A little thing I noticed.

 Spoiler

Yeah, I was thinking about the same thing. I doubt they originally planned several things which are in Maple now, such as Pink Bean, etc.

In fact, I'm pretty sure that, at first, they didn't think that Maple would've become such a huge game with such a great income. If you listen to the first BGMs, for example, they weren't as 'complex' as the latest ones. The concept of the game wasn't really complex either at first, but when they realized that it'd have become one of the most successful games in South Korea and in the rest of the world, with a great income for them, they hired more development staff, adding more and more concepts to the game, some of them which can be considered kind of 'complex', and developed better-looking areas, and better BGMs, to make the huge userbase happy.

What I'm saying is, yeah, they probably didn't plan to add many of the things which are now in Maple to begin with. The entire Black Wings plot only started with the Cygnus Knights only. The Black Magician stuff started with Magatia, and maybe it had other little references in Victoria Island quests (?).

So, who knows if they originally planned to do something with that castle in the background of the El Nath Dungeon.. I highly doubt, since, yeah, Zakum's background is named "FinalFight", so that could make one think that they planned to make Zakum the final boss at that time. OR it could just mean that it's El Nath's final boss.

So many questions and no answers.. It'd be great to be able to ask to a developer of the game questions like these.

Zakum prerequisite quests also involve three steps, zakum being the final step. The story about the people of El Nath worshipping a statue and the lack of references to Zakum anywhere else indicates Zakum never had any influence out of the El Nath region.

I disagree with your point about the Cygnus Knights and Magatia. They were both created later on in Maplestory history and seemed more like an opening chapter of the Big Bang than noodles (Black Wings is never defeated in the Cygnus storyline and 120 characters, no matter how overpowered, seems a bit weak to fight off the Black Wings led by the Dark Magician.

 Spoiler

Maple has always made excessive use of the "Noodle Incident" - that is, events in the past that are referred to but never, ever explained in detail. It's arguable whether they set these up well or not, but as time's gone by more and more are finally being made use of. The most obvious is Tristan and Balrog; I have to admit when I first looked at it I never thought they'd come back and explain it. Now not only do we have the Balrog boss at the bottom of sleepywood and all that ties to it, but even the Dual Blade's storyline stems from that. Alcaster is a walking talking mess of Noodle Incidents: Between his involvement in Magatia (Why did he leave? What became of the 3rd faction?), the Book of Ancient and the war that quest mentions (war against the black mage?)... Athena being an Elf? How come she's the only one in the whole game?

Naturally as some are filled in, new ones spring up, especially in regards to Elin and Neo City (Elin alone has a plethora of questions that spring forth from it, not the least of which deals with a mysterious locked room that's been in the data from day 1 and still has no use. Neo City has dozens of unused NPCs with scripts attached who don't respond to anything.) It's just a part of storytelling, especially when you've got a group of people working to put it together, with some coming and some going all the time. The Balrog thing was just a simple backstory for a quest chain to one person, but someone else came along and thought it would be interesting to investigate. Who knows, maybe that's happening now with the Nath castle there. The original designer just put it there to lend atmosphere, someone new has come in and felt it needs explaining. One of the most frustrating things about the lack of Masteria updates is that the first design team went to great pains to leave TONS of noodle incidents all over the place, and so far only a tiny fraction of them have been revealed.

The system of switching internal positions within Nexon (Korea only?) have been both a blessing and a curse. While this system provided new and interesting content for Maplestory early on, when it grew larger the lack of overarching storylines made the game look shallow. The result was random people expanding on random stories that were never finished and will never be finished (development takes oh, I don’t know, two years). Forcing people to work with a deadline for their project also makes them work harder, like an investment bank but with anime mushrooms.

This would explain fresh new features in the system/mechanics too. Redundant ones as well.

 Spoiler

Yeah, I totally agree. The development team obviously doesn't stay the same. Some people leave, some people join the team. Just look at Edelstein's design and hear its BGMs. Something totally different from what we've seen (.. and heard!) before, without counting the new concepts used for the Resistance's beginning.

I'm also pretty sure that the "death" (well, it's a big word, but it's just an assumption) of the Masteria development is related to what you said: the development team. The quitting of NxProse and NxJoeW who probably were somehow related to the development of Masteria (I've had the chance to private message NxJoeW on his YouTube account, the one with his GM patroling videos before private servers even started to exist, and he said that he was a game developer), probably had a bad impact on the development. While I don't want to make such assumptions and say that their quitting slowed down or completely stopped the development of Masteria, we're still sure of one thing: not only was NxJoeW a game developer, but we also know that NxProse knew about Masteria like the back of his hand, as he made a thread containing hints about the new expansions and made Q&A's, answering to people's questions about Masteria and other stuff. So he must've had a good role in its development.

Now, do you think that if, let's say, the storyline writer of Masteria content suddendly left Nexon because he got a better job offer, that might slow down the Masteria development? Who knows. One thing is sure: the quests' storyline wouldn't be the same anymore. Another fact: since NxProse and NxJoeW left the Nexon Development Team, all the storylines of the quests of the exclusive stuff sucked (see: Haunted House expansion). That might be another reason. They might have the content ready but can't find someone who's good enough at writing storylines for it. OR the designer could be the problem. If the old one quitted and, let's say, didn't even leave or think about his plans for the future areas of Masteria, how do you think they'd be able to continue the development? I doubt they had EVERYTHING in mind when they made Masteria, like how every single area and expansion should've looked like. They'd have to find someone to do that, which isn't as easy as it seems, especially when they don't want to disappoint users, after the AWESOME Masteria content we've received until now.

And, let me say one last thing. If we gotta keep making assumptions, then I'm going for the lack of a good storyline writer. Why? Simple: they released the Crimsonwood Keep Party Quest without any quest which would explain how Jack got inside the Keep or anything about the Party Quest (you only learn about it once you're inside). It gives you a weird feeling, entering the Hall to the Inner Sanctum and finding Jack, then clicking him just to see him say "You need to be the party leader to form an expedition". That totally makes sense. The only quest which was released was "Cool as Ice", and, even if it explained many things, it still wasn't enough in my opinion. In fact, NxProse said that there were still some quests on their way, and that they should've been released soon. They never did. It always kind of looked like a "rushed" release to me.

Then, the fact that since the release of Crimsonwood Keep Party Quest, we haven't really had any exclusive quest with a complex storyline. The Visitors' one isn't even that complex. Not as much as the NLC / Phantom Forest ones. Therefore, yeah, that's the only possible reason which comes to my mind right now.

Again the two developers were probably moved, not fired or resigned. The ultimate irony of Maplestory is it has no story. I believe the story is ones we make ourselves: the story of our adventures in the maple world. This is a value system that East Asians have; instead of becoming the character they control and participating in a set storyline, they choose instead to explore a free and open world with their friend to just socialize and hang out (more “henehoes” than “heroes”. GMS’s obsession with putting out a coherent story reflects the mindset of Nexon America. JMS seems like an exception but most Japanese people feel uncomfortable playing a purely Korean game so they wanted to put in a Japanese feel to it (yes Asians are highly xenophobic even amongst themselves). If the game continues to be developed by Nexon Korea, Maplestory will continue to lack a story. I will bet pericas that the Dark Magician will never show up until Maplestory faces either an imminent crisis in management or its end.There are too many open-ended storylines everywhere in the Maple world from Temple of Time (“who summoned Pink Been?” to Masteria (wtp?). The Dark Magician will be like the answer to life, the universe and everything.

Different versions of MS has independent content like Masteria and Neo Tokyo that needs to be tied in to the main story. World Tour needs to be places in the World Map. The part of the Ossyria continent south of the known world needs to be explained. The World Map’s lack of distortion indicates the planet the Maple world is on (if it’s even spherical) has to be much larger in relation to the known world. It would take years to logically tie in all these stories together if not impossible. But the flexibility of the storyline and the system makes it easy to adapt to market needs swiftly so I think Maple will stay confused and be proud of it.

Maplestory: Without a story, and proud of it.