In South Korea, the protest against the MMORPG MapleStory has become so massive that it made the headlines on the country’s largest TV news broadcast. After 18 years, the cute Maple Story is in serious crisis: Players are boycotting the game and the CEO is publicly apologizing.
This is the game: MapleStory plays a minor role here in the West. However, in South Korea, this MMORPG is huge. Launched in 2003, it appears to be a cute little game but is a deep MMORPG. The game is particularly known for allowing characters to advance to “higher classes”.
A hero starts as an “Adventurer” and can then become a “Bowman”, a “Hunter”, a “Ranger”, a “Bowmaster”, or choose one of the many other professions.
Like many free-to-play MMORPGs, it relies on a complex character development system. Over the more than 18 years, Maple Story has developed an extensive system of items and probabilities: It’s all about which item adds which stats to a piece of equipment, at what quality, and with what probability.
As it turns out, the system was so complex that the developers at Nexon could no longer keep track of it.
Players are flocking to MMORPG Lost Ark
How loud is the protest? The MMORPG Maple Story and the developer Nexon are currently facing serious troubles in South Korea:
- Players are protesting against the MMORPG and calling for a boycott. Already 20-30% of active players have left the Korean Maple Story, as reported by mmorpg.org.pl
- According to a player on reddit, nearly all streamers of MapleStory and many players have migrated to Lost Ark – the newer MMORPG from South Korea is bursting at the seams
- Players even rented a vehicle to drive their protest through the streets of the city – this has become somewhat common in South Korea, similar protests were seen in LoL
- The backlash against Maple Story is so significant that it made it into the main news broadcast in South Korea.
Oops, the random mechanic was not random at all
What are players upset about? There are the usual complaints: not enough content, too much stuff in the cash shop.
However, the real scandal is that the developers have lied to players about some probabilities for years.
Specifically, it’s about the items “Powerful Rebirth Flames” and “Eternal Rebirth Flames”, which Nexon introduced in 2013: These items can give specific bonus stats to items. Therefore, they are important for character progression in the game. These flames have always been the most challenging way to upgrade equipment and have been too rare and in high demand for years.
It was supposed to be totally random which stats actually get applied to the items. This is a typical “free-to-play” mechanic: As a player, you wish for certain stats that fit your character. You are happy when you get them but frustrated when you don’t.
On February 18, it became clear in the patch notes for a new update on the test server that there had been issues with how the system worked over the years.
Because the distribution of stats was not as random as it was announced. Players found out that the outcomes were not really random, but determined by an algorithm.
Due to a flaw in the random process, it turned out that the item had a high probability of getting the stat “All Stats%” if the value “Jump” was received as the first on a piece of armor.
Similar problems occurred with the “Inner Abilities” as with the flames.
On the English MapleStory site, the problem has been thoroughly explained (via maplestory.nexon.net).
Game Director apologizes for ‘Embarrassing Mistakes’
This was the response from the MMORPG: Initially, the director of the game briefly apologized to the fans. However, the protests escalated afterward.
A few days ago, the game’s CEO then spoke again and explained in a lengthy and personal apology how this scandal came about. He repeatedly referred to “embarrassing mistakes” that were made. They should have adjusted to the general sentiment and been more transparent years ago.
- The core problem is that for 18 years, they were never truly transparent with players, never disclosed clear probability numbers in percentage, but only spoke of “chance”.
- Apparently, they did not even understand their own mechanics anymore and could not trace certain errors: Customers had complained as early as July 2019 that “All Stats %” and “Jump” were oddly connected – but the error could not be traced in MapleStory
- Additionally, they can no longer compensate players because they only have records of the last two years regarding which items were purchased, and not longer.
The director states: They became frightened when they realized the extent of the problem and continued to make poor decisions:
- They fixed the error instead of apologizing for it
- They announced a compensation without informing players in detail why the compensation was even given
The director of Maple Story says: He knows that trust has been lost, which is hard to regain.
This is the mood: The apology letter from the game director is seen critically. He seems to take all the blame upon himself. Players fear that the director may serve as a scapegoat and everyone else feels innocent.
Apparently, there is a desire for deep changes at Nexon and in the game.
This is behind it: The situation is roughly as if EA admitted: “You were right all along about the momentum, of course we manipulate games in FIFA 21.“
In such random probabilities, MMORPG players always believe that there is some pattern that can be deciphered. Here, MMORPG players were indeed correct.
We have reported on MeinMMO about the brief hype of MapleStory 2 in recent years, the game was released here in Europe on Steam:
Biggest MMORPG hit on Steam from 2018 has now closed forever – What happened?
