2014-01-20, 06:03 PM
Although you definitely bring up some good points, I'm inclined to give Nexon the benefit of the doubt. The fact that the dupe was made public on New Year's Eve proves that this was planned to some degree to impact Nexon and the MapleStory economy as severely as possible. Although it is true that certain professions do not get breaks for holidays (news, entertainment, public workers, etc.) I sincerely believe Nexon had left things on autopilot because of the holidays as nothing, to my knowledge at least, has ever occurred on New Year's or other holidays (other than 2x events failing).
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. As cliché as it may sound, I think we should all give Nexon the benefit of the doubt. If this happens again on a holiday because of lack of staff, then we can plead incompetence.
As to the topic of the rollback - they were in between a rock and a hard place: rollback and anger the community with the possibility of having no impact anyway or remove the items and ban the violators as best they can. I wholeheartedly agree that they should spend more time getting to know their game and pursue preventative measures from exploits, hackers, and DDoS attacks. Still, it's understandable why Nexon is in this position.
As Min Kim (5toVe) has mentioned, he slept in a cardboard box in the office during the early days of GMS. When GMS was just beginning, it was clearly a much smaller operation and I assume everyone who worked there had to do multiple jobs in addition to policing the game as GM's and thus had to stay very involved with the community and what was going on as far as gameplay and player habits. Nexon America grew pretty quickly once the cash shop was released and with a larger team, lack of proactive, hands on leadership for years, and other bureaucratic nonsense it's very easy to see how things have deteriorated to this point. The great irony in it all is the MapleStory community is shrinking and players are quitting and moving to other games like League of Legends but the NxNa bureaucratic machine continues to trudge forward into the muddy abyss.
I don't really know enough about Nexon's other titles, but when the money stops flowing to Nexon Korea's satisfaction, I'm sure downsizing will be in order. The fact that they can't seem to keep a Community Manager for more than a few months (or weeks) and the ever-revolving-door of staff at Nexon proves that things do not look good for the company. Whether or not downsizing and humbling Nexon America (and Korea) will do anything beneficial for the game depends on who's left and how much they care about keeping it around instead of wringing out every last drop from this dying game.
It's also prudent to mention that the only thing keeping the game alive right now is the elite players, to be honest. And a lot of them are active members of the community. Those elite players will move to other games and get older and grow up. Nexon isn't really appealing to new players (that I can tell, at least) so that spells trouble for the future of the game.
The situation is tough, for sure, and I don't know how much longer we'll see a gradual decline. Right now, Nexon seems to be in the "bailing out" phase of this disaster of Titanic proportions (since Unleashed hell bans). My prediction is that this will continue for maybe a few more months or a year or so and then things will stop gradually declining and just drop suddenly off a cliff and that will be that. MapleStory 2 may help, but that's assuming they don't rush it out before its ready in North America and Europe to try and save what's left of their customers.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. As cliché as it may sound, I think we should all give Nexon the benefit of the doubt. If this happens again on a holiday because of lack of staff, then we can plead incompetence.
As to the topic of the rollback - they were in between a rock and a hard place: rollback and anger the community with the possibility of having no impact anyway or remove the items and ban the violators as best they can. I wholeheartedly agree that they should spend more time getting to know their game and pursue preventative measures from exploits, hackers, and DDoS attacks. Still, it's understandable why Nexon is in this position.
As Min Kim (5toVe) has mentioned, he slept in a cardboard box in the office during the early days of GMS. When GMS was just beginning, it was clearly a much smaller operation and I assume everyone who worked there had to do multiple jobs in addition to policing the game as GM's and thus had to stay very involved with the community and what was going on as far as gameplay and player habits. Nexon America grew pretty quickly once the cash shop was released and with a larger team, lack of proactive, hands on leadership for years, and other bureaucratic nonsense it's very easy to see how things have deteriorated to this point. The great irony in it all is the MapleStory community is shrinking and players are quitting and moving to other games like League of Legends but the NxNa bureaucratic machine continues to trudge forward into the muddy abyss.
I don't really know enough about Nexon's other titles, but when the money stops flowing to Nexon Korea's satisfaction, I'm sure downsizing will be in order. The fact that they can't seem to keep a Community Manager for more than a few months (or weeks) and the ever-revolving-door of staff at Nexon proves that things do not look good for the company. Whether or not downsizing and humbling Nexon America (and Korea) will do anything beneficial for the game depends on who's left and how much they care about keeping it around instead of wringing out every last drop from this dying game.
It's also prudent to mention that the only thing keeping the game alive right now is the elite players, to be honest. And a lot of them are active members of the community. Those elite players will move to other games and get older and grow up. Nexon isn't really appealing to new players (that I can tell, at least) so that spells trouble for the future of the game.
The situation is tough, for sure, and I don't know how much longer we'll see a gradual decline. Right now, Nexon seems to be in the "bailing out" phase of this disaster of Titanic proportions (since Unleashed hell bans). My prediction is that this will continue for maybe a few more months or a year or so and then things will stop gradually declining and just drop suddenly off a cliff and that will be that. MapleStory 2 may help, but that's assuming they don't rush it out before its ready in North America and Europe to try and save what's left of their customers.