Free-to-play schemes could be unlawful, warns OFT

Have you actually tried playing Maplestory's competition in the realm of 2D MMOs? Wonderking (now dead), LaTale (looks worse than maple, imo, and it's currently pretty dead), Dofus... None of these games even come close to the amount of depth and community that Maplestory currently provides. It's the best 2D mmo available, and I have tried all the rest. I really have tried them.

Nexon is thoroughly trouncing the competition on 2d mmos. There really is no competition left. Nexon either bought them out or so dwarfs them that there is no competition to be had.

I have, but it doesn't change all the inside problems with the game that turns people away. Mechanically, it is the best 2D MMO to exist, but all of the massive problems with the game internally are the issue. Why did we have to wait years for a Windows Vista/7 fix? Why does the game still randomly crash for no reason? Why does the game bug out all the time?

There's all kinds of internal issues that prevent the game from being as good as it could be, and I doubt very much that new players will ever want to deal with that kind of crap. We deal with it because it didn't happen when the game was first released. Before I stopped playing after the release of Ariant back in the day, I never had unexpected crashes, random "bot" disconnects when I didn't bot, or anything of the kind. Yet now I can't even play for a few hours straight without running into a world of issues. They never adapted to any of the new technology that has been released or anything like that. I believe the game still runs on what, DirectX7? Most of the issues could be fixed by just upgrading/updating the engine a little, but they don't.

It's a huge turn off to people who are unsure of the game. Then you mention to them that they can't even fight the end-game bosses because you need to invest thousands (money or hours, pick one) to get the gear necessary, and is it any wonder they leave? No.