The fatal flaw with the current business model.

Since it was just posted on this site, I thought it'd be relevant to bring up the article on "Nexon: Market optimization key to free-to-play":



When the CEO of the company dances around the issue of Pay-to-win and writes it off as just a stigma attached to "Asian-developed games" and not a valid concern, you know how that might affect their philosophy in managing the game.



And since Maplestory doesn't have a local development team (as far as I know), this is more or less saying the Maplestory is stuck with the Pay-to-win model and they're fine with keeping it that way. He does go on to say that he has respect for domestic developers such as Riot and Valve and how they basically understand the Western market much better, and yet Nexon itself has no clue how to actually cater their own game (Maplestory) to a Western market.

Welp.
That's it then, I guess.
I give up. No reason to go about hand-wringing and hoping for positive change when the writing on the wall says there's no way for improvement.
If they aren't going to try, then I guess there's no need for me to continue trying to hold on.