Hi Maplers,

Over the past few months, we’ve made several changes to the game that exhibit the overall direction we would like to pursue for Global MapleStory. While it hasn’t been very clear to you why these changes were being made, we’d like to try to explain a little bit better the discussions we’ve had and the reasoning behind some of the changes. One of the main reasons we wanted to provide this insight now is to also give more context to our decision to remove Singapore area maps and content in our v199 update this week.

Over the many years that MapleStory has been available, we have added unique content and exclusive features that were intended to provide more enjoyment and fun for our players. We believe that we have been successful in doing that so far. At the same time, it is also our responsibility to continuously change and refine content according to MapleStory’s main content and growth flow, which constantly evolves and undergoes revamps. The reality also holds that some of this unique content is making it very difficult for us to both maintain the game’s stability and to make improvements by looking into potential conflicts with future content. We are placing a lot of focus and effort on these two things and we believe that, despite not being able to maintain some of these exclusive features we have added in the past, we are moving in the right direction.

An example of this direction is the recent addition of 25 stars and Bonus Stats. We implemented these to minimize the differences in power between existing content and new content being added. However, we also needed to find ways to have this change blend well with GMS-exclusive content, such as Gollux and Sweetwater equipment without causing too many issues. We recognized that some players may not be happy or agree with these changes, but we needed to make these difficult decisions in consideration of the long-term progression of equipment and maintenance of the game.

The recent closure of Mr. Lee’s Airlines, and upcoming closure of Captain Vaga and Singapore, are also a part of this effort to try to optimize the experience of the existing content as well as future content. Again, we wanted to focus our team on the areas of the game we feel provide more meaningful value to all players in the long term.  This doesn’t mean we are planning to remove all unique content and changes that have been made in Global MapleStory. We are trying to identify areas of the game that we feel are outdated, that conflict with upcoming content and changes we are preparing, that are difficult to maintain from a technical standpoint, or provide too much opportunity for abuse with illicit activity. While we understand that our communication with our players has not always been timely, one of our goals as a team moving forward will be to communicate our direction more clearly and inform you of any major upcoming changes as soon as we can.

In the end, our focus will always be to do our best to provide all of our players with enjoyable content.

Thank you,
Dennis "SavageAce" Bernardo