[EMS] Ye good olde big updates

 

Ah, the infamous big updates from MapleStory to catch up for what most people consider as lost time.

MapleStory Europe is no stranger to these updates, and some of them have brought us fantastic improvements.

 

It has been a while since my last EMS blogpost, and I think I should give that ye good olde big blogpost to catch up on you guys too.

The Big Bang update back in 2011 in EMS wasn't just simply the update that went by the same name in other versions, it also included a full revamp for Zipangu, adding Pine Forest, Kaede Castle and Neo Tokyo. But wait, there's more! They also expanded Singapore with Ulu City, and added the full Malaysia, including the Theme Park. Some other subtle improvements were done compared to other versions, including the often forgotten fact that we never got that controversial quest reset on any of our characters. Let's not forget the improved Crimsonwood Keep! However, one of the few things that was a let down to most, was the ominous lack of the SP Reset Scroll - but in the end, Nexon Europe decided to add it because the community asked for it. EMS did its own thing, as we have done for a looooong while, y'know?

The Tempest update came out in 2013. No, not that update other versions had that released Grandis together with Luminous and Kaiser. I'm talking about the EMS version of Tempest. The 1,5 GB Wailord of an update, including the full Justice update, the full Champions update and the Tempest update all at the same time. Heck, we even got Kaiser before Global because of that. That is why I have obtained my Kaiser Skill Link before my Luminous', because Luminous was released at the end of the Tempest update. EMS did its own thing again.

The Leap update came out late 2015. It ended near the start of this year. It is a big update that most people seem to remember, because it was one in recent memory. The Leap update was a combination of three major updates once again. Maple Ice & Burn, Creation 12 and the Pink Bean class update.

This summer, we finally got the long awaited Reboot update. Well, to be fair, it wasn't called Reboot, but it wasn't called Acceleration either. EMS just did its own thing again - in fact, we didn't get the Reboot server as most versions avoided its release too, and Destruction King Urus was one notable character to be left out. Actually, we got the Zakum the Newborn update in addition instead, which is a funny trivia for the history of MapleStory, given we got the revamped Korean Folk Town and Zakum the Newborn before Urus, who was the first content to add the skeleton animation in the game's engine.

However, not all of these updates have always been that widely appreciated, and this unnamed update, which simply goes by the version number 118, may be(come) one of them.

Let's get this right off the bat. And I need to be bold in order to do this. I am not one of those Maplers who lashes out verbally about this update being "the death of MapleStory Europe". I'm one of those few who decided to wait until this update came out first, holding my prejudgemental b/s until *after* we know what was intended or not. I took my time to discover and digest the changes that has been brought with this update before writing anything on my blog, because I do care about giving my final thoughts and not some premature celebration or doomsday scenario. Okay, we good? Good.

Before I can move on into the details of this update, given not every reader around here plays EMS or knows about the most recent direction this entire franchise is heading, I want to give you guys a recap for what the hell "happened". Read in the spoiler below. Be warned: it is a long and bold wall of text.

Long story short, MapleStory Europe is undergoing a service, game and company upgrade.

Now the short story long. A few months ago, Nexon Europe has moved from Luxembourg to Germany, with a larger building so it can house more employees. Which makes sense if you want to expand as a company right? In fact, they even recruited new employees. Not just a few, not ten, but apparently over one hundred as far as I've read on the official EMS Facebook earlier this year.

And well, earlier this year, Nexon Europe has confirmed that they will combine forces with Nexon America to increase their market position. Yeah, that makes sense, given there is a load of online games out there (yes, it is indeed shocking to hear that there's more than MapleStory guys! *gasp*) and even the largest on the market still needs to upgrade in order to not fall behind. And if you like it or not, Europe and the US are both rather limited regions to sell your games, whenever it's offline or online. Do you know how many copies of a game you need to sell in order to make some profit?

MapleStory isn't the only game that Nexon runs online. If you simply Wikipedia for what Nexon has been responsible for, the list is quite an impressive portfolio in a way. So imagine that running a game costs quite a lot of money. Not just your electric and toilet bills, but also licensing is one hell of a tax to pay. Well, it's no big secret that Maple generates a lot of money. But if not every game out there generates enough, games like MapleStory and Dragon Nest needs to carry those more "obscure" games along. Which ends in less money reserved for those larger games we all seem to play, right?

And yeah, there are a lot of people who care about those obscure games too. It's called a target group, ones who actually play the game. You know, like social media and smart phones also has a significant amount of people who don't use them, like myself.

Target groups aside, Nexon Europe is a rather small company. I'm genuinely impressed and happy that they even can hold such a big franchise like MapleStory online. However, you can understand that if a company is small and has a rather significant product to take care of, combining forces with your neighbours from the *same* company might not be a bad idea. Especially when EMS has been growing significantly in the past few years, the game might eventually outgrow what Nexon Europe can handle. So splitting up the load with Nexon America to reduce the pressure enables them to put more men into development might not be such a bad idea.

So as far as we know, we'll get an improved launcher, that enables us to download this Wailord of a client (which is like what, almost 9 GB?) much faster, enables us to patch the game much faster, enables us to even play other games from the United States that we cannot play here, and those people from the US can also play games that they don't have there that we do here.

In the past few years many people within the EMS community asked for specific content that was at the time rather unlikely to be released. I can understand why people ask for content that seem rather unlikely to happen in the first place. A lot of people, including me, might envy what other versions might have that we wouldn't at first. Things like Neo Tokyo, the Sengoku update, Singapore and Malaysia, Dong Fang Shen Zhou, Nebulites, Dawnveil with Beast Tamer + Gollux, and the like. There was even a poll many years ago where we could vote what World Tour content we'd love to see the most in EMS! Singapore + Malaysia got the most votes, and was released with the Big Bang update.

And the truth of this understandable and justified behavior for player demanding content that other versions have while they don't, is that by just simply reading Basilmarket, the GMS forums and Southperry often for several years, you can see that GMS players also desire content they don't have but we do. I have read too many topics about GMS players wanting Veracent, or Supreme, those super fancy events like Lania's Triple Lunchbox, or Additional Options (aka the Flame of Rebirth system), or that they wished Neo City was never made given that ruined the opportunity for them to have Neo Tokyo. What was even worse in this context, is that EMS never removed Neo Tokyo or Kaede Castle in favor for Neo City or Sakura Castle, while pretty much all versions except for Japan MapleStory did. In addition to that, those players can't just simply visit EMS to try out Supreme before it got closed, because guess what: region lock. And bypassing your IP to play EMS is considered against the Terms of Use here so, if you're out of luck, you'll get banned for crossing the borders.

So Nexon Europe listened to most of these requests. So if the majority asks for Dawnveil or more World Tour content, it makes sense for Nexon Europe to give us what we ask for, right? I'm not sure if the same thing applies to Nexon America, given I don't play GMS as you all know, so I won't assume things, but I hope you guys had that customer service too. But hey, if I tell my friends in EMS that Nexon Europe's customer service isn't that bad, regardless of what I tell them, they refuse to give me a point and rather insult me for defending a company that runs the game we all love to play in the first place. Hey, Nexon Europe doesn't have to help us at all, as stated in the Terms of Use, they don't owe us anything, so they're being rather nice if you are to them as well. And if you don't like all of this and rather go lash out on the internet because we apparently all love to do that, why do you even bother to hang around if you clearly hate the game already?

That aside, here comes the part of this combining forces where people went outrageous, like everywhere. The EMS forum, the EMS social media, community forums, all the way even to my friend lists, whenever it was in-game, on Skype, on Steam, through e-mail or through SMS. So just because Nexon Europe and Nexon America wrote a few things about a migration, *not a merge*, people went apeshit, regardless of whatever reasons happened before that, because they thought EMS and GMS were going to merge. And they thought a lot of things will be removed. All of their progress they worked hard for being lost. Is that kind of feeling justified? I actually think its a mixed bag.

Yes, it is good to come up for your own rights. But don't you think it would be a dumb decision for Nexon Europe, after upgrading their company size, to just simply give a crap and removing all of the things you worked for? Actually, because you agreed on their Terms of Use, they are allowed to do whatever they want, so they don't even *have* to listen to what you want them to do.

Think about this: will a merge work between EMS and GMS? Most people will boldly answer with a no. Because people can think on a logical way and thus they already see the glaring flaws of that decision. And yeah, they are damn right. That won't work, everyone will agree with that, so Nexon as a company won't do that. No merge is going to happen. Case closed. By the way, Nexon never mentioned a "merge" anywhere.

So, the version 118 of EMS was released. Strap yourself in, because this is going to be an explosion...

Guess what?

No explosions. Put those pitchforks back from where you got them. The initial outrage of the community poofed away. And it seems a lot of people moved on and seemed to be glad they didn't really lose a lot.

Certain things have changed in this game. EMS is still EMS. *gasp* What a big surprise. (I'm bad at sarcasm by the way, so I'll point out that was some attempt to sarcasm right there)

A lot of new content has been added. Let's start with something significant. We finally got Dong Fang Shen Zhou. Dong... Fang... who the what now?

Almost every MapleStory version has something we call a "World Tour". At first it started as a regular content where every regional version gets something local, familiar, of their own home. Eventually GMS created the entire continent we know as Masteria and EMS did something, called the universe/dimension of Asbeel (Veracent + Supreme), too.

Most people know Zipangu, Singapore and Malaysia because it has been worldwide available to a lot of versions. Zipangu is the "World Tour" from Japan MapleStory and Singapore/Malaysia are the "World Tours" of MapleSEA (South East Asia). Well, there are way more versions of MapleStory than the general public knows.

One of which is China MapleStory. Which has more players than MapleStory Korea *and* Japan together. Y'know, Korea made the "OG" version of Maple and Japan is where all the cool kids play games. Jokes aside, Dong Fang Shen Zhou has been the World Tour for China MapleStory. And it isn't that new either. Also, let's just call it The Far East within this blogpost, because I've have been writing DFSZ for days and it's a mouthful to write, let alone to pronounce.

The Far East has been a World Tour almost as old as Zipangu itself. And those World Tours are even older than GMS. And we all know Zipangu has gone through numerous changes, and so did The Far East. Only recently, The Far East has been revamped because it became so outdated and was officially translated in English too, and finally saw the light of day in the English versions of MapleStory. Huzzah!

Man, The Far East is a fantastic piece of World Tour. It has about everything you want from a World Tour, and you can easily see that much love went behind redesigning the original continent we never saw in Europe.

It has about everything you'd expect: culture, its own respectful world map, replay value, loads of questing, maps that must be unlocked, new and exciting loot, and much more! A lot of the maps have been carefully redesigned from the original layout, including almost every original enemy, with also introducing some new faces for monsters to hunt and NPCs. Let's not forget the fact that almost the entire original soundtrack has been reused as well!

In addition to all of that, there has been an explanation to the revamp of The Far East. In the original version of this World Tour, you had this raid boss called Wulin Yaoseng, which can be seen as a walking Zakum for its day (like Bodyguard A/B/The Boss from Showa Hideout or Evil Giant Spirit from Siam's Golden Temple back before EMS was even made). He was faced at the end of the Grand Hall of Sages (which is called the Mahavira Hall in the dub), the building that towers Mount Song. He is missing in this redesigned World Tour, and at first I found that rather disappointing, but eventually I *might* have found out why.

There's a continuous reference to a character in the English dub. You never really meet the character at all, given "he went on a journey" and it is uncertain when he'll be back. Because he went on a journey, there was apparently nobody left to protect The Far East from demons. So when the demons had a free pass, a large part of this continent was casted in shadow, giving a permanent night life to Shanghai. The character that went on a journey was named Monk Laomo. While I cannot find anything more than this in the story or on Google, it might be safe to believe this was Wulin Yaoseng. The original Shanghai Wai-Tan from CMS was portrayed during daytime (feel free to Google it), so that also expands on this explanation and the fact why it's always night today.

I'm glad that Nexon has given this opportunity to experience The Far East. I have waited too long for this, ever since I found out about it in 2008. While I honestly have dire hopes if Siam and Formosa will ever have this same level of revamp it deserves and to revive Golden Temple and Taipei 101 from its ashamed grave back while doing so, this revamp has been significant and perhaps made the statement that even old (and to an extent, shamefully neglected) content might eventually come back.

By the way, yes, our Zipangu, Singapore and Malaysia has changed in favor for the GMS versions. Which means we have some pretty awesome new loot, like a potable Badge, but that did mean we lost some very good training grounds and Neo Tokyo.

With the same update, we also got the full Dawnveil update! Tynerum, Commerci, Arboren, all included with Gollux and Beast Tamer. In addition to this, we have also obtained the grand Masteria revamp, which includes like near to all iTCG items in addition with easier crafting for items such as Balanced Fury.

This one in particular has been a highly requested update. One that actually put quite a distinct controversial line between the EMS community for who wants it and for who doesn't. The thing is, while many players wanted to have Beast Tamer, an equal amount of players didn't want to have Gollux. And for some reason, everyone seemed to be fine with Commerci.

Well, guess what. Dawnveil comes with all three, so if you like it or not, we already have them all. I actually think that one of the "main reasons" why people dislike Gollux is "because there will be more elites, because Gollux equipment is such a cheap way to improve your range". Well guess what, not everyone needs to run Gollux. And I'll tell you two secrets: elites are expendable, consider the community regards you as one or not, so you have like little influence on the judgement people around you will give, and trying to get that Fafnir or Absolabs monopoly is actually the reason why other new players will become elite: you feed them with stronger equips and you're an example and inspiration to them. And it's not that the Cubicfest from Commerci is going to prevent more people from cubing. Too bad.

Let's not forget the countless Capsule Toy events we had where you could easily get Fafnirs and such... And if you still think I don't have a point, go read some Batman comics or come to realize that I might have inspired countless of other people to try to hunt a Ribgol Sword as well. Because we all know how well that ended, now do we?

Hold on Ray, did you just mention Beast Tamer earlier on?

Hell yeah, I did. Beast Tamer Skill Link GET!

Beast Tamer was one of the very first things I did straight away when the update got released. Man, that Critical Rate will be significant to me for running 100% Critical Rate... But I'll get back to that later on this blogpost.

While I'm not the kind of player who was *that* hyped for Gollux, I am very glad to see this fellow in EMS too. I still believe that Gollux is an interesting boss to go through, being on paper very similar to Hekaton, and yet still is much different.

But I do believe that Gollux was executed much better than Hekaton, because they split up the bodyparts in different maps to reduce the CPU requirement, and it is less of a clusterf- to begin with. I really hope that Hekaton gets revamped soon and gets fixed, because there's a reason why EMS decided to give him a holiday ticket (read: the community requested Hekaton to get fixed because it became unplayable to most, and therefore, Nexon Europe listened and benched him until further notice). Man, somebody should draw Hekaton versus Gollux. And that has been on my "to do" list for drawing ever since I got that idea.

The Commerci Voyages is a system I was curious about. I have heard various tales about "the Cubicfest" on the seas of Maple World.

While I'm still somewhere near the start, with not having that many trade permits yet, I'm enjoying these mini games a lot. It reminds me positively about RuneScape, like how when Professions came out during the Chaos update. If there's one thing I do appreciate, it's side content, and it's always nice to see when mini games are rewarding to play, given that also helps to enjoy the content as well.

To me, earning Denaro during Voyages isn't really my main interest. I'm way more interested in the Cubic loot, and so far, I have found one Cubic and Meister Cube from one daily session of Grosso Polpo (the lovely cliché of a Kraken boss, a must have in all RPGs) - and to think that within a few weeks, I'll have runs where I face multiple of these bosses in a row...

Talking about Cubics and Cubes, there have been a few notable changes to drops and upgrades as well. A lot of bosses drops regular cubes now! So it's nice to see that a lot of people who usually cannot afford that much can still get cubes of their own, without being dependent on some fancy FM position or something... Heck, even some bosses got weaker in HP, some of those also deal less damage, and in addition to that, a lot of bosses wield much higher EXP upon defeat.

We also have Nebulites! Many people were afraid that Additional Options (AO) would be removed, in favor of Nebulites. Especially the worry would be that all Additional Options prior to the update would be lost.

In a way, Nebulites are actually better than Additional Options. There, I said it.

Additional Options was very biased towards boss equipment and it hated to be used on anything else, including Sweetwater, Sengoku, Elemental Staff, Bunny Disguise 3, and many other popular items that KMS didn't have. It was extremely difficult to get high % All Stats on certain equips because they are simply not from KMS. So if you guys had your hopes up to use Additional Options to full effect in GMS, you would probably have to throw away all your Gollux, Alien Visitor, Meister, Terminus and Sweetwater items because they simply couldn't outmatch the ridiculous 5~7% passive All Stat Fafnir or Tyrant equipment. And if you take the "Eternal Flame" route, you have to wait until an event comes out which usually limits you to a maximum of one or two on each character by spending quite some coins for it... I have tried 27 of them on my Ribgol and the best thing I could obtain was something like 27 Magic Attack. Falls short in comparison of almost +60 Attack, 10%+ Boss Damage, and occasionally even % All Stats and % Total Damage on most Fafnir 2h Swords, heh.

That said, in a way, regardless if you hate the A and S-rank Nebulites and how they are manufactured in the game, you at least still can get 6% All Stats on a low level equip. By the way, the amount of stats you can gain with Nebulites are much higher, such as Boss/Total Damage, and % Attack. So in the end, you don't only get a less biased or forced way of playing, but you can also have a consistent upgrade, given when you find a Nebulite, you will get those stats on it. Especially on non-KMS gear, obtaining high Additional Options will require a ridiculous amount of high-tier Flames...

I won't even bother to talk about the fact that significant more equipment types can have Nebulites, or the fact of trade limits on items with Additional Options and how most equips became "preflamed" (aka having Additional Options when you find it by default) and how that disabled the usage of lower tier Flames in order to reset those.

I have been expecting Nebulites to hit EMS eventually, but I didn't expect them to replace Additional Options, given GMS was the only version without AO, so if you think about the fact that every other version had Flames instead, AO's would remain in EMS right? Well, yes and no.

All Additional Options have been kept. However, this system is in a rather "End of Life" state, like what happened to all Veracent and Supreme items - we pretty much didn't lose any of these equips, neither did we "lose" upgrades (except for a handful, which I'll talk about in a second). So if you have upgraded your equipment with things like Miracle Scrolls (something GMS doesn't really have), they'll remain the same. Used Flames on your equips? They are still there.

Another fun part about it is that most fully upgraded equips could get to a total of 20 Star Force. In GMS, you have a maximum of 15 stars. Because we would get this Star Force system of GMS, a lot of people got worried about what would happen to their upgraded gear. People who had over 15 stars didn't lose a single star, so these veteran equips will be worth a lot if you want to sell them (advice: don't).

So EMS is the first version to actually have hybrid items of *both* Additional Options and Nebulites, as shown with my Ribgol, I can use a Nebulite on it. I haven't really obtained proper Nebs yet, because the Galactro-Drill prequests are bugged at the moment.

However, because AO's are now in End of Life, that means equips with these bonus stats will be in high demand...

The only two equip I have noticed that has been changed that I can confirm has to be my GMS-Mark of Naricain and my old Explorer's Critical Ring. I can also confirm that the MSEA-Mark of Naricain has been unchanged, so if you had one of those, well lucky you - you still own a Mark of Naricain that can be fully upgraded, including Potential, Nebulites and Enhancements. Note the image below.

Notice on the left, how my Mark of Naricain has changed from fully upgraded back to zero,
with only the AO's to remain. This is the "GMS" Mark of Naricain, only obtainable before Big Bang.

The Mark of Naricain on the right was obtained after Big Bang, and uses the MapleSEA ID.
Because we have both items, and GMS never had the MapleSEA one, only items that were in
Global before that are different than EMS are affected, and because most equips are like exactly
the same, or that a lot of items never existed in GMS at all, the loss in equips have been almost
neglectable, with a few exceptions.

Thank goodness I followed my gut feeling and decided to get an Ani Pendant (an item that is very similar to the MSEA MoN, with one slot advantage) a few months ago. It seemed that worked out in my favor, because I "lost" one MoN, and thus I still have a direct back up to compensate it.

I'm not sure about other equips like Liberated Kaiserium, since those had 1 slot in EMS, and therefore, could be fully upgraded, including Star Force (it had the ability to get over 600 attack in total through Star Force). By the same logic of this update, that'll mean Liberated Kaiseriums will lose the slot (given the one in GMS has no slots), and would also probably be reverted like my MoN did if you upgraded it.

Let's not forget that our Reward Shop has also been dramatically improved. Much better loot, and probably they'll be refilled monthly, instead of once every three...

Well, before I finish this blogpost because it has been going on for waaaaaaay too long I guess, you probably have noticed something on the first image. You are right - that is full Amaterasu! Well, 7/8 set with Ribgol of course. Mori Ranmaru finally drops all the recipes and all bosses drops the shards like they "should".

I won't run with Amaterasu yet - I'm currently in the process of upgrading these pieces first because my Cygnus gear has been heavily upgraded and therefore is difficult to be outmatched this early. While it might take at least something like a year, perhaps two or three, but the most important thing is that I have all pieces ready - and that I can equip them whenever I feel like it.

Also, if you notice correctly in my Equip Inventory, I currently use four Critical Adventure Rings, because apparently GMS doesn't have Dark Critical Adventure Ring in Pool B... HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA *cough* excuse me, I was remembering all the people who thought running four Adventure Rings simultaneously was impossible because it would be too broken and that I had to "dream on" and "get real". Having 55% Critical Rate and 25% Minimum Crit Damage from four rings certainly is - who needs Potential on Rings if you can pull this off? Ah well, the advantage of playing on a single character ever since the 30th of September 2007, enables you to combine some crazy relics from a distant past...

Oh, by the way, we also have Crusader Codex, Monster Life and the Stellar Detectives. Go check them out when you can. That 3D background in the Hypercube is fantastic, we need more of that. Like seriously tho. NEED.

But hey, just give everyone a time to process and digest things. It has been quite a lot of things to go through in a short notice, and eventually things will settle down in a few months. And probably after a year or two nobody will really remember a lot. Given this happened a lot of times before, trust me. It's not that anyone remembers we had to wait for Fourth Job for way too long, especially when we got Knights of Cygnus before 4th job, and before Pirates even!

I genuinely think that the positives outweigh the negatives, although some of the losses might have been a hard (emotional) hit to some, just give it some time to process. Anyway Nexon Europe has kind of hinted that we'll do our own thing again apparently. EMS is still EMS. Not much really outside of new content and a few tweaks has changed. So don't be surprised if some things might be restored or that certain content would be reintroduced (like how Avatar SoK might be a perfect thing to introduce worldwide given its success in EMS before it got removed in favour for GMS' Cash Shop system)

And if you're going to ask me about "Ray, what about the removal of Neo Tokyo in EMS?"
I'll give you the same answer about the cancellation of Bionicle Generation 2 after it lived a short two year run before The LEGO® Group pulled the plug: It sucks, but the only thing we can do about it is simply enjoying things while we still can, because before we know, they might be gone forever...

*I like how I've pulled of a zero mention about obtaining my Tent Cha- oh shit, I just did now didn't I?*