[MSEA] Haunted Mansion Quests and Morphs!

London, Egypt, Paris, all in the real world

Most of the world tour areas have at least some fictional elements. There aren't any black blobs running around SEA, or Kappas or Himes in Japan, or whatever. The Headless Horseman is a more western legend, so is the mad scientist (to some extent) and the Indiana Jones style of adventurer in the Barricade brothers.

(Randompeep is probably going to recognize this rant because I gave the abridged version of it just the other day. XD)
And a lot of areas of Ossyria and victoria have real-world influences too (KFT, Mu Lung, Perion, Ariant, etc. Heck, I'd even argue Orbis.) but that doesn't make them world tour areas.

there's a number of reasons why Masteria shouldn't be considered a world tour. For one, it acknowledges, and is respectively acknowledged by, the rest of the Maple World. The only world tour area that even really comes close to doing this is Zipangu. The others have some interconnectivity amongst themselves (There's a singapore quest that requires you to go to Shanghai, for example) but the rest of the world is essentially oblivious to their existence.

For two, Masteria actually has a real location in the world. There's maps that depict in detail Masteria and its relationship to other areas/regions of itself. No other exclusive area has a map. It defines where it is in relation to other areas (Off the coast of Victoria, for example.) Singapore doesn't say where it is. You just hop on a plane and fly off. You can't even tell what direction you're headed. The other world tours don't even have such a ride; you're just magically "there".

For three, there's a naming scheme in place. Victoria, Ossyria, Masteria. You could even include Amoria if you wanted. It's not just that, though. The world tour areas share a naming scheme too: They're all on continents named after their real world locations.
Zipangu - Name once used for Japan, comes from Marco Polo.
Formosa - Name once used for Taiwan, it's of Portuguese origin.
Dong Fang Shen Zhou (Continent of Shanghai) - I don't remember exactly what it means but it's something along the lines of "eastern kingdom" and it's a name traditionally used to refer to China.
Siam - Old name for Thailand, it was used as recently as 1949.

The first place to break this pattern was Singapore, where they just used the modern name. This is probably due to the fact that Singapore doesn't have any other name. Same is true of Malaysia. I'm willing to bet if they did have such a past name they would have used it.

the reason for this is simple: by using a historical name for the area, it shows a reflection of the culture, but it can be much more idealized. It's a pretty typical fantasy device. Imagine if they came out with an area called Camelot for EuropeMS. Would you be surprised to see British influences there? Of course not. But the image that one has of "Camelot" in their mind calls forth a time where monsters and heroes roamed freely, and that's the situation that was attempted to be set up by using old names for Asian countries.

As far as the black blobs in Singapore go, they're sort of a physical representation of the affects on pollution. Unoriginality aside, it was a pretty neat idea; they just didn't follow through with it very well. You're literally fighting pollution in game, and it (is supposed to) encourage(s) you to do so in your real life as well. You'll see when we get it that there's a few quests there that deal with literally cleaning up the town of pollution.


Masteria is basically what the whole game would be like if it were made in the US instead of Korea. Many of the korean cultural influences in game simply aren't noticed by Global's players, but they certainly do exist. The only reason it seems so obvious in Masteria is because they are from our own culture. Even still, the references are often subtle. It's also influenced by Internet culture as well (Pwnzer the ostrich for Versalmas, the use of "noob" and "cc plz" in pet text and even quest text in a few cases.), would you then make a case that it's supposed to be representative of the internet as well? Seems rather silly.