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LHC Party Bonus is here to stay D

Hello again Maplers!

One of the things we love about the MapleStory community is how passionate you are about the game. We know that many of you follow news about other versions of the game and talk about what you'd like to see in Global MapleStory, and we think that's awesome. Lately the discussion has centered on the "Ascension" title floating around the MapleStory website and forums, with many of you guessing that the Ascension update will bring the content that was released in Korean MapleStory's "Jump!" You're right, but there's a lot more to the story of Ascension - including why it's not quite "Jump!"

What is Ascension?

First, let's go over the basics. The Ascension update will include everything that was released as "Jump!" in Korean MapleStory, including a total skill revamp for all Warrior, Magician, and Bowman classes, the introduction of Monster Park (a multi-level party play zone), three new party quests, and revamps for six existing party quests. There are also some technical improvements including the addition of an event calendar to the UI.

While this content was released over the course of three updates in Korea, we've chosen to release it in one. This was due in part to our decision earlier this year to focus on having fewer but meatier updates. Additionally, the full "Jump!" content contained a lot of improvements that we wanted to implement immediately. Naturally, putting them all together in one update has taken a little extra time, but we felt the wait would be worth it.

What's Different?

Remember when I said that "Ascension" wasn't "Jump!"? As your dev team, it is our responsibility to not just take what comes out of Korea and drop it in Global MapleStory. We evaluate the content to figure out both what works well with our version of MapleStory and what pleases our players. In doing so, we made some significant changes to the "Jump!" content:

• Party Play: Korean MapleStory chose to remove all Party Play bonuses other than Monster Park. We knew that many of you were disappointed by this news, so we listened to our community and retained the bonuses in Ascension.

• Weddings: Ascension will introduce a new, simpler wedding system. The update will give you more options for weddings and make the required quest both faster and easier to complete. We are also debuting 30-day and 100-day renewal ceremonies for couples that are already happily married!

• Events: We've added some cool events just for Global MapleStory. Details are coming soon, and I think you'll really like them!

I'm Ready to Ascend Now!

We're really excited about Ascension - so much so that we had originally planned for it to be ready by now. While preparing the update over the past few months, however, it became clear that our servers need some significant upgrades. While we've continuously made small changes and improvements while working on updates, what we really need now are some major changes requiring a dedicated effort from the MapleStory team.

With this goal in mind, we've decided to first complete what we're calling a "server update." This is a pure backend update that won't include any player-facing content. We knew that it would be frustrating for players to have to deal with a downtime and an update only to log back in to the game and find that nothing had changed, so I wanted to let you know that it was coming. While you won't see any changes after the server update, it should greatly improve the game in the long run.

Don't worry though, Maplers. We still plan to deliver Ascension to you before the end of the month, and we promise it'll be worth the wait!

Until next time Maplers,

Eurydice

The MapleStory Team

http://maplestory.nexon.net/FunStuff/Articles.aspx?boardNo=405&contentNo=00Cva&pageIndex=1