MapleStory
Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008
Not music related, but today I wanted to talk about somethng else: MapleStory! MapleStory is a MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game) created by South Korean gaming company Wizet back in 2003. Free to download and totally free to play (though you can spend real-life cash to get special items to alter your appearance and to enhance gameplay), MapleStory soon expanded, creating versions for players of other countries - typically, IP address forces you to play a specific version of MapleStory, although it seems the only restriction on KoreaMS is having a KSSN. So if you live in Japan you can’t play GlobalMS, and if you live in America you can’t play EuropeMS, etc. Each version has certain things that are exclusive to it, be it specifically themed holidays or certain worlds/towns, although all versions do share most of the same basic worlds, maps, monsters and quests. There is currently 11 versions of MapleStory: Korea, Japan, China, Global (but really North America), South East Asia (MapleSEA), Taiwan, Thailand, Europe, HongKong, Brazil, Vietnam, and apparently there’s plans for India and South West Africa (MapleSWA) versions. According to Wiki, there’s something like 50 million player accounts in total.
MapleStory is adorable, and looks almost like it’s geared towards young players - it’s 2D, side-scrolling, cartoon/anime kind of character design with the monsters being giantic mushrooms, smiling green slime blobs, angry pigs, snails and walking tree stumps - but it’s not. It has all the same features of your typical MMORPG - quests that grow increasingly hard, monsters that get pretty freaky, a variety of different character types to choose from (archer, swordsman, thief, magician), and a stat/skill point system that most MMORPG players will be familiar with. Your stats/skills and the type of points you put into them with each level up depends on what character type you have, and what further sub-type you want further down the track, with each character type branching off into 2 or 3 different directions at Level 30, and then again further on in the game. Mess up some stats or put your skill points into the wrong skills, and you run the risk of having a character that will be at an incredible disadvantage further on in the game.
My bestfriend and I started playing MapleStory on the Global version about 2 years ago, maybe a bit more. We never really got very far because we’d keep quitting and then starting again with a new character a few months later, over and over again haha. We had to switch to the Europe version several months ago, and once again ended up quitting, but about a week or two ago we started again and decided that we would get further this time and not start over next time we get bored with it XD
MapleStory is so incredibly addictive. It involves quite a lot of grinding (killing the same type of monsters over and over again, either because you need to kill a certain amount of them for a quest, or you need the items they drop), but really most MMORPGs involve that. There’s a lot of different stuff though on there too, quests that have you going from one town to another to get this or that, or the infuriating jump quests, and there’s even mini games you can play if you get the right items, like Omok, or matching cards.
If you can justify spending some real-life cash, you can purchase NX Cash on the MapleStory version sites, and use the MapleStory Cash Shop in-game. You can buy clothes, accessories like wings or cat ears, weapons that don’t give you any added stats but mask the currently equipped weapon, effects that follow you (like rainbows or dark, roiling shadows), rings to exchange with your crush or friend that create an effect when you stand near each other, and my favourite of all: PETS! Your pet follows you around, and you can equip them with other items (more NX Cash to spend) so that they pick up the items dropped by monsters you’ve killed or other things, and once your pet has reached a certain level you can start talking to it and giving it commands (like sit, stand, poop - yes, poop!), and for moar NX Cash you can buy a nametag and give it a name. Most items you buy from the Cash Shop though only last 3 months. Having said that though, the NX Cash isn’t TOO expensive - considering, for example, you have to pay like $15us PER MONTH to even be able to PLAY World of Warcraft, or games like Rappelz (also originally Korean, created by nFlavor) that suffer from massively overcrowded free servers but have special, less crowded servers for the players who pay money to get in.
This is my character, Jinjja, currently a level 23 swordsman, and that’s my pet, a Jr. Reaper. XD
I really do recommend anyone who’s got some spare time to give this game a shot XD It’s so fun, I love it! You can check out the official website here: www.maplestory.com . If any of you play on Europe, give me a poke! You can find me on the Kradia server, in the English 2 channel.
Posted by Taliana in How Koreans Do It |
October 24th, 2008 at 12:13 am
So… ever been a magician? I’ve just become one, and I’m sort of stuck. hehehehe
Thanks for the tip. I quite like it, and it’s a nice distraction from studying. ^^
October 24th, 2008 at 2:50 am
I haven’t had one myself but that was my bestfriend’s first character when we first started. We screwed her stats up right proper, but I have become much better versed in things since then XD
Although this won’t help you since you have already created the character, for those planning on taking magicians your starting stats (don’t forget you can reroll the dice as many times as you want. I have once sat there for an hour to get decent starting stats for a thief) need to have STR and DEX incredibly low (around a 4 is good), with INT and LUK quite high (8 is good, 9 or 10 best). Magicians DO NOT NEED STR or DEX. At all. Magic works solely on INT and LUK, and you don’t want to waste AP points on anything else.
The basic idea once you’ve gotten started is that your luck is always 3 points higher than your level. If you’re level 10, you want LUK to be at 13. If you’re level 26, you’d want LUK to be at 29. Everything else goes totally into INT.
By the end of your first job (Level 30 is when you make the second job advancement), you want to have mastered the following skills: Improving Max MP Increase, Improving MP Recovery, Magic Claw and Magic Guard. You also want to have about 1 point into Energy Bolt (you can do that early). How you stagger out your points is up to you, since I’ve never been a magician I can’t really say what would be best, but I would assume the MP stuff is best as it later on allows you to attack and recharge a lot faster.
It’s also important, no matter what class you are, to train on the right monsters. You don’t want monsters too low, but at the same time you don’t want ones too high that take forever to kill. Without knowing what level you are it’s hard to say what you should train on, but up til about 15, snails and slimes are good, and then the orange shrooms. Let me know what level you are and I’ll be able to give you a better idea of what to train on, and where you can find lots of them.
Don’t be afraid to ask people to party with you either if they’re a higher level and seem to be hanging around the area. As long as you’re not just standing around, or KSing, then people are pretty good about partying with a stranger even if it’s just for a little while.
And always check the quests, too. More become available at certain levels so just run around and do the ones you can. Collect stuff to sell - shells, slimes, branches, mushroom caps, mushroom spores - but be aware of what you need for certain quests. Don’t sell your ores in the shops, hang onto them and sell them to players for more money (or if you don’t have enough space, create a second character, get through the training island and make a job advancement, and then use it as your mule to store stuff on, just transfer stuff from one to the other by using the storage system, it’s the Asian dude in every town). Hang on to feathers too, someone was paying me 1k a feather today, and I had like 30 of them 8Dv
October 24th, 2008 at 3:37 am
Thanks! Seems I’ve made a couple of wrong choices, but I’ve not totally messed up. Hm… If I ever want to start again, I think I’ll choose another occupation. ^^
October 24th, 2008 at 4:09 am
Swordman is quite good for hacking your way through the game especially if you’re soloing. Thief are good for range if you use the claw and take the assassin route rather than using the dagger and going bandit, and I personally just have some kind of deep-rooted hate for archers in every MMORPG ever XD
For swordman, your starting stats want INT and LUK around 4, with STR and DEX high at around 7 or 8, preferably with STR at 9 or 10. After that, your DEX wants to be twice your level, with everything left over put into STR.
For thief, you want STR and INT at around 4, with LUK and DEX at around 8. Dex again twice your level after that, with everything else going into LUK.
Not too sure about bowmen, though I hear it’s best to carefully plan your AP for them.
October 25th, 2008 at 1:11 am
Is this the same Maple Story? If so, this is just too weird…
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27337812/
October 25th, 2008 at 1:27 am
LMAO Yes, Ed, the very same. There’s a town, Amoria, in some versions of the game and if you complete some quests and use NX Cash to buy a wedding ring, you can “marry” another character there, some versions even allow same-sex marriages I think. And then of course you can get divorced too, hehe.
I think by “killed” it means she deleted his character? (since if you die in the game you just get resurrected to the nearest town) I’m so amused! And also kind of amazed that something like that can actually carry legal implications with it o_o
October 28th, 2008 at 11:20 pm
I’m a player from MSEA. I was totally addicted to MapleStory. I had a number of 4th jobs. It’s really really fun.
Since I was a hardcore Mapler, I was actually searching for Maple stuff when I went to Seoul last year. I went to PC 방… There wasn’t a single soul playing MapleStory… I knew the game originated from Korea hence I was looking for KoreanMs because I wanted to have a peek at how the future MSea might be. (MSea server is always behind KMS and JMS) But I was disappointed as I couldn’t find any Maplers! lol
November 1st, 2008 at 6:14 am
I think Maple Story’s still popular in Korea… I didn’t spend a lot of times in PC 방’s during my time there, but my students still talked about it sometimes. There were two 13-year old boys at my academy who insisted their English names were “Maple” and “Story.” :S
March 15th, 2009 at 6:23 pm
Hey I was just wondering. Can you play together with someone in a different country? I live in the US and I have a friend in Malaysia. We both agreed to play together so I was just curious about that.
March 15th, 2009 at 7:19 pm
No, you can’t play with people in different countries. Every region has it’s own version of the game, and you must play that version. If you try to play a version of the game that is not your local one, you will not be able to connect to the server.
Your friend in the US will be playing on the MapleGlobal version. This version is limited to the US, Canada and Mexico.
Since you live in Malaysia, you will have to use the local version which is MapleSEA. Countries that can play MapleSEA are Malaysia, Singapore and and Thailand.