Extra Credits - Free to Play Is Currently Broken - How High Costs Drive Players Away

By that perspective, how can you justify that ideology when the playerbase peaked in 2007-2008 and has steadily gone down hill (almost 75% of its player base). Granted cash shop had gachapon as it's "main source" of "pay2win" but it was nothing compared to the cube implementation, in fact I would argue it was much more manageable.

Though if you're speaking generally I can understand, but maplestory went the opposite approach and has lasted 10 years and still maintains a 20-25k base, vs the 100k+ they used to maintain

Was mostly speaking generally. Maple tends to be an outlier for various reasons. I can't speak much about the games early days (as I wasn't around back then) perhaps someone could shed some light on them for me?

How did the game do profit wise back when things when it wasn't really pay2win, when the game was just starting out and didn't have much of a following?

A quick google search suggests something like 300 mil and 500 mil in profit in 2006 and 2008 respectively for NA, which is pretty dang good for a relatively new f2p mmo.

I'm no economics expert nor a gaming expert, but we've also forgotten that when MapleStory started the internet was remarkably different. The game peaked while social media was still finding its stride. I would hazard to say that the landscape changed in the years that followed and the addition of cubes and more pay2win mechanisms also sped up as communication shifted from MSN, AIM, forums, and the in-game community features deteriorated. I think it might be foolhardy to completely discount those occurrences when asking why Nexon pushed so hard to capitalize off the game.

In 2014, however, there is no excuse. Many games (even card games) have resorted to these money sucking tactics. Transparency and respect for the consumer is a must in this day and age, but sadly many, many companies are still holding on to the past.

I came back to maple just a couple weeks ago, and after walking around a bit one of the first thing that came to my mind was "how the heck are there still so many hackers if the game is so empty compared to previous times?"...

I'd like to say NexAn can't really stablish any measures to deal with inflation within maplestory unless they deal with hackers first, but after all these years more than evident its impossible.