolving it (and keeping it alive) we have to go outside the box. 2017 is likely the beginning of what I would call giving MapleLegends an own identity, instead of trying to be GMS.

When you talk to 2015/2016 users that have quit because the server changed too much, they will likely mention that 2017 was the beginning of the 'downfall'.

The Facebook advertisement era

The summer of 2017 also saw the second-biggest population increase of MapleLegends: over 1000 users online. This was thanks to the combination of a few things, as well as a massive successful Facebook promotion.

A lot of our staff members at the time joined during this era. This promotion was extremely successful and pretty much pushed the server to the second biggest Old School MapleStory server.

This is also an era where a lot of areas became 'busy'. PQ's were extremely full, and people constantly asked us to add more channels. Having not learned much yet, I kept adding more channels. We had 1000 online and I believe had 12 channels at peak.

Looking back now, this was a horrible mistake, and something that I still to this day regret doing: Adding this many channels made the server look 'very dead' and when looking at feedback from users this was many times mentioned. Only shortly after 12 channels were added, the population started to decrease again. We were for a good while at 12 channels when our population kept going down and down. After a while, channels were decreased all way back to 6.

2018: The era of expanding outside GMS

So in 2018, we started adding a lot of new areas. Our goal was to expand gameplay outside of v0.62, and also had a goal of having 'every area' from pre-bb. Coke Town was added, Neo Tokyo was added, Ellin Forest PQ was added, and the most infamous Shaolin was added.

The goal of MapleLegends changed. Not only will we bring 'nostalgia' for GMS users, but also from other regions. Our goal was to make Maplelegends a 'global' nostalgic house and having people feel nostalgic from all over the world. Why limit ourselves to just GMS?

This was again a 'new thing' to do. Every server just added content from GMS, but we went outside of that.

This was also the year one of my favourite features of all time got released: Monster Book. Monster Book was with luck 'half' in the v0.62 client, and thanks to basic client mods we were able to 'unlock' the rest. Monster Book got released and shortly after the monster book ring got released too.

2019: Pushing v0.62 to its limits

2019 started with a major rule change: The removal of the Vote Abuse rule. Information as to why and everything can be better read by clicking here. This was again a major change to MapleLegends. Looking now 2 years later after this change I still think it was for the better. A little bit earlier Gachapon was completely removed from the Cash Shop and was changed to only be obtainable by playing the game, instead of voting.

2019 is when we really started to evolve the server feature-wise as well. We released CWKPQ with its debuffs and everything into the v0.62 client. For the longest time users just kept telling each other that CWKPQ will never happen in MapleLegends because of v0.62 limitations. In the end, with a lot of magic and powers, CWKPQ did come into MapleLegends, fully intact with its debuffs and everything.

CWKPQ is definitely one of our more proud pieces of work because the amount of effort we did put into making this a reality is insane. We are very happy a lot are still using this PQ.

The beginning of 'actual' client edits

2019 is also when 'real' client edits started to happen. Previously, we usually replaced a value with a new one, which made some skills be cast faster, or NOP'd some check to make Boomerang Step work at the end of hills.

Or when we added completely new code, we usually 'Frankenstein' it in the client itself, and replaced some 'unused code' with something new.

During the summer of 2019, we started to tease a new era completely: A higher resolution mod for MapleLegends.

Only done previously on pretty much private/unreleased projects, as well as Croosade and OSM, MapleLegends too started to develop its own HD mod.

This was also the start of a new era. This is when we started to do actual client edits. This is the year we started learning that technically 'This can't be done because of v0.62 limitations' is non-existent. If you are skilled enough you could literally add *anything* into the game client, as long you have the skills and patience.

This era especially was extremely exciting for me, because a lot of tweaks I wanted to make for a really long time in MapleLegends could now become a reality or a reality in the future. We were almost close to reaching 'the end' on adding content and tweaks, and this new 'era' of client editing for MapleLegends opened so many new things.

2020: The population peak of MapleLegends so far

2020 is when the biggest population of all time happened. Unfortunately, the initial population increase was due to a very sad event going on in real life, which without a doubt is not a good thing for all of us. I have explained at the end of the year 2020 topic that I am definitely not happy that it's a thing.

MapleLegends reached an all-time peak of 3000 users online in the summer of 2020. This is only reached ever in a handful of servers, and it's, without doubt, an extremely proud achievement to make, especially for a server that got to as low as 20 users online in 2016.

2020 is still a year where we made a lot of client tweaks and features. Things such as Dark Chat, faster portal animations, infinite chat logs, GFX-DC fixes, internal tweaks, and so on. We became not only one of the biggest servers, but we also did this without having hundreds of hackers inside the server.

Learning from my mistake in 2017 I now refused to add channels. Something I get a lot of criticism for. I've been named numerous things by now for not adding channels, but I don't really care. Not everything that users want is better for the server, and I know this thing, in particular, is not. However, that does not mean I ignore the issues that come with not having enough channels.

2021: Keep evolving MapleLegends

We still have many things in planning for the server, which hopefully evolves the server even further, and giving content for users to enjoy, while still feeling like an Old School server.

We feel we accomplished our initial goal in 2015, which was creating an authentic v0.62 experience. In the end, we can't please everyone, we can't keep everyone happy, and we can't equally have everyone enjoy the server as much. MapleLegends has to evolve to stay afloat, which is, unfortunately, a sad reality for most games, even unofficial servers.

The goal I have right now with MapleLegends in 2021 is to give people an enjoyable and fun time, while also continually adding content for users to enjoy. The only thing that hasn't really changed for me between 2015 and 2021 is the social opinion. It's still very important for me that people meet up, make friends, and enjoy the game together.

This is also the biggest reason why I do not want to add channels since it decreases the chances for that to happen, and makes the server feel 'less alive' and more 'empty'. Dungeons are just the start of trying to keep the channel amount at its minimum while still giving users the maps to play in. More changes to help with that may come in the future.

MapleLegends may no longer be the most authentic v0.62 experience. Instead, has its own identity, its own goals, and so on. Hopefully, even in the future we make more improvements to the server and have even more users to enjoy the server.

The future is hard to predict, and anything could happen that changes it from what was initially expected. The most important thing is to enjoy it as long as it lasts, and make as many friends along the way.

Thank you for reading. Do remember I am just a human as well, so some things may be slightly off. It's been 6 years in total!