Maple Memo: Farewell from Anna

http://maplestory.nexon.net/news//69344/

Hi Maplers,

Today’s memo is not about our upcoming game update. Instead, I would like to talk about myself and give you an update on the changes within the MapleStory team.*

I’m sad to announce to you that I will be stepping down from my position as a MapleStory Producer as of October 1, as I decided to move back to Korea due to my personal reasons. With this change, one of our other existing MapleStory Producers, Sally; and the Live Game Director, Hyun, will be leading the team and the project from now on.*

MapleStory has been a part of my life ever since I joined the MapleStory development team in Nexon Korea back in 2007 so now that I’m writing this memo, I feel like I’m reaching a big turning point in my life.*

Among all these years, the best decision that I made was to move to the United States and take on the Global MapleStory Producer position in Nexon America. Thanks to this experience, I was able to work with you more closely and have a better understanding of our player base. It has been a very precious time for me to be able to meet our dedicated players and I’m confident to say that you are the most passionate players and you are the reason why MapleStory and our team exist.**

In addition to this opportunity of working closely with you, I was extremely lucky that I was able to work with our current MapleStory team as they all truly love being a part of MapleStory and working for our players. While the changes we make and what we do sometimes make our players disappointed, one thing I can surely say is that our team members consider you to be the most important thing and we all appreciate having you as our players. You will have more chances to hear from our team members about several important topics as they have just started to communicate more with the players through various channels.*

Even though I’m leaving, MapleStory will continue to have exciting updates and I’m sure that they will make you thrilled just like how MapleStory has been doing for all these years. I will also give my full support from a distance.* * *

Thank you all for the support that you have been showing me the whole time. It was a great honor to be your Producer.**

Thank you,

- Anna

*

I am not sure how I feel about this.
Of course, at the human level, I wish Anna well, and hope this decision, though sudden, will be good for her.
But what does it mean for GMS?

On the one hand, GMS went downhill during the 2 years she was in charge. Some things intended (like the horrible cash-grab of Magic Wagon, lowered rates of good stuff from Marvel, introduction of p2w familiar system, destruction of Masteria at huge development budget cost) and some just pure incompetence (the 2020 DMT's, the exceedingly buggy release of the abovementioned familiar system, even the overabundance of bugs in the most recent Goo Island filler patch and last weekend's laggy 2x in Reboot). And some, a combination of both, intended due to ignorance of the material, like compensations that make no sense (the Gollux pendant-for-belt exchange, or the aforementioned 2x which reddit described as "we'll compensate for server instability by having an event of server instability").

On the other hand, does it even matter who is nominally at the helm of this ship? Or is it being remotely piloted from Korea?
Most of these bad changes are continuations of trends we started to see under SavageAce. Maybe because Anna was the GMS Product Manager in the Nexon Korea MapleStory Overseas Team at the time (the person he talked to on the Korean side), and maybe because neither of them had power and all the decisions come from much higher up.

One thing that changed for the good in these past two years was the crackdown on bots. That was really well done. Does Anna deserve credit for this, or did that come from higher up as well?

So what happens now, when we don't have a lead Producer? Sally isn't being promoted to the position. So she'll be doing her existing job and also (part of) Anna's job? That doesn't bode well for the quality of either. But, if the Live Games Director is now more directly involved in GMS, does that mean we'll get some better treatment, maybe more AWS resources or more QA testers?
Will we eventually get a replacement Producer, and will they know anything at all about MapleStory?

I guess all we can do is wait and see.