We often see players, new and old alike, make comments that reveal big misconceptions they have about how Maplestory is run and maintained. The purpose of this thread is to dispell these misconceptions.
Here goes:
Nexon America is a publisher, not a developer
Everything in the game, whether KMS, "Overseas content", or GMS-specific, is coded at Nexon Korea (in Seoul, Korea) and then sent over to Nexon America's team, who test it and, if it works, install it on the game servers. If it fails during testing or after going live, the team in Korea has to be given as much information as possible about the problem, and work on a fix. Then the local team receives the fix, and tests it again. If it's not properly fixed, back to Korea it goes.
Note that Nexon's Corporate Headquarters is in Tokyo, Japan. This is probably because Nexon stock is traded on the Tokyo stock exchange.
Nexon America's Headquarters is in El Segundo, California
Don't try to call them or go there, though. Their front desk knows nothing about your issues, and will only transfer your call (or let you in) if you can name the person you want to talk to and that person OKs it. They also don't accept complaints through the Better Business Bureau or any other "Third Party", short of legal action. Note that if you threaten legal action, Customer Support will stop talking to you except to direct you to their Legal Department.
Wizet is part of Nexon.
Wizet, the developer of MapleStory, is a subsidiary of Nexon Corporation. It's still developing MapleStory and MapleStory 2.
GMS patches are planned months in advance
Because of the way major content moves down the pipeline from KMS release through localization to GMS, all content and events are planned out on a big roadmap calendar to ensure everything happens in the correct order and adapted as needed. Which means that if you want to suggest a new event or change to existing content "for X holiday that's coming up in 2 weeks", it really can't be done.
Development happens while the game is online
The development team in Korea works on new content or bug fixes to old content on their own development system that is independent of the game servers. They then send it to Nexon America for QA (Quality Assurance) to test on their test servers, which are also independent of the game servers. Only after that, the game servers are taken down and the patch is applied, and re-tested on the game servers. The actual time it took to create the content or find the fix for a bug, is not directly related to the length of time the servers had to be down to apply the patch.
Maintenance vs Game Update
A scheduled maintenance is when the servers are taken down for things like Windows updates, backups, database cleanup, etc. They generally occur once a week, on Thursday morning (Pacific time). Most weekly maintenances also deploy some fixes for the game, primarily those that don't require a client update.
An update or patch is when the game receives a new version and the launcher needs to download updates to the game files. Major game updates usually happen on Wednesday morning (Pacific time), presumably to give more time to fix any unexpected bugs before the weekend.
Unscheduled maintenance is when the game servers need to be taken down unexpectedly to fix an urgent issue with the game. By their nature, they could happen at any time.
GMs are not Developers
GMs are Customer Support agents. As such, they can:
- Patrol the game to deal with suspicious activity
- Run certain in-game events
- Respond to tickets and live chat requests by searching an online knowledge base for the approved response or procedure to handle the issue.
- Forward issues to the development team.
They cannot:
- Make any changes to game code or hardware
- Answer questions about the game (e.g. "does diligence affect clean slate scrolls?"). They have only basic knowledge of the game itself. If they do give an answer it may well be wrong. You're better off asking on these forums, the official Discord, or fan sites.
Community Managers are neither Developers nor GMs
The community manager (currently: Ghiblee) has two main roles: PR and ambassador.
As PR, the CM can use social media, videos, live-streams, web events, contests, etc, to entertain the community and help generate interest in game content.
As Nexon's ambassador to the community, the CM collects player feedback and passes it on to the people who can actually make decisions about the game. The CM then relates these decisions to the players (or the players just find out what was decided when they see what got implemented).
The CM cannot:
- Make any changes to game code or hardware
- Force the developers to make any such changes
- Ban or unban any player from the game
VFMs are not Nexon employees
VFM ("Volunteer Forum Moderators") are player volunteers in the community team. They therefore have even less power than the CM, but assist the CM in his or her duties.
The VFMs can:
- Moderate the official forums
- Moderate the official Discord server
- Collect player feedback (bug reports, suggestions) and pass it on to Nexon
- Help run events and streams
The VFMs cannot:
- Make any changes to game code or hardware
- Force the developers to make any such changes
- Ban or unban any player from the game
Client and Server
The portion of the game that runs on your PC is the client. The portion that runs on Nexon's computers is the server. The client can do some things on its own (like walking around the map) but mostly sends commands to the server about what you did, to make sure all users see the same things happening.
Issues with the game can be purely client-side (game freezes, graphic glitches), purely server side (channel crash), or due to a bad connection (most forms of lag and disconnect).
"Glitch" vs "Hack" vs "Bot"
A glitch is a bug, an error in the game. The error can be in design or in coding, of the client or the server. A glitch can be positive (to the players) or negative. An example positive glitch would be Kishin and Frenzy stacking for mad spawn rate. An example negative glitch would be players being skill-locked after dying and reviving at Lucid. Taking advantage of a positive glitch is considered "exploiting" or "abuse". It doesn't matter that it's Nexon's fault the glitch is there. It's your responsibility to not intentionally trigger it.
If you're not sure whether something is a glitch or intended, use your head. If it's too good to be true, it's probably a glitch. Will you be punished for exploiting it? Nexon's track record is inconsistent: sometimes they do nothing, sometimes they ban everyone. When considering taking advantage of something you're not 100% sure is intended, always think: "Is this worth risking my entire account over?"
A hack is when someone uses external tools to get things to happen in-game that would not happen without the tool's action. This can be editing the game files, using a packet editor to tell the server things that the client itself would not, or any number of other methods. Regardless of why or how they're done, all hacks are against the Terms of Service and generally lead to permanent bans when discovered.
Botting is when the server is fooled into thinking there's a person playing the game, even though there isn't. Keyweighting your attack key is botting. Using a programmable keyboard to repeatedly issue a set of commands is botting. Using a program that runs a dozen fake clients to collect meso is also botting, in addition to being hacking. All botting is against the Terms of Service and is punishable by bans.
A recent QoL change made it so EXP or Drop coupons awarded at the same time (such as Rest coupons for not logging in for a while) stack in inventory.
This is a very welcome change.
However, it does not solve all the inventory-clog issues caused by EXP/Drop coupons.
Events like the current Sugar Rush give many such coupons, but not all at the same time. Since each coupon's expiration time is set when it is awarded (typically to exactly 7 days later), it means each one has a different expiration time and therefore they can't stack in inventory.
Similarly, the Daily Hong Bao items and the buff coupons they give all have different expirations times and consequently clog up the inventory.
I suggest that coupons and other expiring event Use items have their expiration dates or times rounded up to the end of the day when they're to expire (e.g., all Feb 10 Sugar Time exp coupons expire at 23:59 on Feb 17) or the end of the event (e.g., all Daily Hong Bao items expire one week after the event ends, so at 23:59 on Feb 27).
The OX quiz event we have running currently, sends out a summon every hour at 15 minutes after the hours, for people to queue up.
All those who queue get transported to a waiting room for up to 30 seconds.
Once the waiting room counter reaches 0, everyone inside is transported into the game map - unless there are "not enough participants", in which case everyone is sent back where they came from.
I don't understand why there is a minimum of participants required.
The score you get seems to depend solely on how many questions you got right, not on how many people did better or worse than you. So you could, theoretically, do the quiz solo. You would not gain anything from the lack of competition (except maybe not having to wait as long for the 5 coin "waiting 'til the end" bonus).
I play in MYBCKN, a world with low population.
I also live in UTC+2 timezone.
This means that for most of my playing time, I queue up for OX quiz, lose all buffs and get moved to ch 1, and then get sent away without having played the quiz.
Please lower or remove the minimum participants required for OX to run.
This isn't about drugs, or anything else in real life.
This isn't about Nexon Customer Support stonewalling ban appeals.
This isn't about any of the serious issues that Nexon keeps "monitoring" and "discussing" and "looking into" until we give up hope of them ever being addressed.
As can be seen in the linked thread, there are a bunch of medals that don't register in the collection. Some of them are old, from before the collection came into being, and some are new but (usually) non-KMS. It's an annoyance to medal collectors to have to keep these in inventory.
But we put together a list, and the VFMs forwarded the list to Nexon, and we (or at least I) felt confident that it was just a matter of time before Nexon adds these medals to the collection. They've already done one round of such additions in the past. It's an easy enough change, just not very high priority, so it could take time. Fair enough.
But yesterday, when the issue got mentioned on Discord, Arwoo showed up with news.
"I do have some information in regards to the medals"
"Well, it might not be good"
"Actually, it probably isn't good"
"The intention wasn't that every medal would be made with the ability to be registered"
WHAT?
I'm sorry but I'm having extreme difficulty wrapping my mind around this absurd statement. It was delivered about 9 hours ago, of which I slept about 5, and I am still just, just, I can't[\i].
Why would it be intentional to hand out medals, untradeable and with no useful stats, that can't be registered in the collection? What "intention" lies behind it, except the lazy intention to skip coding the one line that adds them?
Why is Nexon's answer always "NO"? (when it isn't complete silence, that is) If that's how they respond to trivially straightforward issues, what hope is there for complex ones like game stability, bans, Haku, world populations, Jett, drop rates, meso farming, inventory clog, and so on and so forth?
Arwoo then went on to say, in response to our unhappy reactions:
"Yes, so that's what we're trying to solve with our delivered feedback"
"perhaps something could be added to the ones that can't"
"Ideally though, we'd like to see if it can be developed so that every medal can be registered since we're sure that's what you guys want"
"but I can't be certain of this promise"
Yeah. What "you guys" want. Like it's not a matter of proper game design (if you have a medal collection, it should include all medals), it's a special QoL perk that Nexon might be generous enough to grant us spoiled children. Why, when I was your age, I had to carry 50lb of medals on my back while trudging six miles through the snow every day, uphill and against the wind both ways!
Yes, I'm mad. Maybe having 20 medals clogging my Equip Inventory has something to do with it. And maybe I'm just sick and tired of the way this company pats itself on the back for solving one issue (and a dozen typos) a week, while the backlog just continues to build and the population continues to drop.
and 7 others. 
and 2 others. 