Nexon Needs To Raise The Level Cap

[MENTION=6654]Viaje[/MENTION], you're completely wrong about GMS not having a golden age if all you're looking at is content. Like Mazz said, the community changed drastically with massive game-breaking changes, which is what ultimately ruined it for me and many playing at that time. A lot of us playing back in 2006-2008 didn't need crazy ass loads of new content. I still remember how amazing it was when we got Himes, and people would go crazy there for hours on end with friends, for months until the next update.

My point is, the community back then had nothing insane like the community does now, and thus, while everything was still technically easy, it wasn't in terms of time and effort. Therefore, the people who played back then tended to be older, mature types who had already developed a sense of patience and a worldly understanding that rewards are given to those who work hard. That community was fun because they were intelligent, chill, amicable people who you could easily become great friends with and enjoyed spending time with, no matter what you were doing. Henceforth why people didn't need game-breaking changes every month - we were fine playing around in Henesys for a few hours or grinding on Sharks. In other words, we were easily satisfied, unlike today's masses.

And to everyone else: stop judging something's level of "challenge" or degree of "difficulty" based on how technically involved it is. Hard, physical farm labor, while maybe not as technically involved as biomedical engineering, is still a challenge to complete to make a profit, given you need to expend a lot of time and effort maintaining your products in order to have them produced on time. MapleStory was the same, back in the day. It was and never will be a technically challenging game compared to others out on the market, but if you snub the true difficulty in the amount of time and effort it took to accomplish something back in the day before everyone else, you don't know what a hard day's work is like.

 Spoiler

Quick last comment about final point: I was one of many people who played the game insanely at times in order to level before everyone else. I should amend my previous comment and say that I'm proud of reaching Lv. 200 when it was not only a challenge in terms of time and effort, but in doing so because I pushed myself to reach it as fast as possible to secure a fantastic, lasting ranking. To do that I, again like many others, had at times 3-4 4 hour month-long 2x cards, and will never forget the craziest weekend of gaming in my life when I played 16-18 hours a day for 3 days straight. That's not. physically. healthy. That's CHALLENGING. To maximize EXP/hr outputs consistently for 16-18 hours 3 days in a row is CHALLENGING. And thank god I only had to do that - I know many others who pulled that for weeks on end.

All this venting boils down to this: do not snub what people have sacrificed, physically, time-wise, socially, etc., to achieve in this game. It's disrespectful towards what they spent all that time and effort trying to accomplish, and is downright rude when comments are made tactlessly. Think before you speak.

I call this "Maplestory Stockholm syndrome". No, the community hasn't gotten less mature. It never has been particularly mature in the first place, seems like you judge the whole community by just a small sampling of friends and acquaintances. You also manage to completely ignoring the rampart hacking that has been going on since day 1 almost. Remember how the devs said that they would be withholding Ossyria if people continue to hack so much? Remember how there where months, when you couldn't find an empty channel because they all where taken by vac hackers who would just come up to you and start up their hacks in your face?

While I'm sure you've had good times playing this game, it doesn't absolve it from being a thinly veiled progress quest. That you used "working hard" as a way to describe Maplestory just seals it.

EDIT:You're asking people to respect you because you've sunk immense amounts of time into a videogame. Think about that.