A frankly mediocre game with an awful storyline, but a testament to how you can wrangle months of playtime out of me if you're a polished feature-complete title with a strong community-creation component. MapleStory 2 was as standard as MMOs get, I don't remember it being very well balanced, the action combat struggled to hold shape under the latency issues, it literally kills u irl when u die. Yadda yadda, I could say anything and you'd have no choice but to believe me, the game's servers have closed down permanently.
This was, however, my Massively Online Style Savvy: Trendsetters for PC. Games are terrified to let people make things for themselves, use their own images, provide customisation tools that could be exploited for devious ends - but they're pure and valuable expressions of da self! On one hand, I empathise with the walled-garden approach most games take, all content within the title being curated and poured over by the developers n publishers to assure maximum sponsor compatibility and compliance to ratings boards. MS2 was a rare and frankly exemplary occasion of a fairly major MMO publisher essentially not even caring about all of that. If you could think of it - you could make it. You could design your clothes and accessories and furniture meticulously, you could buy real estate within the world map and design every block of the house, you could buy billboard space and plaster any .png you want in story-critical questing zones. Was dumb as shit but so pure and good.
Also want to signal boost this
https://maplestory.nexon.net/ms2archive
An official site recognising the fact that the game has shut down and just made ALL of its art assets freely available for download. Wtf. Why is this so rare.
This was, however, my Massively Online Style Savvy: Trendsetters for PC. Games are terrified to let people make things for themselves, use their own images, provide customisation tools that could be exploited for devious ends - but they're pure and valuable expressions of da self! On one hand, I empathise with the walled-garden approach most games take, all content within the title being curated and poured over by the developers n publishers to assure maximum sponsor compatibility and compliance to ratings boards. MS2 was a rare and frankly exemplary occasion of a fairly major MMO publisher essentially not even caring about all of that. If you could think of it - you could make it. You could design your clothes and accessories and furniture meticulously, you could buy real estate within the world map and design every block of the house, you could buy billboard space and plaster any .png you want in story-critical questing zones. Was dumb as shit but so pure and good.
Also want to signal boost this
https://maplestory.nexon.net/ms2archive
An official site recognising the fact that the game has shut down and just made ALL of its art assets freely available for download. Wtf. Why is this so rare.