Nexon Needs To Raise The Level Cap

No, I'm pretty sure the community was a lot better back when leveling was harder. When leveling was harder, it acted like a kind of filter: once you got past a certain level you had to be pretty committed to the game to keep going. Let's say back before 4th job came out for example. If you were level 70 it meant that you had spend weeks or months grinding, and in that time you met other people your level because hey, party exp makes it go by a little better and as a bonus you have some people to talk to. Aside from that there were still party quests, you usually met some people there who you'd buddy and meet up later to grind or pq or whatever. As a result, most people were pretty friendly even if they weren't the most talkative people, because grinding by yourself once you got high enough got boring for most people. But let's say you're one of those people that likes going solo, if you were level 70 before 4th job it still meant you'd spent a ton of time in the game. Most people playing would get up to level 20 or 30 and quit because "this game sucks, grinding is boring and it's really slow".

Nexon realized that if they made the game more accessible they could attract more players (and make more money), so that was the point of Big Bang. They revamped levels of monsters and some areas to change things up for preexisting players and scaled back the leveling to make it easier for new players to come in. When it became easier to just jump in and start leveling it changed Maple's target audience. Suddenly it's much easier to start up and by the time the grinding really starts you have all these cool flashy moves and a ton of levels so instead of people quitting at level 20 or 30 we have people sticking around until 70 because hey, why stop now?

Again, you're judging the whole community from a small clique that you've had. There has always been a ton of high level people posting the regular inanities on Basil, it's just that the high level playerbase was smaller, so it was easier to split the wheat from the chaff and goes right into the rose-tinted glasses department.

There was still hacking, but there were also active GMs running around who would make announcements when they banned people. Did that stop all of it? Of course not, but you definitely wouldn't have the kind of situation like we had where hackers went to the christmas event and vac hacked all the items. Granted, this is just one time period in the game, but I'm not really sure what your point is in this. Do you mean that hacking was indicative of the community at large? There are only 20 channels per world, if a map has great drops and it's widely known then are you really saying that those 20 people spread across 1 per channel in those maps represent the thousands that play on that server? Come on, man.

Hah, active GM's? There was a time when 17/20 channels of EVERYTHING IMAGINABLE starting from zombies to maladies were hacked. What I was trying to say, is that there hasn't been a time when Maplestory has been without issues. The olden times definitely weren't better.

No one's saying it's not a progress quest. You could make that case about pretty much any game because it is literally the point of a video game to make progress towards a goal, whether that goal is defeating the final boss, saving the planet, or in maple's case reaching the max level (or whatever goal you make for it, there isn't so much an end goal as a bunch of goals that you can work towards). You don't think grinding up to 200 is hard? Fine, for you it's the easiest thing and you might love it but for others of us it's not and saying "Heh, you guys are acting like a bunch of manchildren. This isn't work, it was easy for me and so if you think otherwise you're just complaining and looking back through rose-tinted glasses" is insulting as hell to anyone who spent their time getting there. You're being condescending as pineapple, dude.

I thought that games where supposed to be fun? I'm being condescending as pineapple, because you guys sound like people from an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.

Sounds like a personal problem. You turned a game, something to enjoy into a job and to hell with everything else still doesn't change the fact that it isn't hard just really really time consuming.

No one was forcing you to try and be in the top 5 or get to lvl 200 in three months from 170 these are things you decided to do on your own. It wasn't hard it just required time and patience. It's an accomplishment none the less. Just stop going around and saying how hard it was it never was.

Basically this.