Morality of Using NX

I am one of those people that have never bought nx, never plans to, and hasn't used the MTS for nx. I lvl very slowly (3+yrs and only 2 lvl 70+ no 120+) but I'm fine with the current rates (exp and drop wise).

I have the option to buy nx cards, I have a job and can afford to spend 100's a month but I can't get over the morality of it all. Maple is supposed to be free to play and all so I choose to not waste money on it...

Then theres the issue of MTS. True I spend nothing out of my pocket so technically its still free to play, for me. In order for me to get nx out of the MTS someone has to put some in, thus Nexon is making money off me using the system even though its not me thats paying in. But the morality issue comes into play. Through my activity Nexon nets income. I prefer to not directly financially reward a company that rarely listens to its customers and in some cases even lies to them just to cover their collective asses.

Many of you share my morality against buying nx but have no problem using the MTS. How do you get past the guilt of knowing that you indirectly support Nexon with your quest to get NX?

Also a subquestion for everyone, when you say put it in the MTS for 1600 do you mean 1600 before or after tax (the buyer pays the tax 1860 or you cover the tax 1364)?

I don't buy NX, but I use MTS.
What I sell on MTS is mostly etc. stuff that people could get for themselves if they weren't too lazy to: cursed dolls and pig heads and that sort of thing. I figure if I didn't sell this stuff, they would buy it from someone else. The NX is as good as spent already.
It's not like I was selling some unique equip that is much too hard to find in FM, and forcing somebody to go buy NX to acquire it.

That said, I don't think it's "immoral" to let Nexon make money. Yes, MapleStory is free-to-play, but if they didn't make a profit from it, they'd shut it down. They are not a charity, they're a company. All companies want to make money.
It's true that their customer support sucks, and they do a bad job pretending they care about the quality of the product or the satisfaction of the players, but the bottom line is that I (and you, presumably) still manage to enjoy this game that they provide. If you think that not buying NX will make Nexon change their ways, you're wrong. It'll just make them stop investing in MapleStory development or server upkeep.

The second the cards are activated Nexon has already made the money. Shuffling it around a little isn't giving them money, as they already have it.

I dont understand how anyone can think it is immoral for a company to sustain itself by making money. These companies in return provide jobs, pay taxes, and continue to provide a service. You said you have a job so I assume you arent employed at a free-to-work company?

And there would be no F2P games at all if they didnt have some sort of cash shop.

how is it immoral for me to use my money that i work for however i want? is not as if its illegal to pay for nx.

...seriously? You play the game. You haven't quit because "they rarely listen to their customers." They are providing a service for you. There is nothing immoral about paying for the game. If you don't want to pay for NX, that's fine, but it's kind of stupid that you're trying to play the game and protest the spending of money on it at the same time.

Side note:

The second the cards are activated Nexon has already made the money. Shuffling it around a little isn't giving them money, as they already have it.

True, but using MTS creates more demand and gives the people that buy your items with NX more incentive to buy NX, and thus they will buy larger amounts of NX. At the same time, it takes a small amount of NX out of circulation for good, which adds up to a lot of NX spent on tax alone.

I dont understand how anyone can think it is immoral for a company to sustain itself by making money. These companies in return provide jobs, pay taxes, and continue to provide a service. You said you have a job so I assume you arent employed at a free-to-work company?

And there would be no F2P games at all if they didnt have some sort of cash shop.

The problem isn't with giving money to a company. The problem, as I perceive it, is to give money to a company that doesn't care one bit about its customers at all and takes every possible opportunity to gouge them.

I prefer not to reward people that don't deserve to be rewarded... I concur that's it's not really an issue of morality, though. I could easily afford NX if I wanted to but the only NX I've ever used was points from Mom&Pop I don't try to push my point of view on others, though. After all, it is their (or their parents') money.

I can appreciate you not wanting to spend money on a product you dont like, but why do you still play - even for free? Is it in protest like a poster above mentioned?

I cant stand liver. It tastes gross & has little nutritional value. I'm not eating liver whether it costs $20 or someone gives it to me for free.

Well, it would be great to not have CS. However, would you expect Maple to be running today if they don't include CS?

The second the cards are activated Nexon has already made the money. Shuffling it around a little isn't giving them money, as they already have it.

Supply and demand. If noone buys them, will they still sell cards @ 7eleven and other places?

Many of you share my morality against buying nx but have no problem using the MTS. How do you get past the guilt of knowing that you indirectly support Nexon with your quest to get NX?

Many of the people who opt to MTS and not purchase NX, aren't not buying NX to boycott Nexon, they're not buying NX because they dont want to spend real money on the game.

Furthermore, if you dont purchase any NX, then anything you earn via the MTS would already be in circulation, and thusly already in Nexon's hands, so it doesnt matter.

Well, it would be great to not have CS. However, would you expect Maple to be running today if they don't include CS?

You would need to pay a monthly fee.

I can appreciate you not wanting to spend money on a product you dont like, but why do you still play - even for free? Is it in protest like a poster above mentioned?

I cant stand liver. It tastes gross & has little nutritional value. I'm not eating liver whether it costs $20 or someone gives it to me for free.

I never said I don't like the product... I also don't view MS as the product; I view all the NX frills as the product they're peddling and they're not necessary or worth the cost, which is a big difference. I'm not one of the people that view MS as a "free to play, pay to enjoy" game, otherwise I wouldn't have gotten 114, 64, 58, 57 and 48 characters without a drop of NX.

For example, I would never go out and buy myself a Ferrari because I don't view the return as being worth the investment. If someone wanted to give me that same Ferrari, or even sell it to me for what my current car is worth, of course I'd take them up on it...

In playing for free, I don't reward their ineptitude. The only investment I make is in leisure time, which I would waste on other forms of entertainment anyway. I'm also not one to whine and complain about all the advantages people get from the NX... I'm quite content leveling at my own pace.

Also, for what it's worth, I haven't logged in since a couple days before Christmas.

Ever heard the saying:

"Nothing's ever free."?

Well, it's quite true. Nothing is. There always come a sacrifice, for a huge MMO like MapleStory to run, they need money to support their servers and network, where do they get their money from? Certainly won't be expecting donations, so they made the Cash Shop, so people (especially little kids) spends money on NX cards, which makes the game free for the rest of us.

But theoretically, WoW is the same way, just applied differently. Their's is P2P, it's 15 dollars a month (correct me if I'm wrong), so you don't have to have a function similar to the Cash Shop. Regardless, WoW also needs to pay off for their servers running, their entire network and everything else. Both companies needs money to run their servers, Blizzard AND Nexon, but how they advertise their game in a market-economy is different.

Some NX is more permanent than other.

Recently I've just been using NX to get the permanent stuff (inventory expansions, and some rare weapons that I can only find in the MTS, and face/hair coupons that last until you change them)
If they made certain CS equips permanent I'd buy those too. (invisible hat for my Paladin definitely, even if it was 4-5 times as expensive)
I'm just not playing enough to use 3 month expiring stuff.


Since I can't buy cash cards, I have no motivation to buy NX. Paypal NX is pretty well useless to me - it's mostly limited to cosmetic upgrades, which I don't feel like right now. Maybe if they let people with history of good transactions (before they introduced cards, I'd spent over $100 with no fraud) buy stuff with Paypal NX I'd be able to support them again.

As it is, by using MTS NX I support them indirectly while getting what I want.

Supply and demand. If noone buys them, will they still sell cards @ 7eleven and other places?

Apperently so. I just bought some NX cards at the local Target that have March 2007 as the date on them. And the Nexon cards are completely full on the shelf, while EVERY other card is only half full. My guess is that I'm the only one who buys them in the entire city I live in. They probably keep them on the shelf since they already have them, but I don't see them reordering it when they finally run out in two more or so years.

The second the cards are activated Nexon has already made the money. Shuffling it around a little isn't giving them money, as they already have it.

Actually, the moment the cards are in the store, Nexon has their money for it. Target pays Nexon for the cards, and then turns around and sells them. Some companies offer credit for their unused merchidise, but Nexon apperently doesn't. That is why there's still tons and tons of March 2007 (with KartRider on them >_>) Nexon cards at my local Target.

I buy nx occationally (maybe $30 every 3 months) but when MTS came out I started merchanting there for NX similarly to merchanting for mesos and so now I use NX a lot and still buy it occationally.

I buy nx because I like the game and nx enhances the game play (more item space, looks, faster exp or drops, etc).

If I didn't like the game I woudn't play and then I wouldn't buy nx. It's silly in my opinion to say you won't buy nx because you love the game but hate the customer service. Why do you love the game if customer service is that important to you? I here WoW has great customer service but I don't contribut to them because of it. I hate their game and see no reason to support them even if they have great customer service. It has no value to me as I don't enjoy their product.

As Nexon is a for profit company (like most) they are obviously going to see the profit of their games and the one that gets the most attention is going to be the one that makes the most money. So if everyone quit buying NX in MS they would just close MS and move on to other ventures; they would not think, oh we should spend more money on customer service to try to get people to buy more nx in MS. When tons of people buy NX they look into what people like and try to provide more content that pleases their users to encourage them to keep playing and keep buying nx as this brings them more profit.

Unfortunatly for many of the global users Nexon American is centered in the U.S. and has a high population base of Americans. The culture in Americia is vastly different from cultures around the world and the content Americans would want to see is faster, better, now; as opposed to building a relationshiop. If you took a poll of American users you would find that most of them would prefer a really cool functioning content patch (say the new jobs KMST has) as opposed to active and friendly GMs and a chat with a Nexon Rep on-line now feature. To say it another way Americans would prefer that Nexon spend its time developing a lot of content and fixing the bugs rather than chatting with them and resolving individual problems that don't effect most people.

It's obvious that in the reacent year Nexon has been considering it's customer base and applealing to those needs. They try to do every other week server checks, they try to alternate night & day checks so that the same people are not intrupted all the time, they have come out with some pretty awsome patches - instead of maybe 1/4 being cool it was closer to 1/2 being cool. And while they may have been trying to fix bugs I'm sure most agree this aspect is still fail. I'm sure that as Maple Story pulls in more profit to Nexon that Nexon will try harder to please most of the population in order to make it even more popular and make even more money. As they get their major customer base happy they will probably move on to try to please smaller customer bases and that's when I would expect to see more customer service.

I've never bought NX or used the MTS.

I lol at this thread. Nexon hasn't exactly been on the ball about some things, but we HAVE been getting excellent updates recently and I'm sure it takes a fair amount of manpower to achieve them. So what if they are trying to make money? They are a company. A lot of their players play the way you do--not giving money into the system, because they either choose not to or are unable to. And that's fine.

But what's wrong with them trying to make money? They ARE a free2play game, so customer service isn't one of the top things you should be considering (if you want that, go join a p2p game). They specialize in microtransactions in order to keep their company going and all of their GMs, programmers, etc hired. I don't get why people are always so happy to fault Nexon for their moneygrubbing ways. Sorry, but if you were running a company as large as theirs I think you would make some of the same decisions. Hardware is expensive, so are full-time salaries (including benefits, etc). From what I see they make majority of the community at least satisfied (SP.net and SW.net aren't exactly representative of a good chunk of the community), and so majority of the community puts money into this game.

I'm not a Nexon cheerleader (really, unless they totally kill my character I could care less) but, geez, this is silly. If you don't want to support Nexon financially, fine. But then you have NO right to complain when things go downhill because they aren't making the $ necessary to upkeep.

Also, putting into the MTS (if you are selling useless etc items, whatever) is not giving money to Nexon. As someone stated earlier, the money is already in the MTS and you aren't contributing to that. At this point I'm pretty sure it's just a transfer of wealth; ex, you sell etc items for small amounts, someone else buys them with their cash they made by selling other useless items, you eventually save up enough to buy $100 weapons and so on. So there's no need to feel guilty about supporting devil-Nexon; the trade will go on with or without you.

Supply and demand. If noone buys them, will they still sell cards @ 7eleven and other places?

You missed the point. By buying the cards, you've given them money. You could throw the cards into the fire for all they care at that point as they've made their money.

You missed the point. By buying the cards, you've given them money. You could throw the cards into the fire for all they care at that point as they've made their money.

Nah, by buying the cards you are giving Target back their money.

Nexon is already sitting pretty...I think the only direct cash they make instantly is via PayPal...and that doesn't work very well, heh.