The fatal flaw with the current business model.

Eh, depends on how you judge the game. I tend to think of adventure games as "clear this area and move on". Maple Story is all about leveling up and increasing your characters stats and skills. That's more of the RPG genre than anything. But regardless, not really the point of what I was saying.

If Maple Story weren't a fun game, nobody would even care. There are plenty of games out there being over-monetized and abused and driven into the ground, but then nobody really cares or misses them when they're gone. However, if you take something people actually LIKE and screw it over, then you get all sorts of community backlash like you have here.

The problem is that most "RPG"s aren't actual Role Playing Games; they just contain some of the aspects of role-playing games, namely: character levels and stats.