Maplestory is probably the most famous and popular old school MMORPG in Korea. It holds a position there similar to WoW here. However, unlike World of Warcraft 2, the developers took the risk of publishing a sequel to Maplestory. However, that ended in failure.
How did Maplestory 2 perform? Maplestory 2 was supposed to build on the success of the original and finally implement the game world in 3D graphics. The developers promised great success when the MMORPG launched in Korea in 2016 and in the West on Steam in 2018. After an excellent start with over 42,000 players on Steam, it was the largest MMORPG on Steam for a short time.
But then the player numbers kept declining (via SteamDB). Just half a year after launch, only about 2,000 players were left, about as many as in the original Maplestory (via SteamDB).
Even new updates and patches couldn’t further convince players of the second installment. In May 2020, the servers were shut down in the West. But in Korea, it wasn’t over yet – until now.
The predecessor of Maplestory 2 is still running today:
The End for Maplestory 2
How did Maplestory 2 fare in Asia? The MMORPG performed worse in China and Korea than the predecessor. After the shutdown on Steam, the next to go were the servers in China in 2022 (via MMOCulture).
Now the last servers in the homeland of South Korea have also been shut down. There are no official servers of the game operating anywhere in the world anymore.
Why did Maplestory 2 fail? As a Korean MMORPG, it is hardly surprising that Maplestory 2 relied heavily on grinding. Too much, as many older posts from players on Reddit illustrate. The 3D graphics of the sequel did not appeal to every veteran either (via mmorpg.com).
A player with over 1,100 hours in the MMORPG sees it the same way. He complained in his review about botting, a toxic community, sold dungeon runs, and too many luck-based systems that spoil the fun with long streaks of bad luck (via Reddit). Although many of the problems arise from players breaking the rules, the developers seemed to be inactive for too long.
Here you can see the last moments of the MMORPG:
How is it going with the predecessor? While the successor was actually intended to benefit from the well-known and popular predecessor, the opposite has happened. After a short trial phase, many players returned to the original.
Although the MMORPG first appeared in 2003, a new peak of concurrent players was only reached on Steam in 2024 (via SteamDB). With 13,850 users, this number is certainly not above that of its successor, but besides Steam, there is also a separate launcher that many veterans use. Financially, the predecessor is also said to be doing much better (via mmorpg.org.pl)
While players in Maplestory 2 complained about problems with the community, the developers in WoW quickly intervene. However, this doesn’t always end well, as shown by the following case. Here, the wrong player was affected: WoW: A player buys gold – and as a punishment, a completely different one gets banned
