Questions from a long gone player

Nilrem

Due to certain reasons that would otherwise take too long to explain, I now have a lot of time on my hands and have decided to see what this game was up to during said time.

And good lord, has this game changed since I last invested any time into it.

I think the newest class when I last really played was Aran? Maybe Cygnus?
Needless to say, I am very lost.

Link skills, character cards, potential system, all the new classes, etc.

I have quite a few questions to ask.

1. How important are link skills, and are the following 7 characters good for me to start on for them? Cygnus Knight, Cannoneer, Kanna, Demon Slayer, Demon Avenger, Luminous, and Mercedes. The class I'm thinking of using all of these skills on is phantom, which has a neat cane. A CANE.

2. What the heck is a reboot server, and was it a good choice for me to pick it? It was shiny and clearly has some importance behind it.

3. Are cash clothing items still all temporary? Because I remember that being a huge reason to not buy them.

4. Why are there so many classes?!

5. Why does that Knesis fellow have anime music when I hover over him in character select? Is he made of 100% concentrated anime?

6. Why are some classes greyed out at creation?

7. Was phantom a bad choice of "main", or is the power of the fancy cane enough for me? If phantom isn't that fun, is there another class that might be fun?

8. What is this potential stuff on my equipment, and how important is it?

9. What are character cards and how important are they?

10. I started playing as a Cygnus Knight first, as they are labelled a beginner class. Was this smart?

11. When did this game have actual story and lore?

12. What is a pink bean and why is it the first choice in creation?

Hopefully after some answers I can actually understand things, as looking up information is difficult with how search works, and trying to look up guides on choosing a class only brought me to some tier list that only revolved around damage and told me nothing remotely helpful about what any class does.

Neospector

I can help out here too.

1. Link Skills are considered very important by much of the community, although I think you can put them off until you've decided on a main. Phantoms are a good class, and can steal skills from Explorer characters, but they deal moderate damage.
2. Reboot is a server where trading is disabled, cubes are bought for mesos (not NX), and monsters are tougher but give more EXP. Players have a tendency to put it on a pedestal at times, but it is nice. You haven't made a wrong choice, if that's what you're wondering, and you can always switch if you don't like it.
3. Permanent items are rotated on sale. You can also find permanent items from surprise style boxes. Surprise style items are random, but can be sold to other players (on normal servers) or traded in for other items (in Reboot). Most year-round items are temporary.
4. Well, KMS went on a new-class creation spree at one point, but they've stopped doing that and started focusing on balancing. They all have varying playstyles, so they're not all copies.
5. Actually, "100% concentrated anime" is probably really accurate. Kinesis is a heavily story-oriented class that starts in the Other World (AKA Earth, specifically Seoul, South Korea); he has voiced tutorials, three animated cutscenes, and is the only playable character to canonically possess a girlfriend. Typically I recommend that you play through the FriendStory dungeon on another character before you play Kinesis. That music is actually his theme song.
6. Zero is only available for special events (and never on Reboot), because of the nature of the class. Beast Tamer is unavailable for some reason I don't know about, although she tends to be reopened during special events as well. Other classes are typically available year-round.
7. What matters is how much you like the class, more than anything else. Phantom is a nice class with a decent story and a nice playstyle, but if you don't like him, don't fret, you can always try a different class.
8. Potential is 2-3 lines of extra stats that can be added to most gear. You can randomize the lines you have using cubes. Potential has 4 tiers (rare->Epic->Unique->Legendary), and the power of the lines depends on the tier and the level of the item being cubed. It's actually rather simple to get the hang of; if you've ever played Splatoon, it's like ability slots. Most of your power in the end-game will come from potentials, since lines can include things like +%(stat) or +%damage. I believe there's a Tot's tutorial that explains this in-game, look underneath the book icon on the left-hand side.
9. Character cards and part-time jobs are being merged into the Maple Union in a future update. Don't worry about these too much for now.
10. Cygnus Knights are good classes. I've heard players that main them tend to like them a lot. I find Nightwalker a bit tedious, but the hyper skill "Dominion" is one of the coolest skills in the game. Blaze Wizard is the default class botters tend to use, but this shouldn't be taken as a deterrent from playing it if you want to.
11. Around the addition of Pirates, when the "Black Mage" character was first mentioned. Eventually, Aran and Evan were added as the first "Heroes", which began centralizing the lore. After the RED update to Explorer classes, all class storylines now tie in (however loosely) to the central storyline of the Black Mage, and the level 200+ Arcane River areas are directly related to him. The Black Mage's past was revealed in the Grand Atheneum dungeon, the first major battle against the Black Mage was fought in the Black Heaven blockbuster, and it's suggested in Zero's and Kinesis's storylines that the Black Mage has plans involving all three primary worlds (Maple World, Grandis, and Earth). I wrote out a summary of events at one point here, if you want to read it.
12. Pink Bean is Pink Bean; the lovable, adorable, chubby level 160+ boss in Temple of Time. This guy. If the game's quests are to be believed, Pink Bean is possibly the most powerful character in the game canon, except for maybe Lucid in her dream world. He never truly "dies" and he considers fighting with Maplers to be more or less a game. His battle map is called "Twilight of Gods", the literal translation of Ragnarök, and prior to fighting him you first must defeat 15 iterations of additional bosses (in the form of magical statues). That being said, he plays with toys, lives in a silly-looking house, and listens to Angelic Buster songs. Pink Bean was first released as a joke class during a KMS April Fool's joke, and they've been releasing him every so often. He's an event class; you play, complete achievements for rewards on other characters, and the character is deleted at the end of the event. Lots of fun, but you might not have enough time to complete it by next week (when we get the Re:Zero update).

Nilrem

Plenty of helpful info in that post, I think I'll stay in reboot for now.

Started leveling a Cygnus Knight, the archer type. Not to main or for a link skill, but because after I started leveling it I saw it had that neat little passive from leveling that boosts every other character I have on the server. (I also think I played this class all those years ago, its a lot stronger than I remember...)

Which honestly appears to make it one of the best "first" classes to level up.

If you have time, can you elaborate on the answer to question 3, about how permanent cash items work?

Also, even though its opinion based, I would like some suggestions on what sort of classes are fun without any kind of extreme investment.
In a sense, I'm not here for anything endgame, more to just mess around since I've ended up in a situation where I have a lot of free time.

AKradian

Regarding Reboot vs. non-Reboot, ask yourself the following questions:

1. How fond are you of the market? Does buying and selling thrill you or are you just as happy without it?
2. How fond are you of grinding? Does doing the exact same thing for hours on end relax you and put you in a meditative state, or does it bore you to tears?
3. How fond are you of having real-world money shortcuts to power? Would you rather have the option, or live in a world where nobody can use $$ to get ahead?
4. How fond are you of playing dress-up?

Reboot is the newest world and it was created to combat the notion that "MapleStory is Pay2Win."
Therefore, in Reboot, all Cash items that give power are either sold for meso or not available at all.
In addition, Reboot has no trading. And even within the same account, you can't transfer equipment from one character to another (you can transfer other items, such as meso, potions, and crafting materials).
Both of which mean that in order to "get anywhere" in Reboot you must farm meso. A lot. Hence my question about grinding.

Rebooters like to claim that in order to "get anywhere" in other servers you have to pay tons of real-world money. That is not so. You can, if you want to. But if you don't want to, you can work hard at other things, craft, play the market, use the Rewards Shop, use the upcoming (next week) Meso Market, buy good gear off other people, and so on. It's far more complicated than either farming meso all day every day, or dropping some real-world cash, but it's doable.

If you don't particularly care about getting to the top, and just want to have some fun with the game, then you don't have to grind, merch, or use NX, in either world. Well, except for buying a pet. Life is very uncomfortable in MapleStory without a pet.

Reboot is the most populated world right now, so if you like to have an active guild and buddy list, and people everywhere you go, it's a good place to be.
If you like company but also like a lively market, Scania is the most populated of the non-Reboot worlds.

Also, since you asked about clothes: in non-Reboot, you can buy permanent NX clothing in the Free Market or Auction House, from other people who bought Premium Surprise Style Boxes in the Cash Shop. And if you buy the boxes yourself, you can sell off any items you don't want to wear. In Reboot, you must buy your own boxes and are mostly stuck with what you get from them (you can trade them in to an NPC and collect stamps that you can use to buy items from a very limited selection that the NPC offers).

Hopefully that helps you make up your mind.

Bruise

Don't worry about all of those things. You can research them as they come up. What you should be worrying about is playing the game and leveling what you can. All of that other stuff is grindy and tedious. You can enjoy your free time more leveling your character, doing events, or something else in real life.