General

@redeyed: I think we all know what its missing.
The community. The friendly community. The together. Who would ever think soloing zakum was possible? Exactly. The moment they made this game soloable, No one trained together. No one bossed together. No one hanged out with their friends or met new ones. Hence why the game died. It got lonely.

@joblessjim:

Actually the game population started to sink arround 6 months after Big Bang patch, or in other words with the release of Chaos patch.

Chaos patch introduced the first boss on which was truly p2w and required a lot of money in order to be able to successfully do it.

The main reason why people has been leaving this game isnt that it was made easier but having to spend hundreds(and eventually thousands) in order to have access to endgame content. If the game didnt follow the p2w route this game would probably still break at least the 6 digit concurrent players mark like back during Big Bang and LHC period.

Big Bang patch actually had proven to be a huge success and definitely was the golden age of MapleStory. I dont get why did Nexon kill the potential that it offered so fast.

Just the community is different, older and have more things to worry about, game play is of course much easier compared to back then.

Nexon isn't really doing anything for the game anymore, just trying to keep the game alive and interesting and they're doing a rather bad job at it, but what can you expect, most of the players are self entitled people who think that they should be given everything on a silver platter.

What's changed is the community, and for the worse, if Nexon takes the game down cause people are abusing a cube exploit and FIXING the game, people complain that they aren't getting compensated. It's pretty pathetic and honestly It's rare that I side with the community over Nexon anymore.

Any game you play is going to be far better in the first month than the 11th year. The game is just old.

the game catered to special snowflakes a bit too much. Now we are left with what we have.

Big bang resulted in the highest amount of active players in maple's history. But within a year that population began to decline fast.
There are many reasons why this happened, some of which nexon could not help. An example of this would be competition.
But nexon has done plenty of things that have driven this game into the ground. I've explained numerous times, so I don't really want to do it again.

I liked pre big bang because It actually felt rewarding to level. I liked it because not everyone was 200+. I liked it because there were actually people online. I liked it because you could make a new friend each day. I liked it because there wasn't an obscene amount of screen diarrhea (damage numbers/sparkly nx/Flashy skills). I liked it because each class was unique. I liked it because level meant more than damage. I liked it because funded didn't mean being 500x stronger than someone unfunded. I liked it because maps were big. I liked it because there wasn't instant gratification. I liked it because I had time to like it.
But most importantly, I liked it because it felt like home. If i sign in now, it just doesn't even feel like maple anymore. So much has changed, so many people I knew are gone. The lack of care for the game has just made it not enjoyable. People will say it's because we grew up that we feel this way, which is true to a certain point, but that's not it. The game has lost its magic.
I play oldschool runescape, and I can say the game is a solid 70-80% as enjoyable as it was back in 2006-2007. They have even managed to add new content that did not ruin the feel that the game has. So to say that nostalgia blinds people is not always true. Oldschool has a solid 20k people on at any given time, they would not still be playing if they didn't actually enjoy it. Contrary to what devs might think, a lot of people actually know what they want/enjoy.
Nexon made maple something that we do not like, based on what we did like. They could have added in decent content that would be enjoyable, and not interrupt the feel/flow of the game, but they did the opposite.

So my opinion on the subject? We can't get back those good times ever again. Even if they tried to, it won't be the same. It can't be the same.
pre big bang was when the game was alive. Post big bang is the period of time that the game will be dead.
I get people like the game because it's easier, and you can throw money at the screen instead of actually playing, but these are the things that lead to the downfall. At some point there actually has to be a game to play and enjoy.
Not everyone is going to agree, but numbers speak for themselves.

I liked pre-bb more but that's at least half because of nostalgia. I definitely liked how it was harder to level so you felt like you really needed to focus on one character. It felt more like that character was you. Once bb came out and I was able to train other characters effectively I started gradually getting more detached from my characters. Before BB I felt like I WAS a F/P. After BB I felt like I HAD a F/P. Also I felt special because Poison Mist let me train at Skeles from a low level and Meteor spamming was really effective.
That's not to say all the updates have been bad. LHC was great, especially when it was new and everyone got together in parties to work together to kill all the monsters. At that time, the leveling speed was insane and it was fun to work together for it. Eventually that speed became the norm and people found out that you can have a strong high-level person leech you and it resulted in a lot more exp so they started doing that. There were fewer people who were willing to get together in a weaker party and just screw around while getting exp.
Similarly, when I first found out about Stronghold, I had that same rush of "wow this is really good experience, I could level up fast from this!" and since SDH had no safe spot, we were trying to protect the weak people off to the right. I'm not sure why we didn't realize that the top platform was safe, though I know none of us had high chairs at the time.

Basically, I liked the rush from leveling up and gaining newer and stronger skills. I was low-level and I was working to become high-level. These days I've gotten to level 200 on 22 different characters (plus my pb, so I guess 23) so it feels a bit stale. This isn't Nexon's fault necessarily and it's not something they can fix. If they slowed down the leveling like it seems like they're trying to do (c'mon Nexon, even nerfing DI?) it's not going to change anything at this point, I'm too used to it.
The salon update was a great idea though. There are a lot of gems that certainly help but don't fix everything. Even v172, as crappy as this update has been, let me use Cannon Jump twice in the air. That's definitely fun.

tl;dr I liked pre-bb more, probably largely because of nostalgia, but also I liked the rush you got from leveling back then.

Idk why you guys think that the time when you guys were kids vs the time now when most of you are adults is going to be the same.

Making friends was of course easier when you were a kid, you basically just needed to ask, now its more complex because idk, your more comfortable with your current set of friends now.

Then there's the fact that you guys could work together to achieve things rather than doing solo play and complaining about "p2w" when the only thing "p2w" is bonus cubes. You guys seemingly picked up teamwork aain when reboot came out since its "useful again".

@deadangel13: Could just be how it is in my world I guess, when I go there I usually don't see anyone actually using it.

@keyan22: I dont really feel that about ardent. Smithing takes a big part on my day in maple and I always see ppl there taking advantage of the system (many Extractor afkers as well).
Tho I do agree that Big Bang wasn't the point where maple changed completely, but slowly through various updates that had followed it.

I joined after big bang because it seemed more fun when it happened to me, feels like yesterday, but it was 6 years ago lol, though I do agree with some about it being fun when it was harder, I just didn't like the difficulty pre big bang, like right after big bang it was fine, but eventually it got even easier which kinda ruined it(around when DS came out), during this time it really did start to die, it was fine up until a update or two after DS.

I remember when Ardent came out for example(Chaos patch, post Big-Bang), people were sprawling all over the place(you could find people in different channels!), people were actually crafting things, nowadays you see two people with one of them being afk and the other using it to go to the FM, how sad.

I can see Nexon making the game better soon, but I doubt it'll get it's old population back.

the game was shut down and deleted several years ago!! dont even bother thinking about it fam. the game doesnt exist anymore fam

I like Maple more now than how it was pre-BB. So many more jobs and most have improved immensely in being fleshed out than before. Easier to level, but also a lot of side things to do now too.

Back in the day, I was a Paladin and one of the first Pallies on Windia to get their HT Pendants. I'd make other Warriors jealous because I didn't have to have any base Dex due to my +Dex/Acc from gear and I also owned a Silver Mane for training speed purposes. But the game was just not satisfying to play for me.

Omg getting that Strafe at lvl 70 with my ranger, I just went back and forth in El Nath strafing at things for hours <3

I remember pre-bb the best part in my opinion was actually having fun doing the PQs especially Ludi. When getting to 70 was at least an achievement and felt fulfilling.

Anyone else have more to share?

pre-bb was the sht... when I was stuck at lvl 63 for the longest time
community was a whole lot nicer and a lot less pay 2 win -- more like pay to look nice
lots of immature kids in the game now too since almost all of the old community is 20+ and going on with their lives

i think Pre-BB was also more fun you got to meet so many nice people and fun people because the only way to really level was PQS, But this game now is more like just Solo playing you don't really need anybody to play it with which is what i hate and its hard to make friends since everyone just either ignores you now or is just straight up mean and angry for no reason

For me personally, it was great before that crappy Renegades update. That was when Chief Bandit used to be fun, used to be my main. Then Nexon deleted everything good about it.

Anyways, I like the Aqua Road/Aquarium update, it was pretty cool to swim about. I think it was around my birthday, so it was sort of a good memory.
My dad thought I was staring at a fish tank.

Seems counter productive to say the games dead and then in the same sentence encourage people not to come back.. this type of attitude is contributing to the games downfall.

2005-2010 was fresh and we were for most part much younger which creates a lot of nostalgia which was amazing to experience but 2010-now has still had its awesome moments

@zentenest: Community back then was so much better than now. Part of this was bc Nexon sucked so badly back then...basically only barely enforcing their own rules, etc. Back then everyone whined about this...but in retrospect I think it was better back then than it is now where Nexon gets too involved.

Specifically I'm thinking about issues where people would ks each other, scam each other...even hack, etc. Back then if someone did something truly wrong rather than complaining to Nexon or making lists on Basil of IGN's or in the guild bbs - we would get involved as a group and police our servers. If someone ks'd our friends - we'd work as a group to ks them in return till they apologized and stopped doing it. If someone scammed - we'd track them down in game every day and ks them endlessly so that they could never level. We'd click into their boss runs and try to screw it up and steal their drops.

The community that came from all of that was sooooo awesome. It had to be. We had to police our own worlds...and do it right. More than once I remember my guild and friends...and their friends...and their friend's friends...would have to carefully arranged to ks a person/persons 24/7 so we'd have to arrange shifts.

'twas so awesome.

I was actually down with Big Bang in 90% of its aspects... I loved the Resistance classes, the new content, and I thought the reformed EXP curve was pretty fair - neither too easy nor too hard. For the first time, Level 70 wasn't a nigh-impossible goal for the newcomer. Even 120 was in sight.

My favourite era was around when, you know, they had PvP around. That was brilliant. Even though Wild Hunters were supposed to be ass at it, I didn't see it - maybe 'cause I was only 2nd, 3rd job? But anyways, run around filling people with arrows for 10 mins and get a fair chunk of EXP? It was a deal for me. The only things I'd really missed were Monster Carnival and the ye olde Victoria Island.

However, it's hard to say which patch made the game take a severe downhill... I can't put my finger on it, but it did. Just in every aspect, it was imbalanced; broken, content wasn't available in certain level ranges seemingly at all. The further EXP curve revamps also turned the levelling process into a bit of a joke.

Since the Patch I Can't Quite Discern But Brought Doom, I'd honestly thought KMS were doing a good job slowly winding Maple back up to a good experience... but since 2014 around there, it's been gaffe after gaffe after gaffe. The first PQ revamp, when they removed a few of them, made me wince. But the second was a disgrace, a near game-ruiner. Hell, the second PQ revamp basically removed PQs from relevance apart from the standard 5 R+J (which is ubernerfed in EMS). Spell Trace and Star Farce got a provisional thumbs up from me, but their most recent changes to equipment gaining were ass too. The more they mess with things, the more messed up they become!

I like pre-BB community. Most things we did back then always with a party, but now everything is soloing. I missed my Dragon Knight's crusher, because it was such an amazing skill back then. I was level 132 DK before 4th jobs were out, but now it is totally a different class except for its 2nd job name.
What made me mad is the the recent patch. It doesn't look like an anniversary patch at all. 11 years are such a milestone for a game but Nexon released such a crap like this is beyond my imagination.

game is garbage. it's a shame nexon are spastics. v172 is trash, such a disgusting update.

idk but pre bb had something this ms is missing

I was lvl 127 when 4th job came out and the best place for high lvls (at that stage anything above lvl 60 was high lvl) to train was at Gobies in parties. I had 2 lvl 200s when BB came out...first 200 in 2008, second in 2009.

I feel like the game has been going downhill slowly since the fourth job patch. IMO, the best point for the game was somewhere between 4th job coming out and the mount patch coming out. It's still amusing to think about how that 20 million meso price on the mounts was seen as such a massive big deal. lol.

I still think the game is pretty good....but it's definitely been downhill ever since BB. The main reason for this, imo, is that BB represented the point where Nexon crossed the line into handholding way too much and treating the players like lazy kids.

The thing I miss most was the way the boat rides between places used to be. Especially between Ellinia and Orbis. That was so friggin cool. Took 30 minutes including the wait...but if you did it on ch 1 you would hang out with tons of other ppl getting rdy for the same ride...and then you'd have a chance to fight the Rog on your own or as part of a group. If you didn't want to...you could hide on the inside of the ship. That's prolly the thing I miss most now.

I still love the game, but do miss it being harder.

Maplestory is pretty much dead, unless you have some friends to go bossing with then its not worth it to come back