a take on the freakish bratz-esque game

Maple Story is a side-scrolling MMORPG featuring a disturbing, or as Wizet calls it, "cute" cast of characters with the objective of finding out how long it takes a sane person to crack under the constant pressure of subliminal advertising.

Don't believe me? Go to their web site : www.mapleglobal.com

Now that we got that out of the way, we're going to go to the real deal: my take on Maple Story. Well, lets start with what you're going to do from the get go.

You start out by creating a character using the huge array of customization options available (just kidding; there is no customization), and put together your own little screwy character under the honorable title of "Beginner". You load up, and you get out on the large, eventful fields of Maple Island. So that brings us to this:

The gameplay. MS is a huge level-grind based on beating pokemon to death with sticks while wondering what's beyond the area you are in now; with a twist of platforming. So while you're jumping around with your little monster, you get to enjoy scenery, battles, and wishing that your character would walk faster.

If you want to go more in depth than that, though, then lets start with the battle system. Fighting in Maple Story is based on 3 factors: holding the attack button, picking up items, and not dying. Judging by the fact that the leveling pace is terrible (the time it takes you to level grows exponentially: from a couple minutes at level 3 to 4, to taking days from 23 to 24), battling the same monsters over and over again with this shallow system is going to get boring. You could say that there are additional factors that add an extra dimension, such as casting a defensive spell, or improving so-and-so's ability to throw rocks, but that only applies after your character stops sucking, which can be a pretty hard achievement depending on the class (mage, thief, warrior, archer) and how well you placed your stats.

Talking about stats, you might want to know what you're going to be by the time you hit level 2, because you can't rearrange your stats once you put it down, and MS happens to be one of the most stat sensitive games ever. For example: you get to level 8, thinking you played it safe and properly allocated your stats by making sure everything was balanced and even. You decide you want to be a mage with your ~20 all around stats, when you realize that the moment you pull out the wand that you can barely do any damage; so, of course, you have to resort to beating everything with a stick until they slowly die. It is then later that you learn that the only essential stats of mage's are intelligence and luck. So technically, you screwed your next 50 levels because you didn't pull it off right in your first ten.

The experience of realizing that you just wasted 40 hours of your life, if not more, will happen to every MS player at some point in time, considering that they never even realize that they made a mistake until they're already level 25 (like me). That is unless, of course, that you have either read this review, or had someone tell you how MS works before you played it. The chance of either of these occurrences happening is pretty much next to zero, so you can imagine how bad this ends up for the rest of us.

Moving on; as an alternative to the basics of Maple Story, the game features plenty of exciting stuff to do, such as (and probably limited to) : talking to people, trying to make money, and "quests". Lets start with the later, shall we?

Maple Story doesn't have quests. They can call it that, but mostly the only thing you're going to find is the average fetch routine. So you can go ahead and indulge on the exciting challenge of collecting 200 mushroom tops for the next hour. If you're not really up for that, however, then you can always shoot for the platform quests.

A platform quest consists of a couple maps you must go through a few times in order to achieve a goal. These maps are pretty much huge open spaces with unbearably small plots of land that you must ascend in order to reach the top. Jumping up these things requires perfect timing and immense patience; that is, if you have any left, seeing as you're probably going to be hit by flying pieces of crap for the time being. Let me remind you that a blow from one of these things, or anything for the matter, will send you sky-rocketing to the bottom, blowing off every ounce of effort and time you had expended in order to get to that point. Fortunately, you'll get used to this, as it will happen myriads of times. And when you boil it down, the only real factor that comes into play is how you'll react to the monotony: with focus, or with frustration.

Luckily, if fetching and platforming isn't your thing (which probably isn't), then there is still hope. Party Quests. Get in them, and you'll be rewarded with a series of challenges that will speed up the snail pace process of leveling up. The only catch is that the five challenges never change, and it can take hours to get in one, because the folks at Wizet were genius enough to only let one party in at a time. Seeing that this is the fastest way to level up when you reach the 20's, and level-grinding the normal way sucks ass, everyone will be trying to score a PQ at once; meaning that it will take longer to level up this way.

Aside from level-grinding battles and quests, you'll pretty much be facing staggering poverty and the hard-ships of making profit. Money making in MS is a grueling process, done by either picking up cheap change from the thousands of monsters you will kill, or selling rare drops to the community of MS. Unfortunately, rather than placing the item up for bids like on ebay and doing something useful with your time, you will have to advertise what you're selling in order to hit the cash you need to buy the stuff vital to not dying in your voyages. So be prepared to stare at a text bubble filled screen for a couple hours hitting Up and Enter repeatedly in order to see results.

Not that you'll be missing the visuals or anything when you're looking at the text, because, quite frankly, Maple Story looks like crap. It probably has the worst 2D graphics in any online game to date. Sure, the sprites have tons of character animations, but everything is incredibly rugged, and you won't be able to do a thing about it since MS is locked on a low-end 800x600 16-bit interface. Luckily, where they fail in visuals, they exceed in sound. Because, unlike the visuals, you'll be able to turn it off. Sure, the music is charming, but it becomes extremely repetitive and is pretty generic to begin with. This shouldn't be a bad thing though, because MS is a low-end game, so you should be able to run iTunes in the background without trouble.

What is trouble is the community. If you have ever enjoyed being hacked, scammed, ridiculed, or possibly raped at any point of your life, then Maple Story is a god-send. The society of Maple Story is composed of myriads of unethical, convoluted children that will do whatever it takes to make sure that your life is as close to an emulation of the seventh circle of hell as possible. Whether it's the constant spamming, the border-line useless moderators, the disfigured text strewn with misspelled curse words and ill-intention, or the immaturity of the majority of all the players you're going to be rubbing elbows with; Maple Story does a damn fine job of making sure that your time is adequately wasted. The only relief you're going to have is if you have a personal friend online, but looking at this god-forsaken mess, I highly doubt that relief will ever come

yet another reason why shmups are better then RPGs

Before I get started with the review, keep in mind that it was submitted on April 26, 2007. This game is updated periodically, and given that nature certain aspects of my review my become null and void in the future.

Maple Story is a Massively Multi-player Role Playing Game (MMORPG from here on out) made by "Nexon" and "Wizet". The game is free to play. Sign up is a chore and there are at least two different areas where you can sign up to the play the game which can become QUITE confusing unless you have someone who has done it before hand help you out and swim through the confusion.

Graphics: 7/10
The game's graphics are 2-D. I'm quite the fan of 2-D and I don't mind this, Your character is big headed, and typically carries a striaght normal face, they'll show emotion when they get hit by a bad guy or if you hit the appropriate F key. Fans of Anime will dig this. Customization options are extremley limited at the onset of the charecter's life, but as time progresses, you score some cash, and gain levels you can deck out your charecter with clothing, armor, weapons and so on. Extra things such as weapons and clothing of legendary warriors like Lu Bu and Guan Yu can be purchased with "NX Cash" (something you buy with real money) to superimpose them on whatever weapon you are using. Clothing is a double edged sword though, as these clothing's look nice they offer no protection, and are merely for show, not go. The backgrounds are different enough to let you know where you are, like a dungeon, an ancient forest, a canyon area and so on. Hit sparks are not very flashy, its easy to see how much damage has been dealt and recieved, and the heads-up display is simple and not retina searing.

Bottom Line:
the graphics gets the job done, if you want to look flashy you're going to have to earn it or buy it.

Sound/Music: 5/10
The music is acceptable in some areas. a few places I think it even sounds nice. The sound effects are a different matter. Your charecter is mute. the most sounds you'll hear will be the cutesy yelps of the cute charecters you just finished smacking or killing.

Bottom Line:
The music ranges from tolerable to nice. The cutesy sound effects get old quickly.

Servers/lag: 7/10
I didnt really lag to badly on my PC, I'd stall once in a while on my laptop for a second, but nothing to the point that would seriously impact my experience. I for one think there are too many servers. Your charecters are also unable to switch servers. So keep this in mind as you decide which server to go to. Each server has multiple channels as well, so its handy if you want to isolate you and your party from everyone else. Changing channels does not require you to log out either. That's a good thing. On a side not Channel one is the trade channel.

Bottom Line:
A good computer and internet connection means you wont have any problems as far as lag. Channels allow for limited isolation. There are too many servers.

Story: 0/10
Define Irony: a game called Maple Story is completly lacking in any kind of Story what so ever. This particular fact confuses me.

Gameplay: 5/10
The game is pretty much a mix of Hack and Slash, Platformer, and RPG. You beat things up, you jump around, you level up, you get better stuff and skills. The bad thing is that they do not have ENOUGH of these three genre's to make the game great.

There are no combos, you simply swing your weapon.

The platformer aspect can get annoying since this game is Keyboard and mouse only. Thankfully there are very few sections that require spot on jumping.

The RPG element is done best here but even then it's lackluster. There are four classes for you to start out as, Warrior, Archer,Mage and Thief, not including the initial class of begginer, each class branches out to two seperate paths upon gaining enough experience. The biggest problem with the classes is the simple fact that just about everyone will have the exact same cookie-cutter build strategy for their charecter, origniality is over-rated, and one must do so if they want their charecter to be as effective as possible. Leveling up becomes a chore past level 25.

Another item of note is the "Fame" system. People who like or dislike you can "Fame you" as they call it. Fame basically says how popular you are. Granted alot of people buy it and sell it. You can fame any one player once a month, and can give or take one fame a day. Certain quests and items actually require a certain amount of fame to take on (for quests) or use.

Bottom Line:
The genre's that have been mixed into this game are minimal touches, they needed to be fleshed out more.

Community 2/10
This right here... is the game's biggest failure.

The game seems to be little more then a popularity contest in some aspects. When it comes to searching for assistance, it has to be something that the person in question WANTS to or NEEDS to do. Otherwise they'll typically demand money...lots of it. Every so often you'll run into a good samaritan who will give you arrows they dont need, spare you a potion or two and the like, but tehy are few and far between. Speaking of money, people love to beg and rip you off, they'll use everything from telling you to hit a certain string of keys to automatically accept a trade or simply over-price things. Remember the previously mentioned "Fame System"? Its hard enough to earn fame, let alone buy it, but I for one have had people walk past me and drop my level of fame FOR NO REASON, worse still is if you happen to cross a guild memeber, they might just call in their buddies to drop your fame massively, or even better repeatedly report you falsely and get you banned. Alot of people like to KS, or KillSteal, which results in them getting most of the experience and leaving you with just a bit of it. Some people also like running up to you and dropping your fame level for no apparent reason. And anyone who is higher level then you by at least five levels will be very eager to brand you a n00b (a derogatory comment indicating lack of skill in a game).

You can keep a buddy list, and a guild list for whatever guild you may be in, but the amount of people you can have on the buddy list is painstakingly small.

Then there's the hackers. Some of them dont really bother you, but the ones that do are the ones that will literally take all the enemies in their vicinity and place them right in front of themselves (or at least out of people's reach and then smack them up, taking all the experience for themselves. Worse still are the ones that "Vaccum" all the items dropped but the enemies and taking it for themselves. The developers and game security handlers release patches every so often, but they're no match for the speed at which the new hacking tools come out.

Bottom Line:
If you have friends outside of the game, play with them, stay with them. Nice players are a dime a dozen, if you find one befriend them. Beware of random jerks and hackers.

Game Masters: 0/10
What Game Masters? They're pretty much non-existent from as far as I have seen. This is bad. They are essential for spotting and dealing with hackers and gamers that are damaging the community atmosphere.

Overall 26/70 or 0.371 (37%) rounded up = 4/10
I honestly gave the game a shot, after a good start, the game got boring quickly, the community raised the level of my annoyance and the only time I seriously enjoyed the game is with my brother and a friend, and even then, it is only because of the fact that we were too busy fooling around,being silly, and cracking jokes.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 04/26/07

great game - teaches you commitment

Gameplay value - 9/10

I've long since quit MapleStory, but I still feel it's a worthwhile game, especially as it's (for the majority) free, and not particularly difficult to get into.

Although most MMORPGs require time, this one requires possibly the most of all. It takes hours of grinding and button mashing to procure the shiny green words LEVEL UP above your head. The feeling gained from this is possibly the most wonderful one you can get online. Although it gets tiresome from level 40 onwards, and even more so from level 55, it is fun and gives you a chance to make new friends. To visualise a screen, I'd say put Mario Bros, Pokemon and FFIX together, and you've got it. It's a cutesy MMORPG to say the least, but that doesn't mean it can't enthral players. Basically there are 6 main jobs. Beginner, Warrior, Bowman, Mage, Thief and Pirate. Beginners tend to stray towards Thief, Pirate or Mage, but they are all very useful and worth a shot. Basically, to sum it up - use fancy looking skills to mash carbon copies of the same monster for weeks. Sounds boring? It's not.

Graphics - 9/10

These cutesy graphics are quite superbly drawn, and the NPCs and monsters have a wide variety (although a couple more Administrator NPCs would be nice) For a free game with no actual profit, it is quite smooth and something even Square Enix would be proud of (and we all know how highly they value graphics). Every skill has a different graphic, but they get tiresome after a while. The backgrounds are beautifully done, the clouds seem to move with you and every area looks extremely realistic. They add new graphics quite often, which is applaudable.

Sound FX/Music - 5/10

Here's something that lacks. The music suits the graphics, being very cutesy, even the gangsta city music. It's novel for a while, but you'd be best off switching that annoying sound off and picking some nice music of your own to play while bashing Space and Ctrl. Each move and skill has it's own sound, which is cool, but the 'putt putt' of Magic Claw hitting a Zombie Mushroom over and over again can get quite aggravating.

Community - 7/10

I can't dislike the community simply because of the handful (or several handfuls) or scammers, hackers and Kill-stealers out there. The majority of people are kind, understanding human beings, who will help you through the difficult process of levelling. The ever present system of parties and guilds is in this game also, but it's actually very competent compared to certain other games. The party system is simple and quite easy to use. The guild system is slightly harder, but not by much. Also, people here are willing to bargain for items, friendships and everything else on this little game. Unfortunately, the higher you go, the worse it gets. A large number of high level players are all hackers, and as such are still quite immature. The secret to getting a good number of friends is by getting a guild, like my old guild of Peerless is Bera.

Controls - 10/10

I loved the controls of this game. They were superb and customizable to boot. For instance, the Mage class requires all sorts of potions and at least 8 buttons to activate spells. There are plenty, and the click n drag custom system is one of the best I've seen. The functions (party, equipment, items) are put on hotkeys that are easy to remember, and you can customize them too.

Availability - 9/10

First of all, it's free! Just go to the website and click download. There you are, all done. New patches come with the download too, so no worries. The actual crowdedness is easy to cope with, there are easily 150 maps in this game, all of which can take 4 or 5 people before succumbing to lag. Add the 20 channels and 5 or so servers and you have enough room for 75 thousand people at any given time. Of course, the markets and cities can take more, so that's even more capacity. But the problem is finding someone to go around with you on these maps. It takes 10 minutes to travel from continent to continent, which is monotonous is you're looking for someone to train with and your friend won't budge. But that's only a minor setdown.

Twists and Quirks - 10/10

Most games don't pay attention to reality. Maple does, however (at least to a certain extent). In the extreme cold/underwater you gradually lose health. If you fall from heights, you sustain damage. If you put on an oxygen tank underwater, you don't lose health. There is a little plagiarism (take the ship to Ariant, the desert continent, and I'm sure you'll start wondering when Disney will sue), but it's all in the name of good fun. It's fun little innovations like these that make the game so darn attractive.

Monsters - 10/10

These are the best enemies I've seen in a LONG while. It's very hard to come up with a plausible beginner fodder enemy, but here come the Blue Snails! It's amazing how simplistic the graphics are, and how well they've been put to use. Monsters are invented overnight for events, such as the Turkey, Cake Monster and Candle. I believe the Korean version has had Coca-Cola based monsters, which is funny in its own way. Mushrooms seem to be the theme here, with Green, Horned, Orange, Zombie, Blue and Giga Mushrooms all roaming the world of MapleStory. It seems most types of animals have been incorparated, from pigs and monkeys, to slimes and Lego giants, to fairies and penguins, and even one-eyed lizards and an Aztec God. Fantastic thinking and graphics. And of course, more keep coming, like griffins, leprechauns and probably a lot more I haven't been bothered playing with.

Replay Value - 10/10

Great. Just great. There's 5 classes, and at least 2 paths for each. There is also the legendary permanewb class, and the rare battle cleric and bansin. There are even more springing from these branches - Hybrid Spearman, Purestrength Warrior, and the fabled Battle Priest. Also, you can have up to three characters at a time, which is great. You can delete them at will using your D.O.B. Great idea to make more than one character at a time, or get one character strong enough to support others. Of course, it is quite time-consuming, so be prepared for that.

Questing - 7/10

Average questing in this game. There's what you would expect - lazy fairies who can't be bothered to hunt for green slime, old people who decide to give level 13s the job of going down an extremely hazardous area to deliver messages - nothing spectacular. The rewards seem a little dull. Who would cross continents, hunt down 3 diamonds (fairly rare/expensive) and kill dozens of random alien things to get free passage to a beach island? I mean, pay the 1.2k already! (Actually, since I had an Ice/Lightning mage, some of the best training from 40 onwards was on this beach island, so I did the quest). Slightly sub-par, and you don't get much for most quests - you can get a level 70 to hunt down the Solid Horns you need rather than labouring to do it yourself.

Tutorials - 10/10

Most games have tutorials that are as simple as to say 'Click here'. That stuff has been trashed and recycled now. Instead, the game starts you with a fun, graphically interesting tutorial, complete with apple costumes. Then follows an in-depth guide to the assigned keys. It follows with basic talking, item using, door/portal entering, hunting, picking up and a subtle jumping tutorial. It's very good, and doesn't go to the point of an NPC saying 'Oh no! I've lost my keys! Press Z to pick them them up!'. Instead, the characters tell you they're there to help, and give you rewards for completing the tutorials. Makes you feel special, doesn't it?

Overall - 9/10

Great game, made even more so because it's free! There's several sites devoted to the game, and the community isn't as bad as most (coughcoughRunescapecoughcough). Try it, and if you don't like it, uninstall. It's only a gigabyte or so, which is great, because almost any modern computer can play it. Be prepared for months of devotion - you'll need it. Hitting Green Mushrooms with a Broadsword for several months does get boring. But it's still one of the best MMORPGs on the net. It's a great game, and I applaud Wizet and Nexon for having the guile to come up with an ingenious idea as such. A job well done, and I'd like to see some even better projects in future.

maplestory--guilds

How do you join one? How do you start one? What are the benefits of guilds? Are there any drawbacks?

Guilds are supposed to be like a "clan" or something .. for people with same interest to join .

You can go to orbis to start a guild but first you need 1.5M and 6 people in your party to make a guild .

You can expand your guild for more money . And if you want a picture beside your guild name you have to pay more than 1.5M

NPC Creation of maplestroy

All forms of item creation have a couple of major things in common. There are the following common things to do:

1) Finding out what materials are needed to make what you wish to make.

2) Collecting the required materials. The method needed to collect the required materials may be different between the different methods of item creation. This will be explained in more detail below.

3) Collecting any optional materials, if available. Many times you can collect extra items to add additional bonuses to equipment. The bonuses follow the possible bonuses available through scrolling.

4) Going to the proper NPC or using the proper skill.

5) Following the directions required to make the equipment. Things are usually pretty simple after this point.

The fact you need to talk to a specific NPC (non-player character) in order to make a particular piece of equipment is the main similiarity to the three kinds of NPC creation. For the sake of this article, they'll be named event NPC, itcg/cash shop NPC and regular NPC creation. The reason for seperating the 3 kinds of NPC creation is because of the methods used to collect the required items.

Event Equipment creation, as the title suggests, are connected to short time events that happen every so often in Maplestory. The following usually apply to event based equipment creation.

1) The NPCs are usually specifically created for the event and are only available during the event.

2) The required items are available only during the event. Sometimes they can be collected from any monster, and sometimes they are available from a particular map and with special monsters.

3) Some Event equipment creations are also cash shop item creations as well, but it is not always the case.

Itcg/cash shop NPC equipment creation requires you to either find the required items from other players if they are tradable, or to purchase something with real money. The NPC you talk to will likely be the same for any item that is created for the particular set or event associated with the equipment. Cash shop Item creation is most often a kind of event equipment creation. The reason it is kept separate is only because it costs money to use.

Many ITCG (Internet Trading Card Game Currently only for Maplestory Global) cards have special codes on the physical cards to redeem in game for either equipment, useable items or "parts" used to make equipment. The code redeeming section is in the cash shop. To make various equipment with the "parts" items, you often have to complete a "quest" and talk to a couple NPCs to make the desired equipment. The NPC you need to talk to will likely be different, depending on the itcg set you have the parts for.

Regular NPC creation only requires drops that can be found from various monster drops at any time. In most cases the class specific kind you wish to make can be made in the town the job class starts in.

Tips How to View Private Myspace Profiles

We all notice that if you are a MySpace user, you've come across some profiles that you're dying taboo to view but only to catch out that they're set to private. You realize that the simply way to view their profile is to add them as a friend and hope they accept. Unfortunately, nearly of the time they don't know you and they wont accept your friend request. However, I can show you how to view private profiles on MySpace.

I know personally, I've stumbled upon a profile of someone I thought I recognized. All I need to do is look into some more pictures on their profile to be sure. But when I try to view their MySpace profile, I find it's set to private. Now I see the only way I can view their pictures is to send a friend request to them. But we all know that this can be tiresome and most of the time not work at all. If their profile is set to private, they'll most potentially not add you as a friend.

Private profiles is a great feature on MySpace, however they can be a real annoying when it comes to finding friends that you haven't seen in a long time, or becoming friends with someone that you think look cool

Maplestory Carnival Affair Quest

As abounding of you maplers out there know, there is an acutely acceptable affair adventure accessible to all players amid the levels of 31-50. This is the carnival affair quest. Basically, during this "pq" (short for affair quest), you anatomy a team, and actualize a map by beat on the npc (or non-player character). Then, a aggregation with the aforementioned amount of members, alignment anywhere from 2 to 6 humans can challenge. Both teams annihilate monsters simultaneously, earning credibility for their aggregation for every kill. After 10 minutes, the aggregation with the accomplished amount of cp (carnival points) wins the game.

First off, the rewards of the pq. Every pq has to accept something acceptable appear out of it. Otherwise, no one would bother pqing. First off, you can aggregate maple bill that the monsters will bead as you annihilate them. You can allocution to an npc to barter these bill in for weapons for any class. You barter in 7 bill for the weakest items available, all the way through 20 bill for the accomplished akin weapons. Also, you can barter 50 bill in for the acclaimed Spiegelmann Necklace. This chaplet gives you about 27 abracadabra and weapon defense. Also, it gives you at atomic +1 in strength, intelligence, dexterity, and luck. If you are lucky, you may end up with a +2 in one of the categories, or even +2 in 2 categories. If you get a +2 in one category, accumulate it, unless that class doesn't advice your class; in which case, you advertise it for up to 2 million, or barter with anyone abroad who needs it and has the one you need. Also, the acquaintance you acquire from accomplishing this pq is unbelievable! Not alone do you get the acquaintance from killing the monsters, but you aswell get accolade acquaintance for both acceptable and losing! There are ranks accustomed to you based on how abounding credibility you managed to acquire during the pq. The everyman rank that you should get if you in fact do something is a C, which gets you 21,000 exp if you win, and 7,000 exp if you lose. Then comes B with 25,500 for acceptable and 8,500 for losing, and A with 30,000 for acceptable and 10,000 for losing.