My humble opinion on Nexon's path.

Haha if only Maple quests were as interesting as in SWTOR. The class quests there are basically novels just waiting to be explored. I basically treated it as 8 different RPGs that happened to be set in the same universe. I highly recommend it for anyone with even a passing interest in Star Wars mythos. It's even 100% voice acted (with pretty good actors)!

But I digress. I'm just trying to say $5 for a character slot isn't unreasonable, unless you just want to get to lvl70/120 for the link skills then let it gather dust for eternity. 15% WA scrolls = 15% weapon attack? We never had any 15% versions of those, except armor att/matt. My point is they aren't any less useful because they are on another account, unless it already requires PSOKs.

Star Wars isn't my cup of tea, sadly.

As for the character slots argument I would have to say I do indeed only make characters for some quests, their card and link skill now that I've settled on one main which is why my argument was geared towards what Nexon is apparently trying to do with its policy of character slots. It's easy for you and me to say that people don't really need these boosts which is true, but it is also true that free extra damage/HP/whatever would be useful for a complete newbie even if it's not obvious at first.

I know you'd rather not discuss things that haven't been implemented yet, but as the PDR formula change is inevitable I think it would be better to bring this up. Now, I do not know just how much of your PDR comes from the Crusader Codex and Nebulites but I would say getting PDR ignore in MapleSEA basically amounts to having Ambition, having the Pirate deck, playing the right class and cubing. That's it; my former guild leader even cubed his bowgun only with %boss before stopping as he relied on Defence Break to sail through Empress runs because getting 100% PDR is really that frustrating in versions of Maple Story that aren't GMS (And probably JMS with the exception of the Nebulites). Then you see bosses like Chaos Vellum having 300% PDR which could easily screw you over.

Going off on this, why in blazes are the versions even becoming so unequal? I know the publishers of each version might still need to submit their ideas to the main branch but the differences between each server is getting ridiculous (Again, looking at you, Asiasoft).

And now, some mentions:

[MENTION=9951]G-Meister[/MENTION]; You know what's even better than a $99 Valve pack? It's Nethack, a game that is completely free (Including its much more difficult variants), lets you become just as broken as a $100k funded character if you put in some effort, can be played online, keeps your records and is still standing strong decades after its creation. Oh, and did I mention it can also be difficult as all hell and even the veterans might still die early in a game session?

My problem with your post is that it is nearly detached from the discussion at hand. You claim that other games are a good alternative if you hate the company, except you too could not come up with a direct alternative to Maple Story and you failed to take into account that there's a substantial amount of Maple players even on SP itself that play both games and as for this:

Unless you're there for other things excluding friends and the community.

I must say I find that to be rather presumptuous. You are correct that I did not play for friends and the community for a long time; however, my own funding increased as I made friends within the segment of the community known for actually staying for more than six months because I wanted to be of help for my new friends and having acquaintances I was guaranteed to see for at least a week gave me the motivation I needed to achieve the rest of my goals, something that I might otherwise give up on as I would be no more than a faceless person on the rankings you claim to care about.

Other reasons, friendship and the community need not be mutually exclusive. I prefer friends who will stay and those who stay often have either emotional, social and monetary investments into the game.

[MENTION=612]LittlePrincess[/MENTION]; I disagree on this completely. While it is certainly much easier to just quit a character and go for a class that is bigger and better, your method doesn't encourage loyalty either because new players who want to play another class no matter what are just going to blow through the others and as you said level 100 is nothing. I've also played through pretty much every story line available for me save for Demon Slayer (Because mine's only level 70) and Aran (Because I don't have one) and honestly? Not even one story line would be compelling enough for such a restriction at present because the content is painfully limited.

(As a sidenote I like Phantom's and Evan's story the most; however, to implement such a mechanic you would have to first relate every story to each other like chapters instead of making them standalones or it has virtually no appeal).