Edit: If someone is only going to post in order to complain about something I did then try sending me a private message instead. No need to make clutter for the thread and I would be glad to discuss any messages that come my way.
There was once a soda pop company that changed its drink and then later changed it back to the older formula. this drink was called Coco cola. Could it have been that the customers had a deeper connection to the older drink or more nostalgia power with it? Possibly, it might have been that people were mostly drinking the soda because of nostalgia but instead of talking about soda, I'm going to talk about Maplestory.
I don't think nostalgia for this game can fully be captured in words. Even 300 threads or more would probably not be enough if everybody was included. Instead I can maybe share a small sample of it through drawing on my own experience. Players nostalgia is unique but also universal in some ways. People say "what is this Maple nostalgia that you speak of? I have never heard of it." You could say it is an affection for the past but in order to be accurate, I might need to make comparisons among versions. Which is not to claim that one is better than the other only that they are just different. Like apples and oranges, its all fruit.
To start with, I miss the Old MS loading process and sign in procedures. It was quick to start up and the sign board with mushrooms and grass in the background was charming. Today there is more to load so I guess the trade off is needing to wait for a while, maybe not a bad thing but I prefer when the loading was faster. Creating a character was like a mini game, perhaps not efficient but I thought it was always fun. If everybody could adapt to the newest version then that would make all the players happy. What else could there be in Old MS that cannot be found in a newer version? (this is the question I asked myself when thinking of nostalgia)
Remember, I do not see the past and present games as being inferior to each other only different. For instance, what would you rather do after playing for an hour?
1. Level up 10 times, auto assign a lot of stat points because its not that important to pay attention and maybe change training map.
2. Level up once, carefully distribute the few precious stat points and use the newly improved powers to better fight mobs of comparable strength.
Really just different ways of doing the same thing but with emphasis in different places. Some people say that the Fairy arc in SAO was less interesting because the hero was not in as much "real" danger. Old MS had a larger emphasis on making bad choices hurt more if the player goofed.
Like in exploration, today you might say "check the in game map." but in Old MS a player could become lost if they did not have directions or had seen a map on a site like Hidden street. Similar right? No dude, the in game map only provides an overhead view. In Old MS you literally needed to study the field maps (or get help) to figure out the routes to places. Little nooks and crannies are a tiny part of the larger world but they did help provide depth.
Speaking of travel, that brings me to the air ships and the dimensional portal. This is another instance of differing approaches to the same problem. I think the Phantom class was released just before the portal appeared. While I admit my other characters were jealous of Phantoms ability to fly anywhere, making fast travel easy for everybody sort of cheapens it. A few other classes have expanded travel options but I think they are robbed of some of their special-ness when class specific abilities get canceled out because there is a commonly accessible portal. Maybe things become more streamlined but I am not so sure that is always a good thing. Chief Tatamo of Leafre must really be having hard times because nobody needs to buy anymore of the warp seeds. The opposite approach could have been to make long distance travel even more difficult like with a broken down air ship or something. It might sound inconvenient but details like this add to the sense of adventure. Where as making travel much easier maybe lowers the sense of adventure a little. Given the choice between the slow air ships and fast portal I don't think there are a lot who would go slow but it is supposed to be something special that is reserved for a few classes. (like Phantom and his fancy airship)
Similar to walking 15 miles in the snow to reach point A from point B. During the long trek maybe you discover a Polar bear, or a frozen person who needs help or find buried treasure in the snow? Or you could hop on a snowmobile and arrive in about 15 minutes. They are kind of the same journey but also not the same. This is one of many things I miss.
Naturally streamlining is not always a bad thing but it is definitely not always good. How long could it be until Maplestory resembles one of the other zillion web games that exist?Games where the action boils down to:
1. push button to auto walk to quest Npc.
2. push button to auto walk to mobs
3. push button to auto kill mobs
4. push button to auto walk to quest Npc and complete quest.
5. repeat
Granted Maplestory and Old MS are not a lot more than pushing multiple buttons but I would think that players want more immersion and not less. At the end of the day it is still Maple and they are both online games so neither is really "bad" but in my very limited view of nostalgia, I would say that I like Old MS because it has good immersion.
One more thing I liked about the period of Old MS is that there were no artificial divisions between old/ current/ new, it was all just Maplestory.
Good times.
Comments
The boat rides were great, too. The Victoria/Orbis and Orbis/Ludi voyages were the only ones I ever really saw people in, though. Most went afk, but there were always a handful of people to talk to.
I also miss the population, and just being a kid again ;_; I used to complain about school, but goddam was it a lot easier than having a full time job. College, especially, was the most expensive vacation I ever took. Maybe I just need to settle into it more.
As far as immersion... I never really felt it with MapleStory. I could just be spoiled by RuneScape's great writing and world-building. I will say that I really really enjoyed Heroes of Maple, though. One thing that sort of turns me off in MapleStory is the amount of anachronism. It's been there from the start with Kerning City and taxis, but got progressively worse with things like Edelstein (I don't count things that don't get referenced in the fight against the Black Mage, i.e. Omega Sector, Singapore, etc. unless they have been and I'm just not aware?). It's not that it's bad content - the Resistance classes are pretty fun. It's just that it detracts from the medieval setting, seeing a warrior in plate armor next to a modernly-dressed person in a high tech mech. That's just how I feel, though.
도 늙은 메이플스토리만 얘기 하고 있네. 더럽다 친자
A lot of other series do similar things. Steam Dragon Express, Nagasarete Airantou, Mahou Sensei Negima and its sequel UQ Holder...
One Piece probably mixes genres the most, since islands can range from complete fantasy to science fiction (their current arc is taking place on a cake island, or technically a cake archipelago, I guess?). It's actually pretty popular to mix and match genres like that.
Although Maple's areas are a bit loosely tied in since the story wasn't really planned at the very beginning.
During that time, just lving up once was already a acheiveiment, i remember that during that time you focused on the next level, not to get 10lvs above(i guess higher lv feels a bit like that today), before lvs were a huge factor, 5job is reviving some of that, maybe on the future it get more closer to pre-bb; today is more damage that matters, making the lving experience diference.
Something else that cannot quite fit into words is what I will call the organic rate of progression. When a character reached around level 40ish that was about the earliest that one could go to Omega Sector without large difficulty. Probably after playing for a couple of weeks or a couple of months. The thing is that even though the number is only a measly 40 out of 200, it could be this giant milestone of getting to the bottom of Eos tower and walking out the other end. From humble beginnings on the island where computers had not even been invented yet and to reach a region that has better technology then what we have in real life. The core game play is still the same MMORPG standard "kill 10 rats" but with a different setting. The npc desperately explains that you must help them beat back the invading alien menace or all is lost! (go kill 200 aliens) Maybe simple to a fault but I think it works if the game is fun on a basic level. It also meant something that the enemies were not push overs. At the proper strength, they would be a fair match to a character but to a traveler who is under leveled the player could easily be KO'd or unable to kill the mobs. The level is only 40 and yet the adventure could have already advanced so far.
The creators of Omega sector knew what they were doing, even modeling the Meso rangers to look like the Gen 1 Power rangers. There are newer Power rangers but the originals are usually ranked highly when compared to the others. Although I am not familiar with the overseas version of the Power rangers that the english ones were based off of. After playing Old MS for a good while, the player has become strong enough to be in the presence of super hero's and to help them fight aliens in Omega sector. How dramatic!
MS is missing that sense of exploration now because it was dumbed down to be more noob friendly. But even if it hadn't been dumbed down, that sense of exploration wouldn't have lasted this long anyway. I've gotten older, and I would have already discovered all of that by now, so it would no longer be a surprise.
I miss it a lot, but bringing back old maplestory won't bring that same sense of exploration back with it. Best to let it stay as fond memories instead of trying to bring it back and having those memories of it ruined
and 옛날 is used for something from long time ago... like in this case maplestory from long long time ago.
I think if they left it alone, it wouldn't have lost that sense of exploration though, even if you do grow older because it still gives a nostalgia factor and even if not, new players would be given that same thrill and it'd be one of the reasons to stick around. I remember the areas around Lith Harbor used to have a lot of Hidden Streets for newbs to stumble into and it's exciting, because it tells them that this is what they could expect for the rest of the game: adventure.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Maplestory/comments/53w66p/old_maple/
He is probably the reason why it's a rule that you're not allowed to make a thread about implementing old server.
Or, I suppose, you can post counter-nostalgia, about what you didn't like in old maple.
@NeoTokyoDude , I strongly recommend removing the first paragraph of your opening post.
Try as I might, I can't log into it without constantly being reminded of how much the game has grown and changed. I was never good at MS, but there were so many factors in it that I found amazing and fun: notably the exploration! I remember pitching the game to my friends and saying things like, "No, really, there's TONS of worlds! You will never get to see everything because there's SO MUCH in it! You need an air bubble to breathe underwater, and a hot bun so you won't freeze in the snow!" and honestly in retrospect I realize I never did discover everything -- sure, I explored Sea World, but I was too low level to attack anything so I ran around and did nothing. But who cares? It was fun.
Just yesterday one of my online friends that I've known for almost a decade messaged me and brought up that she'd gotten a new PC and asked what games I play. Maple is my casual relaxing game, so naturally I brought it up. She got really excited since we used to stay up late and sneak on the computer to play it.
I remember being petrified of not getting inside the boat fast enough or the balrogs would kill me. I remember staying up late or waking up early on a weekday just to get the boat ride out of the way. I remember playing excessively for a month and barely being level 30. I remember almost being one-shot by dinosaurs in the cavern but my friends and I would still explore despite dying if we did anything wrong. NX was a rare treasure that only highschoolers with part-time jobs got. I couldn't even afford potions, man. (like I said before, I am and always have been a total noob)
I'm not bitter that time went on, I actually really like the game nowadays because it isn't taxing to play and anyone can get into it. It's confusing when you go to farm an item you used to have is now unavailable or when you realize a zone isn't in the game anymore, but aside from that it's alright. I don't miss the old adventurer's tutorial with the weird Maple garb, having only 4 classes (I still have an old Cleric...), having an ugly character because events or free NX was unheard of, worrying if my Mesos got hacked if I didn't log in often, and maybe it was just me but it was impossible to find friends because any time I ran into anyone I'd get "CC plz or im reporting u" for being in the same zone as them.
And omg... Hidden Street..... lol
I've grown with the game and I'm proud of how far it's come. I remember being unable to get my friends into the game for more than a week because it had potential to be great, but if you didn't fork over cash or play every day for months you'd get nowhere. It was a grind before with payoffs that never felt rewarding to us, and that's changed drastically.
So idk, I like it. I feel like I'm the minority with that being said, but I do.