Maplestory’s major content release, New Age, is imminently releasing. With this update comes the introduction to the Sixth Job advancement, a very big deal for late-game and end-game players. The Korean version of Maplestory has had this update for several months, so many enfranchised players have at least seen much of what the update offers.
And…it looked very promising!
There are many new skills and passives for every class to delve into, a new progression system tied into the job advancement. A bunch of reworks that were received mostly well. Changes to Reboot servers specifically to make progression even better for newer players. Burning events, which effectively give you an extra two levels for every level you gain. Players were pretty excited, and when the test server for the global version of Maplestory was released a bit over a week ago (as of this writing), many players dove in and got whatever information they could.
So, what happened?
This Reddit thread has an excellent breakdown of what transpired over the course of last week. The major thing I want to focus on here is the Sol Erda Energy cap.
Sol Erda Energy is the material you need to get anything done in 6th job. The pending implementation in the Global version would have the amount you get capped at 400 per day through grinding, with another 600 obtained through dailies.
Players have done a bit of math on this, and it would take about one year and eight months to complete 6th job as it stands right now. The kicker? That year and eight-month measurement does not include planned future skill and node expansions in the future.
The reaction
Players were very much not happy. So much so that a bit of a boycott has taken place. #dontspend has been a movement not to purchase NX until these issues have been, at the bare minimum, addressed, a pledge to spend nothing on the cash shop until Nexon changes things.
And it appears to be working.
#dontspend has spread throughout Maplestory’s media sphere in streams, YouTube videos, etc. The classic Steam review bombing has also taken place. It even made it to the top 50 in RPGs on Reddit. It’s not a groundbreaking thing by any metric, but it was enough to have Jade, Maplestory Global’s Community Manager, make a statement, per the official Maplestory Discord:
“Hi everyone. We're monitoring the community closely and are very well aware of the overwhelmingly negative sentiment surrounding daily Sol Erda cap and other New Age update changes. Veeraah and I will discuss these concerns with our team on Monday.”
Another statement was also made by another Community Manager, Veerah, two days after:
The precedent
It goes without saying that this is a pivotal point for Maplestory and everyone who plays it. There have been some major ups and downs in its lifetime, and the most dedicated are extremely vocal and influential. I have to give it to them, as I don’t often see many MMO communities vocal enough about changes they dislike to cause a shift. (Though we just saw it with Pantheon, so it does happen.) Almost every major content creator in the community that I’ve seen has backed this boycott. It’s the only thing talked about right now, and players who play completely different MMOs have brought it up.
This is a good thing.
There’s already a lot that we deal with when it comes to MMOs, especially Free-to-play ones. Predatory Cash Shops, unreasonable time gates, etc. It’s good that players can push back on things and hopefully see some action. Even something as small as “Hey, we see the reaction and will look into it” is good.
This is also a precedent for expectations as well. One of the more overlooked parts of this whole ordeal is that many of the changes weren’t even mentioned until the test server came out. All of the previews, event announcements, and promotions, and not a single mention of any of this. This doesn’t look good and is one of my personal concerns about how communication is conveyed.
So, what’s next?
The New Age update is imminent, and there isn’t much time for things to happen. There could be a statement or swiftly changed patch notes, or even nothing. We’re all just waiting to hear something, anything, at this point.
Regardless, the reaction, either bad or good, will be pretty big. Players want to enjoy the content to its fullest, and being unable to do that would leave a very sour taste in many veterans’ mouths. This would also affect new players too, as every day they don’t get to level 260 for 6th job, is a day they didn’t get to do their dailies, which is another day they fall behind. I think the cap should definitely be removed, at the bare minimum. Let us grind to our hearts’ content.
That’s why so many play Maplestory.
Nexon’s response
As we were preparing this story to go live today, Nexon responded to the boycott, walking back the changes. The response players were waiting to hear as we headed into the update going live came through at the 11th hour.
“We understand that there are a lot of concerns about information that was recently revealed regarding the v.246 New Age: 6th Job update,” the MapleStory team states in a statement on the website. It continued, “First, we would like to truly apologize for causing concern due to the lack of prior information regarding New Age’s 6th Job content.”
The MapleStory team went on to explain the reasoning behind implementing the Sol Erda cap:
“...we wished to lower the burden that our players might feel regarding play time and increase the accessibility for casual players by distributing the Sol Erda Energy and the Sol Erda Fragments through the Daily Quest. Additionally, we added the daily cap because we wished to narrow the gap that depended on playtime between the hardcore players and those who could not dedicate as much time to the game.”
They continue: “We will remove the cap and explore separate improvement measures for parts that could be harmful for the gameplay experience. Also, we would like to share that we have no plans to release the Sol Erda Booster at the same time as the 6th Job Advancement update.”
The boycott worked.
It’s not often that I get to see a community come together to get such a major decision reversed. The daily cap has been removed in the global version of Maplestory, with a 30,000 limit put on the SEA version, which apparently maths out to “virtually impossible” to reach in a day. Not only that, the booster that was going to be sold will not be implemented. This is a huge win for the community.
