Maple Syrup Pixels

By Raquel Flores
MapleStory is a PC 2D platformer MMORPG developed by Wizet, a Korean company in
2003; it was designed with a Chibi Anime visual concept for a young audience. In 2009, MapleStory
had 92 million players worldwide and 6 million players in North America, most of the players
between ages 18 and 29. MapleStory has seen many patches, updates, and versions through these
9 years, and some players think that all these changes have had a negative effect in their game
experience that make them consider stop playing. This analysis will cover some reasons why
players may want to stop playing MapleStory as well as the reasons that still make MapleStory an
appealing game.
Maple World, the world where MapleStory takes place, was tormented in the past by the
Dark Mage, and Maple World needs heroes to prevent this from happening again. The player takes
the role of one of these heroes and seeks to kill monsters, bosses, complete quests that will help
Maple World, and level up his character until the character reaches its level limit and becomes a
true hero.
Players use the keyboard to move right, left, up and down in a map, and portals are used
to move from one map to another adjacent map; most maps have platforms of 3 or 4 varying
height levels, but in some cases maps can have hundreds of height levels and platforms.
To start playing, first the player must create a character choosing male or female and one
of the available classes: Explorer, Cygnus Knight, Hero, Resistance, Nova or Sengoku. Some classes
like the explorers, Cygnus Knights and Resistance start the game as beginners, without a job, and
chose one later. Other classes like Heroes, Nova and Sengoku start with a fixed profession and can
start using skills immediately.
Players can chose between five basic jobs depending on the chosen class: Warrior,
Magician, Bowman, Thief and Pirate, but the name can change depending on the class even if the
role is similar For example, a Resistance Bowman is called a Wild Hunter, and a Cygnus Knight
Thief is called a Night Walker. Other classes like Aran, Evan, Mercedes, Phantom, and Luminous
Heroes were created as part of an special event, and are named after a character in the history of
Maple World; some of these classes con only be created during special events.
The great range of possible characters to choose from is one of the most appealing aspects
of MapleStory. Players appreciate the possibility to create a character that they can not only
customize as they want, but also one whose abilities are compatible with the players personality
and game strategy. This freedom appeals to veteran players too, as it allows them a fresh start to
the game again when they reach the level limit of a character.
Players can also choose a crafting or collecting profession such as mining, Herbalism,
Accessory Crafting, Smithing and Alchemy in addition to the classes and jobs. A couple of years
ago, when the professions system didnt exist, players could find mineral an metal ores as rare
monster drops, collect 100 of them, refine them, and then take them to and NPC that could craft
them into weapons or armor. This was a very long, expensive process with little benefit, thus
generally unpopular. The solution Wizet found was to create these professions and place mines
and collectable plants all through Maple World, so that players could have an easier access to
these raw materials. The result has been positive and the offer and supply for the ores and refined
materials has grown, and more players make their own accessories too. Nevertheless, these mines
and plants are still lacking visual integration with the rest of MapleStorys art, as their visual
quality is below the rest of the games graphic elements.
Another of MapleStorys great appeals is the diversity of environments and cities in Maple
World. Players can travel to many different cities, some forests, deserts, jungles, gardens, castles,
and underwater cities to name a few; some of these places are based on pop culture, or literature
classics like One Thousand and One Nights. Many of these cities are not realistic, and probably
not very coherent to one another, but each one of them is defined by a concept and a story, so
even if the characters travel from a forest to a toy city, and then to an alien landing place in a few
steps, it does not bother the player, nor does it break the magic spell of the game, because they
are all justified in the game style and art. Maple World is a place to explore and discover, and the
players know that their reward for leveling up is being able to play in a new zone with new
monsters and loot.
NPCs are a key element to Maple World, for they build up the story and atmosphere of the
game. Wizet created each one of them according to the concept of the city they will live in; their
clothes, job, age, personal story, and all these elements together justify the quests these NPCs will
give the players, their dialogues and how they talk to the player. NPCs are amusing, playful,
serious, grumpy, self-centered or compassionate; they present themselves as plausible characters,
people that players can recognize as familiar and as if they were people that players interact with
in the real world.
MapleStory proves that games do not need to be hyper realistic to be appealing to players
or make them bond with a virtual world, because even with pixel art MapleStory is still visually
attractive. Its graphic style is very similar to a Japanese anime, it uses bright and pastel colors, and
the character design aims to make characters cute and friendly, even monsters and bosses. The
animations are at a low frame rate, and this, added to the pixel art and the platforms, gives
MapleStory a retro look.
Wizet takes care that the graphic style of every monster and NPC is coherent with the rest
of the games aesthetics. This effort translates to the graphics being one of the most important
reasons why people play MapleStory. Nevertheless, Maplestory was developed 9 years ago, when
the most common monitor resolution was 1024x768 pixels, and this defined the size of
MapleStorys window. Bigger monitors have become more common as years passed, and now the
pixel art doesnt work as well when it is stretched to fit the monitor; on the other hand, if played
on window mode, the window is too small.
The games interface has also gone through some changes and not all of them for good;
most of the changes have been button additions and new panels, but most of them are not
important enough to be on a whole new panel, and these additions just make the window look
cluttered and smaller. This probably occurred when Wizet detected a problem in the game or
wanted to improve something and the solution they found was to add a new button instead of
looking for a more creative solution. As an example, some years ago, MapleStory had an option on
the menu that opened the quests window, but more recently, another button that suggests quests
for leveling up was added to the new auxiliary menu at the left of the screen, and perhaps Wizet
could have found another way to make more visible those quests without cluttering MapleStorys
window.
Quests are a fundamental part of MapleStory; in every city there are five to ten quests
available to choose from. Some types of quests available include killing a certain amounts of
monsters, collecting a number of objects dropped by specific monsters, look for an NPC that lives
somewhere far through several maps infested by strong monsters, kills a boss, clean of monsters a
dungeon map within the limit time, group quests, or even jumping quests; the objective of this
jumping quests is to jump from one small platform to another and avoiding obstacles until the last
platform is reached. Jumping Quests are an opportunity to try something different in the game
and prove the players ability in a task different than killing monsters, and at the same time,
avoiding the repetitiveness; these quests, along with unexplored areas of the world, renew the
players experience of the game.
The attacks to monsters are completely dependent on the characters class and abilities,
for each class uses different kinds of weapons according to their skills. Some weapons have
attributes like attack, defense, agility and defense that can improve a characters performance in
battle. The characters abilities can be passive, active or support, and each ability can be improved
by spending skill points on them every time a character levels up. The player can decide which
ability to level up according to his own judgment, or choose the auto assign option and let the
game assign the points according to the characters class. The slight variations in characters
abilities and skills determine the overall strength of the characters attack and allow the player to
build their character according to their own strategy. For example, some players would rather
spend all their bowmans skill points in dexterity and none in strength to improve accuracy even if
they have to sacrifice using armor and weapons meant to their level.
Monsters drop loot after being killed and then they disappear, and the loot depends on
the monster and its level, but in most cases it consists of a random amount of Mesos, the currency
used in Maple World, potions, items specific to the monster, and equipment and weapons as rare
loot. Monsters spawn in another part of the same map almost immediately after they are killed,
and this keeps up the playing rhythm; it is very uncommon to have resting time in a monster map.
Players also like this aspect of MapleStory.
MapleStory rewards players for playing socially, like by playing in groups or doing group
quests. The Family System was the predecessor of the Guild System; high lever characters added
juniors to their families and acted as mentors while sharing experience and other benefits. This
system has been recently replaced by the guild system that features guild competitions and new
benefits to the most active guilds. This has been a controversial change for the MapleStory
community, because the players that were part of a strong, big family lost their bonus, but players
that were never part of a family find it easier to become part of a guild. Characters in Maple World
can also get married to another character by buying a wedding coupon and inviting other
characters to their wedding; the number of guests depends on the coupon. Weddings in the
cathedral are more expensive than weddings at the chapel, but they also allow more guests and a
special private dungeon for the party.
Customer support for MapleStory is not something Nexon (MapleStorys publisher) can be
proud of. Tickets can take a week to be answered and the responses are deficient. Players
experience a number of recurrent problems when playing MapleStory: error messages when
trying to start the game through the website, and players losing Mesos in the storage during
server maintenance.
MapleStory has seen many changes during the nine years it has been around. Some of
them have been welcomed by players, others not so much. Other changes seem incomplete, yet it
is still early to anticipate a future downfall, because it remains a popular game among young
gamers and the recent updates regarded as unpopular can still undergo many changes, so Wizet
can still fix many things from here.