How many people are REALLY still playing Maplestory?

I enjoy this kind of stuff.

And that my friends is how to kill a pika thread

I'm sorry, I don't enjoy this kind of stuff.

Stop stuffing your opinions and conclusions down our throat. I don't think many of us enjoy reading this, nor going pages and pages on about this. You might not give a damn about how threads turn out in the end after N pages of arguing about why Nexon is dying, but we do. It's nice to see everyone give a little of their opinion at the start because some perspectives can be refreshing, but if you're here to machine-gun people's opinions down then the thread certainly gets ugly in more ways than one. You're doing this in a forum where people still play Maplestory, calling people masochists etc.. So what if some of us are?


I'm going back to the literal interpretation of the original question (that may or may not involve botters/hackers/Nexon dying). People play Maplestory in different ways... a spectrum across once-in-a-lifetime and hardcore. I can't answer "REALLY" because that's different for everyone. For now I'm looking at it as a consistent player who keeps logging back in. If you're asking for exact numbers (as in the question "many"), then you will have to ask Nexon to give us a look on how many active accounts are there (we'll assume no one logs in just to see if their character is still there or not), where "active" refers to people who have logged in at least once to play in... say... a couple of weeks.

Now... people log in at different times for different durations. A snapshot of the current active player count (e.g. through Maple.fm) is not going to be accurate because you can't capture the entire population. The closest approximation would have to be through the most recent Hot Time (when was the last one...?). These days you find far more Miracle Time or 2X EXP/drop, but people don't necessarily log in at the start of the 2X and log out at the end of it... there are bound to be some numbers of people who come in late, or entirely avoid 2X e.g. for the lag (I'm sure some of you agree with me). Botters are easy to account for, because they are a (relatively) constant number, so that's just a baseline correction. I don't think the number of botters would increase during 2X...?

You can attempt to use Fermi estimation here, but the orders of magnitude are really too small that the errors start to eat into the accuracy of the answer. Fermi estimates aren't good for modelling or population distributions (I think). I would prefer not to attempt this. Suffice to say, from the answer you get, you still need to take into account the number of people who don't buy NX, and the distribution of the amount of NX bought by those who buy NX. We know a small group of such players buy A LOT of NX. It's more a question of... can these people make GMS float?

Looking at the events that GMS has, yeah many are a bit filler, but they have increased diversity in some ways. In-game events and mini-games do add variety and interest. We also note that during some big patches, there are always Welcome Back events to lure back old players who have left. This is Nexon acknowledging the fact that gamers come and go, and it is going to be true for many MMOs. Hey, even FaceBook users eventually use it just for chat and occasional updates/group events. What happened to the initial fad about looking at your friends all day, getting distracted by it? Not to say nobody uses it looking at people anymore, but generally your FB usage goes down after some time. Why? Because you move on. You have work to do. Life is more important. But people still use it anyway, and when you have new friends you'll spend a little longer of FB checking them and their friends out. Similarly for Maplestory. New updates => opportunity to lure back old players and lure in new players => increase in active players. There is a huge population of old players, and an even larger population of people who never played Maplestory. Each population has its own set of difficulties in getting lured (back) into Maplestory.

How successful are these updates in increasing player population... I'll let time decide. At least... enough has changed for me to want to come back to explore again. You guys can continue bickering about the eventual outcome of Maplestory. Just don't forget that there are plenty of processes that do matter.

edit:

We have that?

We have the opposite

Hadriel

I find this discussion to be most encouraging.

My better judgment tells me that the foundation of Maple is so lost that even if 5th jobs were released tomorrow, that alone would not be enough to declare the game as being a success or even doing ok.

However,
The phrase, "Believe in the me that believes in you" is the first thing that I am reminded of. Or in this case, I will choose to believe in the Maplestory that believes in its players.

Edit: I think Maple could be doing better but I also think there is a decent chance that everything will work out eventually. (probably maybe)

I find this discussion to be most encouraging.

My better judgment tells me that the foundation of Maple is so lost that even if 5th jobs were released tomorrow, that alone would not be enough to declare the game as being a success or even doing ok.

However,
The phrase, "Believe in the me that believes in you" is the first thing that I am reminded of. Or in this case, I will choose to believe in the Maplestory that believes in its players.

I think some of the foundations are too worm-bitten already... as in... the coding, else too irrelevant. It's not very well thought out at some places, and downright frustrating elsewhere (e.g. the bloody looting delay). Content is ok. Service is... meh. GUI has improved, but UI and etc. functions can be quite lacking and inconsistent. Any of these frustrations will erode the interest of players.

While nothing is future-proof, I think Maplestory wasn't designed with the future in mind i.e. not sufficiently flexible in some areas to allow it to move with the times.

Hadriel

I'm sorry, I don't enjoy this kind of stuff.

This is hilarious. I haven't commented on the thread for like a day, yet you come here on your soapbox as if to get the last word only to revive it. Before we begin your slaughter, I just thought you know how hypocritical you are. Who was it who had an entire thread dedicated to him because he was being f`ucking obnoxious with his signature, its as if, you're shoving that down peoples throats. I feel signing off "black kettle", would be much more, accurate .

Stop stuffing your opinions and conclusions down our throat. I don't think many of us enjoy reading this, nor going pages and pages on about this. You might not give a damn about how threads turn out in the end after N pages of arguing about why Nexon is dying, but we do.

Hey, maybe you should read the first two pages, and possibly who the threadstarter is. You care about the thread huh? The community who ostracizes a user by jumping in and going "PIKA THREAD, PIKA THREAD". No one gives a rats ass about this thread, the only reason it's alive is because I saw some shmuck try to act like the only bad part of maplestory is "OH, EVERYONE IS JUST CONCERNED WITH THIS, VERY SMALL PERSPECTIVE, WHILE I ENJOY THE LORE AND QUESTS", while half of them are broken, contradictory or give such sh`itty rewards its a waste of time.

It's nice to see everyone give a little of their opinion at the start because some perspectives can be refreshing, but if you're here to machine-gun people's opinions down then the thread certainly gets ugly in more ways than one. You're doing this in a forum where people still play Maplestory, calling people masochists etc.. So what if some of us are?

Do you boo. Let's talk about "machine gun", I have quoted two people and argued with one, who was very thickheaded about this whole thing. People then came to me to argue. You didn't read this thread, you read my posts and my posts alone, there are no opinions past when I posted. It was people challenging my opinion. So please hop off of it. Justin was the only one to offer a counter opinion, but he faced actual evidence such as population drops, and multiple examples of game incompetence. Don't sit here and tell me I'm just attacking people left or right. Even now, you're jumping into the fray as if you're the hero we all need. Instead, you cause a counter production by pulling me right back in, congratulations to the Hadriel, signed Hadriel.

Now... people log in at different times for different durations. A snapshot of the current active player count (e.g. through Maple.fm) is not going to be accurate because you can't capture the entire population. The closest approximation would have to be through the most recent Hot Time (when was the last one...?). These days you find far more Miracle Time or 2X EXP/drop, but people don't necessarily log in at the start of the 2X and log out at the end of it... there are bound to be some numbers of people who come in late, or entirely avoid 2X e.g. for the lag (I'm sure some of you agree with me). Botters are easy to account for, because they are a (relatively) constant number, so that's just a baseline correction. I don't think the number of botters would increase during 2X...?

Derp, maybe you want to google "maplestory population" which is calculated per hour and goes back as far as 2011. The population is clearly dropping, and it's clearly logged, so just like another user, your argument is basically an assumption and riddled with holes. Not surprising though.

How successful are these updates in increasing player population... I'll let time decide. At least... enough has changed for me to want to come back to explore again. You guys can continue bickering about the eventual outcome of Maplestory. Just don't forget that there are plenty of processes that do matter.

edit:

We have the opposite

Hadriel

Time has already decided, the population hasn't jumped back up since 2012, and by no means was it much. Didn't you also play maplesea? With a 5k maplestory population, how you stomach playing the most corrupt server of them all, well really baffles me.

Also note that throughout his post, the entire theory of masochistic player base, was not even challenged, just "SO WHAT IF WE ARE".

We have that?

I don't really know what to make of this response, so I'll just take it as a question. If we have it, I've never found it. If we have it, please direct me to it.

I don't really know what to make of this response, so I'll just take it as a question. If we have it, I've never found it. If we have it, please direct me to it.

I don't think we have it. We only have the subscribe to thread option, which is the opposite of what you want.

Hadriel

I don't really know what to make of this response, so I'll just take it as a question. If we have it, I've never found it. If we have it, please direct me to it.

You can start by not posting in it so it gets buried but I don't think you have that level of discipline.