Hi Everyone,

As you may have already heard from our Community Managers, there have been a few changes with our internal teams at Nexon. Some of these you have already heard about, and some of them you haven’t yet, so I wanted to take some time to talk a little bit about them today.

By now you have already heard from our CMs Ghiblee and Aru about the recent changes to our community team. First of all, I just want to say that we are truly saddened that Aru will be moving on from his role on MapleStory and at Nexon. We’re very fortunate to have had someone like Aru be able to take on such an important role for this game and, in my opinion, do such an amazing job with it. I will certainly miss the countless debates we had both on and off stream, including topics such as the role of a community manager, the quality of memes we’re seeing on Reddit, the merits of timers on bosses, and of course Aru’s propensity for destroying the sanctity of pizza by adding pineapple.

All jokes aside, the level of dedication Aru showed towards the community, learning the game, and gaining your respect was something that he put a lot of effort into. I’m confident with his guidance and your patience that our next community manager will be able to do the same.

Having said that, we knew how equally daunting the task would be to find someone who could step in and be the community manager you all need. We had been searching for a community manager for MapleStory for a while now, and we interviewed a large pool of candidates. Our decision wasn’t easy—we wanted to be sure the person we brought onto the team was capable of all the responsibilities we expected internally, and that this person also represented the kind of community manager we know you would expect as well. With that said, all of us here are extremely confident that Ghiblee fits that role. I know there has been some concern about her experience with the game, but as Ghiblee and Aru mentioned, continuing to learn the game is one of her top priorities. We know that understanding the game and being able to interpret feedback is one of most important parts of not just being a Community Manager, but important for all of us who work on MapleStory

This leads me to some of the other changes we’re making to our internal teams. I’m very excited to let you all know that we also have a new Producer joining our MapleStory team this week. This Producer will be working side-by-side with me and the rest of the team to help us continue to grow and improve both the game and our service. I’ll let them introduce themselves in the future, but one thing I do want to mention is that this producer brings with them over a decade’s worth of experience and knowledge on the ins and outs of working on MapleStory. This kind of expertise will no doubt be invaluable to everyone on the team.

With news of Aru moving on and the arrival of the new Producer, some of you may wonder what that means for my role and my future with the game. I want you all to know that I thoroughly enjoy working on MapleStory, and will continue to do so as long as I can. I’m excited to continue working with the team here as well as all of you to continue improving this game.

Now in addition to those topics, I also want to make sure you all know we are continuing to look into a lot of issues you have brought up.

We’re continuously looking into ban appeals for those players who have sent in tickets, and in some case reviewing some of the ban appeals that may have already been responded to. We’ve seen all the posts and messages being sent to us, and the team here is doing our best to ensure we investigate these claims as thoroughly as we can. It goes without saying that some of these investigations may take some time, but we’re continuing to treat them with the utmost importance.  

As I mentioned in the past, we’re also reviewing a lot of the processes having to do with banning procedures so we can continue to find ways to improve and mitigate any issues with false bans. While I don’t have any specifics to share on this front, please know that this an ongoing process that hasn’t slowed down.

I’ve also seen comments from players asking for updates on topics that we’ve addressed in the past and are still in discussion. The reason we haven’t shared anything on those topics is because there are no details yet to share. As soon as we have more info, we will share it with you all.

Thank you,

Dennis “SavageAce” Bernardo

Producer - MapleStory