hcom305skillpost

[hcom305skillpost]

Since the pandemic started, we’ve been mostly confined to our homes for the past months. To ease my boredom, I picked up an MMORPG called Maplestory. If you’re not familiar with the genre, an MMORPG is basically an online game where the player creates a character to play as and progress in the game’s universe. Plarium has a great in-depth breakdown of the genre here, pointing out how to distinguish if the game is an MMORPG and listing common attributes of them. Maplestory is no outlier here, being filled with tropes usually found in MMORPG’s. Being able to choose how your character looks, what types of powers your character has, what quests or jobs your character will (or will not) take on for that specific day are just some of hundreds of different aspects of the game.

Maplestory is a 2D side scrolling game that came out in North America in 2005 and undergone multiple changes to keep the game updated and feeling fresh. As the player base started to dwindle down, a new world was created that changed the entire dynamics of the game itself. Before this update, Maplestory was notorious for its “pay-to-win” nature where players who were able to spend real-life money to get further ahead in-game. The second aspect it was known for was being a heavily party-play oriented game where users would join up with other players to train, level up, and defeat bosses together. However, the new world, known as Reboot server, made the game completely free to play and progress through while focusing on the player’s solo progression journey.

I started the game in May this past year in Reboot server. The game has been a huge source of entertainment, pride, and sense of achievement for me as I’ve continued to progress my character through the different areas and stages of the game. I started off not know a thing about the game, and have been able to learn tons of new and exciting things about it through experiencing it for the first time. I’ve made my fair share of mistakes but it just adds on as more pieces to my entire experience of the game. If you’ve never played before and this game sounds interesting to you, or if you’ve played in the past but stopped for whatever reason, I’d recommend giving it a try. I’m genuinely having fun playing it and you might be pleasantly surprised by starting your own maple story too.