2011-03-13, 10:51 PM
Oh boy, where do I begin?
Nexon, as a company, fails to satisfy what I deem to be a favorable company. Nexon advocates a lot of principles, but does not practice them. They appear extremely anti-hacker, but seem to do very little on the end to prevent or even ban them. The majority of the bans you see posted on the weekly lists are non-other than bans by failed hackers who messed up and got caught by the auto-ban system (which also happens to be full of rubbish). Hacks like d/c hacking have not been patched for years, packet editing which should not be able to be done in the first place, IRM which appeared since day one when Wild Hunters were released, this kind of bull has not been treated to yet. When hackers actually do get permanently banned by a GM (which is probably a once in a lifetime event), they aren't IP banned either. This means all a hacker has to do is just create another account and keep hacking away. They get free mesos from botting, free items from botting, can completely disable players from playing using their d/c hacks, ruin the market single-handedly with their d/c hacks, mushie locks, free mushie resets, etc. What does this mean in the long run? It means it's more beneficial to be a hacker than a legit. Nexon doesn't seem to realize the ferocity of hackers running the game. MapleStory isn't a game where hackers ruin it. MapleStory is a game where hackers run it, which is far worse. All of this can be remedied by one simple thing: having active GM's.
Nexon also happens to fail at being a transparent company. A transparent company lets its consumer base know what it's doing, why it's doing whatever it is, and how they're doing it. In the past half year, we've encountered several meso exploits, all of which times resulted in rollbacks in one way or another. During each of these rollbacks, we have -Hime- the Nexon forum moderator giving out false hope to players saying things like "there won't be a rollback unless necessary" and in general, FUD. For those who say she cannot say they are doing a rollback (when everybody knows it), this generates distrust and actually hurts the company reputation more. Especially for things like meso exploits which tear apart the economy even more (which is already ruined by hackers), having a rollback is better than not having a rollback. Nexon knows this, prepares for the rollback, but for some reason think that a good percentage of the player population is stupid enough to not understand that concept. Therefore, Nexon pushes forward a scapegoat, -Hime-, to gather all of the tension, all while Nexon America's actual team works the problem for hours. This is not a good way to be a transparent company.
Another example of Nexon failing to be a transparent company can be found in its events. Nexon also pushes forward fail "events" that do nothing other than suck up terrible amounts of money from its consumers. Events like Black Friday with the limited sales were horrendous. Thousands of players charged hundreds of NX in preparation to buy the items that Nexon promised for sale. Upon the Black Friday sale days, we are met with an EXTREMELY limited supply of cash shop items that the consumers were unable to spend a fraction of their charged NX on. Do they lose money from this? Contrary to popular belief, they didn't. That is because the consumers, I mean players, have already charged hundreds of NX each. Nexon already received its money. The players on the other hand, did not receive their expectations of a decent Black Friday. This is not only immoral, but it hampers the company's reputation as a decent company, and further pushes Nexon away from being a transparent company.
Many people may say that MapleStory is a free to play game, and because of that, they're excused for having terrible customer service. Sadly, this is not the case. While the game is free to play, it's not free to enjoy. 90% of MapleStory revolves around NX. Cubes, AP Resets, hammers, pets, shops, etc. are all required if the player wants any longevity out of the game. While there are cases of players not needing to use any of these items ever in their Maple career, those individuals are far, few, and definitely not the makeup of the huge majority of the MapleStory community. Although there is a system called MTS which allows certain players to not spend a single penny on the game, MTS is created to actually suck out more money from the consumer base itself. The amount of taxes in the game make it such where a single item must cost at least 617 NX for a small return of 110 NX. That's giving Nexon a bit more than a half dollar while you only receive a dime back. What most MTS merchants fail to realize is, they're actually working for Nexon in this very aspect. While they make the game free for themselves, it no longer becomes free for all the other players they sell items to.
What's even worse than all of these aspects altogether are the ways Nexon reacts after a problem. During this past Christmas Event where exploiters were constantly vaccing away all of the snowflakes and not allowing any legits any part in event, how did Nexon react? They posted a message saying something along the lines of "both exploiters and legits alike will be banned for having a pet out in the event map." Seriously? Is it so hard to take down the game, patch that up, and then put the game back up rather than banning and screwing over poor legits who may have been oblivious to the matter? Several friends of mine ended up falling prey to this method of "punishment" by Nexon due to them coming back from vacation, not reading the forum, and entering the event map with their pet. Furthermore, no signs of fixing the exploit were seen. Item vaccers on every channel of the event map could have been taken care of by a single GM per server patrolling those maps. I don't think any one of them have been banned. So what happens in a nutshell? Hackers won. Legits lost. Again.
HAVE FUN READING! tl;dr version: Nexon sucks as a company.
Nexon, as a company, fails to satisfy what I deem to be a favorable company. Nexon advocates a lot of principles, but does not practice them. They appear extremely anti-hacker, but seem to do very little on the end to prevent or even ban them. The majority of the bans you see posted on the weekly lists are non-other than bans by failed hackers who messed up and got caught by the auto-ban system (which also happens to be full of rubbish). Hacks like d/c hacking have not been patched for years, packet editing which should not be able to be done in the first place, IRM which appeared since day one when Wild Hunters were released, this kind of bull has not been treated to yet. When hackers actually do get permanently banned by a GM (which is probably a once in a lifetime event), they aren't IP banned either. This means all a hacker has to do is just create another account and keep hacking away. They get free mesos from botting, free items from botting, can completely disable players from playing using their d/c hacks, ruin the market single-handedly with their d/c hacks, mushie locks, free mushie resets, etc. What does this mean in the long run? It means it's more beneficial to be a hacker than a legit. Nexon doesn't seem to realize the ferocity of hackers running the game. MapleStory isn't a game where hackers ruin it. MapleStory is a game where hackers run it, which is far worse. All of this can be remedied by one simple thing: having active GM's.
Nexon also happens to fail at being a transparent company. A transparent company lets its consumer base know what it's doing, why it's doing whatever it is, and how they're doing it. In the past half year, we've encountered several meso exploits, all of which times resulted in rollbacks in one way or another. During each of these rollbacks, we have -Hime- the Nexon forum moderator giving out false hope to players saying things like "there won't be a rollback unless necessary" and in general, FUD. For those who say she cannot say they are doing a rollback (when everybody knows it), this generates distrust and actually hurts the company reputation more. Especially for things like meso exploits which tear apart the economy even more (which is already ruined by hackers), having a rollback is better than not having a rollback. Nexon knows this, prepares for the rollback, but for some reason think that a good percentage of the player population is stupid enough to not understand that concept. Therefore, Nexon pushes forward a scapegoat, -Hime-, to gather all of the tension, all while Nexon America's actual team works the problem for hours. This is not a good way to be a transparent company.
Another example of Nexon failing to be a transparent company can be found in its events. Nexon also pushes forward fail "events" that do nothing other than suck up terrible amounts of money from its consumers. Events like Black Friday with the limited sales were horrendous. Thousands of players charged hundreds of NX in preparation to buy the items that Nexon promised for sale. Upon the Black Friday sale days, we are met with an EXTREMELY limited supply of cash shop items that the consumers were unable to spend a fraction of their charged NX on. Do they lose money from this? Contrary to popular belief, they didn't. That is because the consumers, I mean players, have already charged hundreds of NX each. Nexon already received its money. The players on the other hand, did not receive their expectations of a decent Black Friday. This is not only immoral, but it hampers the company's reputation as a decent company, and further pushes Nexon away from being a transparent company.
Many people may say that MapleStory is a free to play game, and because of that, they're excused for having terrible customer service. Sadly, this is not the case. While the game is free to play, it's not free to enjoy. 90% of MapleStory revolves around NX. Cubes, AP Resets, hammers, pets, shops, etc. are all required if the player wants any longevity out of the game. While there are cases of players not needing to use any of these items ever in their Maple career, those individuals are far, few, and definitely not the makeup of the huge majority of the MapleStory community. Although there is a system called MTS which allows certain players to not spend a single penny on the game, MTS is created to actually suck out more money from the consumer base itself. The amount of taxes in the game make it such where a single item must cost at least 617 NX for a small return of 110 NX. That's giving Nexon a bit more than a half dollar while you only receive a dime back. What most MTS merchants fail to realize is, they're actually working for Nexon in this very aspect. While they make the game free for themselves, it no longer becomes free for all the other players they sell items to.
What's even worse than all of these aspects altogether are the ways Nexon reacts after a problem. During this past Christmas Event where exploiters were constantly vaccing away all of the snowflakes and not allowing any legits any part in event, how did Nexon react? They posted a message saying something along the lines of "both exploiters and legits alike will be banned for having a pet out in the event map." Seriously? Is it so hard to take down the game, patch that up, and then put the game back up rather than banning and screwing over poor legits who may have been oblivious to the matter? Several friends of mine ended up falling prey to this method of "punishment" by Nexon due to them coming back from vacation, not reading the forum, and entering the event map with their pet. Furthermore, no signs of fixing the exploit were seen. Item vaccers on every channel of the event map could have been taken care of by a single GM per server patrolling those maps. I don't think any one of them have been banned. So what happens in a nutshell? Hackers won. Legits lost. Again.
HAVE FUN READING! tl;dr version: Nexon sucks as a company.