My humble opinion on Nexon's path.

I've been thinking about this lately and I've decided there is no longer a feeling of loyalty to a character. It used to be that people had "a main" and they would sometimes play other characters for a break but they would always go back to their main. Usually it was for the main that nx outfits were purchased, nice weapons, and good equips. Now with a new character to make every 4 months or so, there isn't really much motivation to buy it a lot of things because it's not really like you plan to go back to it later, just drop it for the next new character.

I think Nexon could improve the game by making it available in stages and not swamping a new player immediately with all these choices. I assume accounts still start with 3 slots (although I haven't made a new one for a very long time). So allow the player to only choose from the 5 adventurer characters. Once they reach level 100 on a character (which is really nothing) reward them with a character slot and the option to choose from KOC. After a KOC reaches level 100 reward another character slot and allow them to choose a resistance. And so on. This progression will give the player a since of the story line in maple and might allow the new player to develop some loyalty to their characters as well as not feeling the ultimate discouragement of "there's 18 characters to choose from and I have 3 slots."

But no one has the discipline to do that. A significant amount of people tolerate it because it hasn't directly destroyed them in some fashion yet. They'll continue as they have been functioning for the last 6 years, people like maplestory for what it is, and tolerate the ridiculousness that comes with it. Adults have grown up and moved on from it, as will the later generations. Eventually they'll lose this generation, and realize how much thinner its becoming. People who have been with MS since the beginning have left it, people they introduced it too and kept them going to try to surpass them, are goign to leave even quicker. The power creep changes the entire game every 6 months, and they make it more Bot like eveyr passing "generation". People estimated maplestory is going to be here a long time, but I give it 5 years at best. New players are completely overwhelmed by the mountain of equipment they have to keep repeatingly shining up, assuming they can get a base set to begin with. Eventually there won't be many players who heavily invest in maplestory, the new players will never have that "ambition" to get to the top, because you can easily do it spending a large bill, the older players begin to realize how worthless it is. You get strong enough to fight a boss, hackers not only kill it first, but nerf the prices of everything down to scrap. No player is going to see the fun into investing at one point. Most of the less experienced players are finally enjoying the other half of maplestory, and that's a problem. Not because they don't deserve it, but they are speeding through everything, hitting the head and quitting.

Regarding the OP, I wouldn't be at all suprised if the character slot purchase required this time is just for now, and next month there's more free slots so everyone else who didn't buy slots can make the characters too. Since they all have seperate cash shops I feel sure Nexon wants everyone to make them.