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.