How many people are REALLY still playing Maplestory?

What do we have now? A half ass story that was canned since Nexon Joe or whatever his name left.

The work NXJoe did and what's going on today aren't even related, nor was NXJoe's plotline for NLC even canonically important to my knowledge. Yeah, the way things were going were great, but pomegranate happens, get over it. Enough with the rose tinted glasses.

No you're a masochist just like any other player,

You over use this line so often it's getting bland and honestly stupid. You act like any single person that plays this game and doesn't ever encounter Nexon's erroneous ways is someone who enjoys pain or being treated like they're worthless. Read: Most people that play this game never end up dealing with pay2win, or false bans, or any of that other sort of bullpomegranate that you constantly refer to as some sort of masochistic tendency. Knock it off.

you just want to find an excuse because you don't spend thousands of dollars to get decent at bossing, you enjoy challenges and want to find value outside of something so "common" in todays metagame.

I'm sorry, this just made me burst out laughing. As if Maplestory ever had any semblence of "meta game" or balance for that matter.

You're just as bad as the rest of them simply because you play even though nexon can ban your character for you taking a piss, make your class completely unplayable one patch, or piss off the wrong person and you suddenly are denied access to the game.

Again, most players don't even remotely deal with the first and 3rd points you make there. The second point is something that literally every MMO out there does to an extent. Have you ever played other MMOs Dustin?

It doesn't matter what content you like in the game, or what the hell you appreciate, you're punished from just being apart of the system, don't kid yourselves.

Please, elaborate because I fail to see how this is even partially true. Maplestory is a much different game than it used to be, but it isn't nearly this cesspool of garbage your clearly bitter self is so jaded over.

Maplestory has its problems for sure, but it's still a hell of a lot better than most other alternatives out there.