[EMS] Level 257!

Ding! The Neo update is here, and so is its coin shop event. With little to no effort, it's easy to gain 10% a week by simply maxing out those coins. The event lasts for almost three months, so that's definitely going to add up.

On top of that, there are also two (!) Extreme Growth Potions to be claimed by the end of this event, which is very close to a full level up, even at Level 257. So I should hit Level 258 around August, and probably 259 later this year.

Anyway, it's nap time. I'll see you guys again next post!

[Lego] Mokarr's claw

Maybe you'll learn something about crustacean terminology after reading this post... Wait what?

If you told me that it would only take four months to obtain the next Mokarr part, I wouldn't believe you.

I didn't write about it in March because of the recent abundance of blogposts - but now there's plenty of time to give this blogpost the attention it deserves. There's a bunch to talk about, so let's get to it.

So, somehow there was another person on Bricklink selling a small lot of Galidor parts, and the listing in particular was found in the bulk of unsorted lots. Ya know, that unorganized dumpster on Bricklink where everyone tosses whatever random stuff they want into it, despite that almost nobody looks at them to begin with. Of course, as it was listed as a pile of Galidor parts, I was obliged to buy the complete bulk just to get this one single piece.

It sometimes be like that. Not that I mind though, as you can never have enough parts.

Just like the grabber arm piece from the Nepol Basic Figure set, the claw has a built-in clothespin function to hold onto various shapes of pieces. As with all Galidor pieces, it's preassembled and its individual components cannot be separated without destroying them. The dactyl piece (in violet) is stuck inside the propodus (in medium voilet), and a hidden spring inside the propodus (connected to the dactyl) keeps the claw clenched.

The source for these parts however, has been somewhat of an eye-opener. You see, from the little information that there is to be found about Mokarr (or any of the cancelled Galidor sets), I assumed that LEGO^® only produced these unreleased parts in their main factory in Billund. Y'know, produce a small batch, archive these parts in the vault for legal purposes, done. Given the nature of these sets being unreleased, it wouldn't make much sense for them to have produced any outside of their nearby research & development facilities. Unless there was something else going on.

Certainly, the tooling for these parts have existed as evidenced by the various unreleased Galidor parts out there - but little did I know or comprehend how deep the Galidor iceberg seems to go. According to the Bricklink seller, the unreleased Galidor parts I bought off him were part of a job lot from the Kladno factory. Yes, Kladno - not Billund.

That is... kind of a big deal.

These claws are huge! Look at that shaping. Notice the claws sharing the same scaly texture with Mokarr's head?

To those unfamiliar with LEGO^®'s manufacturing planning, they tend to manufacture parts in several factories. While their main factory (Kornmarken) is located in Billund, they own several other factories throughout the world. There are three in Europe. One of those is the Kladno factory, located in the Czech Republic.

So, why is this relevant? This gives us some rare insight into the development process of the unreleased Galidor sets. It's not just that LEGO^® produced a small batch of unreleased Galidor pieces in Billund as I initially thought. It seems that they've also produced a bunch of unreleased Galidor parts in Kladno as well. But for what purpose? Without information from the company itself or from those who were involved in the Galidor theme, we can only speculate.

If I had to make an educative guess, it seems that LEGO^® bet big on Galidor and it didn't pay off. Galidor has been mentioned in interviews to have played a large contributor to LEGO^®'s path to near bankruptcy in the early 2000's, so that loss had to come from somewhere. And what better way to build up costs than to invest big before it could even prove itself to be able to return sufficient amounts of profit?

At the time, Bionicle and Star Wars were just released and they've became a huge financial success. It wouldn't surprise me if the company firmly believed that Galidor could become the next big thing. Bionicle initially could hardly meet its first year demand, so if Galidor was expected to be as much of a financial success, LEGO^® must have had to produce a large quantity of sets ahead of time. So when the initial wave was released, the production of the second wave was already on full throttle. By the time the company were confronted with Galidor's disastrous sales, they had to pull the plug even though future sets including Mokarr, Boges, Evil Nick, the second year Jens and Euripides figures, were already in production. Ultimately, only a limited amount Aquart and Tager sets were released, probably because those were already packed on palettes and ready to be shipped to retailers.

And even if this particular speculation does not turn out to be true, it does not take away the fact that these Galidor pieces have been produced in at least two factories. That brings the question... How many of these parts have really been produced... and how many of these are still out there, not lost to time?

Funnily enough, another Mokarr connector block was included with the lot that included the claw.
Now I have two windscreens and two Mokarr connector blocks.

Anyway, I'm one step closer to completing Mokarr. Fourteen parts left to find. It really has become a Do-It-Yourself project where I have to painstakingly track down each individual part against all odds, huh? Unfortunately, a complete Mokarr requires a pair of these claws... so somehow I'll have to find another one of these. Of course, while it's incredibly unlikely to find any other Mokarr part... you'll never know I guess. The hunt for Mokarr continues.

By the way, I initially wanted to include information about other unreleased Galidor parts that I got my hands on, but this blogpost is already packed enough as it is... I suppose I did say that I bought off unreleased Galidor parts, right? Plural. There were more than just Mokarr parts in that lot. But talking about that will be for another time.

[EMS] That 5000 day milestone

Well then, it seems that it's been 5000 days since my character was created. Usually I tend to only write each year on the 30th of September to commemorate my character's birthday. But since five-thousand is such a ridiculous number, I thought it would make for a nice blogpost that also doubles as an informative one.

Two years ago I've written about the elusive ID Card Chair, which is an item that shows your character's creation date. A new item that utilizes this variable came out last December: the "[BTS] Our Time With MapleStory" hat.

Originally designed with the intent to display the time you've spent in-game, it was changed to display the amount of days since your character creation's instead. This is probably done because it's unlikely that anyone's true in-game playtime has been recorded by Nexon themselves, given the nature of the game's engine and its age. However, since they've already implemented the usage of one's creation date for the ID Card Chair, it probably wasn't a difficult task to write a formula that calculates the amount of days that have been passed. That, and I can't imagine how much this hat would strain the server if it had to continuously update a clock for each player owning this hat.

Anyway, as you can probably expect from any community, the existence of this hat became a sausage fest where everyone starts to compete for whoever has the highest number above their head. However, having a high "score" on this hat means little if the player themselves has hardly spent an appropriate amount of days that's in line with the character's creation date. It'd be no different from having an Europe Bandana lying around on an abandoned alt. Sure, it's a fun novelty to own any of those. But in context it wouldn't hold much gravitas, if that makes any sense.

I understand that to many foreign veterans and hardcores a "mere" 5000 wouldn't mean much. But to those who aren't aware and need a refresher: EMS officially released on the 12th of April, 2007 (beta started in late 2006). There aren't that many characters left that have the age over a five thousand days because of the migration. Keep in mind that 2,7 of the 3 million characters didn't migrate, so they were all purged. Gone, deleted. I'm only aware of less than twenty characters that are older than Rayque and have successfully migrated. However, I do believe that it's very likely that there is about one-hundred characters left with an age of 5000+ days (FYI: I'm being generous and optimistic there).

But here's the catch: have any of them experienced almost every single day in-game? As in, have they played almost 5000 days daily on that same character? If you are a frequent reader of my blog or know of my reputation, then I don't need to further explain that one. While I'm not one of those fortunate enough to have experienced EMS beta, and by no means am I among the "the highest level", "the strongest" or the "most loyal and experienced" in EMS, I do know that I've been playing on my Hero daily since EMS 0.30, starting my journey 5000 days ago. Without a break.

Whether if that means or should mean something is entirely up to you, but I can't deny that I find myself often longing for recognition. While I play Maple because of my love for the game regardless what others think, I do have my moments where I can't help but feel that my long-term dedication for it has been rather unrewarding. Unfortunately EMS isn't really the type of game where pouring over 22.000 hours in the course of almost 14 years would get you anywhere in either community recognition or in-game progress. As it stands, it seems I'm destined to remain a myth.

But y'know? Perhaps that is what suits me best.