I will always keep coming back for more man

At its current state, this is not a game I would recommend to anyone who has never played an MMO, or to anyone in general really

I never really got to experience the authentic pre-big bang MapleStory experience, but I somehow still managed to get attached to this game as an 11 year old playing it for the first time, post-big bang.

Rating is relevant to the years I played from 2008 when 4th job was added up to Big Bang sometime in 2010, not as the game stands now. Review touches on that disparity, but rating is strictly temporally bound. It was a great 2 years, filled with fun times with both in-person and friends in both the grind and the party quests. Wound up falling out of it by the time I hit crusader. Tried returning since then a few times over the years but each time I realize it's just a completely different game, which is to be expected (didn't even get to keep my old guy and all my old mapleversary gear). That's not to fault it too much given how long its been around and what must conceivably be done to keep such a long standing MMO interesting, but each time I the same glaring mis-step until I finally nailed the coffin. The game seems to have fallen prey to a classic flaw that's been an Achilles heel in nearly every Korean MMO I've played; Content pacing. it started out PERFECTLY paced to demand enough commitment to facilitate its social elements and did so expertly, incorporating mild grinding with party quests at just the right levels to keep things interesting (at least up to lvl 70 where I had stopped). The last time I tried returning however, it was a blast-through rush to high levels to prepare for an end-game grind that becomes the game itself, bereft of the variety of party quests and necessity to seek out training grounds, resulting in an abundance of useless maps and a repetitive number slog. More focus seemed to be given to the idea of having multiple fully leveled characters, something monumentally arduous in its early iteration, in lieu of unique content. Maplestory 2 suffered the same fate not to long following an amazing launch in KMS2 (Which was perfectly paced for its first few months), and then pretty much immediately upon its release to the west as GMS2 you were expected to hit level cap in a day or two. Maybe some don't consider this a flaw, maybe I've just gotten older and less involved. Either way, Both Maplestory and I have moved on.

I'll never forget the fond memories. It was truly lightning in a bottle, though it seems the cork came undone long ago.