Maplestory Himes

[Erminia Scharnberg]

Iwould talk to all the NPCs in every town and eagerly set out to finish whatever fetch quest they gave me, anticipating the experience and item rewards that would be waiting for me upon completion. When I started playing there were only two servers, Scania and Bera. Each server had 20 identical channels which you could choose from to play in. I stayed away from Channel 1, especially in Perion where everyone would be spamming what they were buying and selling, causing the sorry excuse for a laptop I was playing on at the time to freeze for 10 second intervals at a time. Channel 2 was usually pretty crowded as well. So whenever I logged in I chose to enter and play in Channel 3, and it has remained my channel of choice.

I loved exploring the many maps that comprised the main continent of Victoria Island and beyond. I traveled from map to map battling any monsters that crossed my path. The different areas of the game felt like they had come straight out of a storybook. A magical forest, an arid wasteland, a city in the clouds, menacing underground caverns, and so many more fantastical places added with each new update. The backgrounds were all drawn so beautifully and created a really charming aesthetic for the game. I would go sequentially through the portals connecting maps until I reached a dead end. Then I would go back to where there was a fork in the road and take a different path. I pressed up at every sign in the road and peculiarly placed piece of shrubbery hoping to discover hidden portals to secret areas.

The music in Maplestory was one of its best features. It was pleasant to listen to for hours on end in whatever map you happened to be training in. All the musical melodies in the game were well composed and every piece could stand on its own in your music playlist. Ambient and atmospheric, I can get lost in memories of the game for hours listening to the soundtrack now.

Out of all the quest types available, jump quests were my favorite. Jump quests were essentially a 2-D platforming mini-game that you could play to change things up from the endless tedium of monster bashing. Mechanically, all you were doing was holding down a movement key and pressing the jump button at just the right moment to make the distance to the next platform hundreds of times. Your character made the most pathetic tiny jumps ever, but those jumps were always just enough to make it to the next platform if you timed it just right. The frustration and anguish of falling down over and over or missing the very last jump that you had to make was difficult to cope with. But the feeling of triumph and the great sense of accomplishment that came upon completing a jump quest made up for it many times over.

From around the time I was level 70 I started using 2x experience cards while training. These became one of the primary reasons for my spending money on the game. Specifically, I remember that the 2x experience card that I bought was the type 2 card that ran every day for four hours from 1-5 pm eastern time. Over the course of a few summer and winter breaks this was the time in which I grinded every day. I made sure that I arrived early to secure a party or map and trained non-stop until my allotted time was done. Throughout my time training, I would meet other people who used the same card and trained at the same places and times as me regularly. Sometimes I would form parties with them, and we would train together. These people I met became some of the first high level people that I got to know in the game.

I remember one time in a party when I was still pretty low level, Kachee came into our channel and asked if he could join our party. When his character appeared in the map I recognized his name immediately. He was one of the people that would appear on the front page whenever I looked at the world rankings for Khaini. He was an assassin like me, one of the top 5 ranked players in the entire server, and he had just asked if he could join our party. I was starstruck. I wanted to type a message out to him in chat in caps with several exclamation points at the end, but I restrained myself. There was space available in our party, so the leader let him join. Kachee was really cool. Humble and friendly, he talked a lot in party chat with us. When asked about his training schedule and how he got to such a high level he said it was thanks to his guildmates and friends who supported him. Kachee was my in game hero. He was the assassin that I dreamed and aspired to be. Later, I would get to train with him on many different occasions and would even have the pleasure of adding him to my friends list.

Nothing really shouted Christmas in Maplestory like grouping with your friends and dropping all your items to cover up a giant pine tree that took up the space of an entire map. Decorating a Christmas tree in Maplestory with my guildmates was always a jolly time. It was that one time of year where I could show off my collection of collectible goodies that I always kept on me for all to look upon with envy. It was the true spirit of Maplemas. Unlike other maps, in this special map you could drop items from your inventory without fear of them disappearing or being picked up by somebody else. I would use this chance to drop my collection of snowboards, roses, tubes, and whatever else I had in my inventory to the jealousy and awe of others.

I was level 132 when the 4th job advancement update finally came. 4th job changed the entire end game. There were new skills and areas to train that allowed you to gain experience much faster than ever before. Training at newts and skelegons gave significantly more experience than himes or squids. Suddenly, reaching level 200 was a real possibility and not just a pipe dream. Everyone seemed to suddenly get serious about training, and I was no exception. Having new skills to play with and seeing my experience bar shoot up so quickly was all the motivation I needed to get back into the grind. Actually being able spend my skill points when I leveled up instead of having to save them was a plus too.

During one of my training sessions at skelegons I excitedly announced to the guild that I would be reaching level 150 that day. Coincidentally, another member of our guild FrozNLite (Dan) replied saying that he would also be reaching level 150 soon. We decided to do a dual level up. The plan was to party up when we were both at 99.98% experience (there was no 99.99% for some reason) and kill a mob of monsters all at once to receive enough experience to level up simultaneously. A few guildmates and friends even showed up to watch it happen. When the time finally came, Dan used his meteor shower to kill a whole mob of skelegons at once. Unfortunately, in his first attack only one skelegon actually died. The experience was enough for him to level up but not quite enough for me. I leveled up moments later laughing at how we had failed something so simple. Everyone in attendance was laughing, joking, and saying congratulations as well. One of our old guildmates, Tempest1230 was there recording the whole thing, and actually put a small clip of it in his own level 150 video. If you looked him up on Youtube you could probably still find it.

The Pirates update brought the first new class that Maplestory had ever seen since its creation. There were two branching pirate sub-classes to choose from, gunslingers and brawlers. I chose to make a brawler. Their different punching and kicking skills looked awesome, and their ability to transform into what basically amounted to a Super Saiyan sealed the deal for me. PSBrawler climbed through the rankings rather uneventfully. New and better training areas made leveling much more streamlined and quick this time around. It was pretty much an endless cycle grinding at one training spot by myself until I became high enough level to go to another spot. The time it took me to reach 4th job and beyond seemed to happen in the blink of an eye compared to the time I spent on my assassin to get to the same level.

After hearing about it on the forums, I decided to log in for the first time in a long while for the first ever Hot Time event in Maplestory. Just by being logged in at a certain time, every player in the game would receive a free level up potion, an SP reset, and some other goodies. When the time came and I received the items, I excitedly looked over everything I had just gotten. In particular, I stared and hovered my mouse over the level up potion in my inventory for a long time. I recalled all the hours of grinding I had put in just to earn a single level before. My assassin had been stuck at level 166 for a long time even while I was still playing as I had switched my focus to leveling my other characters. Sure, I had pretty much quit Maplestory by that point and had no real need to level my characters anymore. But that potion was more than just a level up to me. It represented all the hours and experiences I had grinding in the game, compressed and simplified into a double-click of my mouse. It would be so easy to just click on it and be level 167 in an instant. But at the same time it felt like the game was trivializing all the time and effort I had put in to training my character previously. Like people were still complaining that they actually had to kill monsters and gain experience to level up, so Nexon decided they might as well just give you a magic level up potion instead. After everything I had put into my character to get to where I was it felt wrong to just be able to get ahead like this. So in the end, I just let the potion sit in my inventory and eventually expire.

Sometimes I wish I could come back to the game and pick up right where I left off. But I know that Maplestory would never be able to capture my interest again the way it did before. The new character classes, areas, and features added to the game are trivial compared to the people that made my experience in game so special. Nothing could possibly match up to the special moments, the memories, or the feelings that I had while playing back then. The magic of Maplestory for me will forever exist in that specific time in the past. In the present, the sense of wonder and adventure I felt when I first started playing the game has long since faded away. The friendships and bonds I shared with the people I met during my time in game have broken. My adventure in Maplestory has come to an end.

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