Hi guys! Today's the 30th of September. I've been playing EMS daily for 17 years now!
Past year has been a wild ride. First year of 6th Job and it started out strong. It's a shame though that we have to wait a bit longer for the next skill wave, but Holy Fountain as our next 5th Job skill is fantastic. KMS has been substantially improving the game by addressing the many fundamental problems that were created in its early years. It continues to move forward, even if some decisions were difficult to make. If anything, Changseop's tenure is very much like Anna's.
Unfortunately I don't share that enthusiasm for EMS, looking back at the past year, or the three years after Anna left. In fact, management is in a worse state than between post-migration and Anna's temporary return. Sally was supposedly her successor, but left quietly at some point. Hyun (who's presumably Mjolnir) took over with Dennis and Inkwell joined earlier this year. Under their management, EMS has gone backwards and the future isn't looking great either. It's hard to be excited for any KMS update when the GMS team openly flaunts they might not implement any of it. Dare I say, it's become hard to be excited for anything related to EMS at all, in general. You can't put the genie back in the bottle.
Last year I expressed "if only they could do something about gear progression", and that happened. Potential in its entirety got reworked the same way that happened when Enhancement Scrolls became Star Force. The rework is a straight upgrade; you'll always have the maximum tier up rates, there's a guarantee on rank-ups and it even has the before/after choice for both Potential types. It no longer requires Maple Points - it's become mesos-only. This way it's no longer affected by the fickle Meso Market as pricing is now at a fixed rate. This is the update that Maple needed the most for over a decade. But as you know by now, only KMS has it. Other versions have no plans to get it, even though Maple Coin Exchanger pretty much is a direct upgrade revenue-wise. They killed their golden goose. What a shame.
If I had to make an educative guess for the future of EMS under the new management, is that Nexon's long-term plan for EMS is to consolidate Reboot with Luna and to reintroduce the original geo-blocking from 2007-2016. Reboot is on its way out, even here. I'm surprised it took them this long because Reboot repeats all of the same mistakes that the Supreme server did. It really is a repeat in history, although you'd be hard-pressed to find people that understand this. Knowledge on Supreme has always been esoteric. Anyone able to tell me the three revenue models for Supreme?
But why do I expect geo-blocking to return? It's because the GMS servers continue to siphon European players away. I can't imagine EMS staying financially viable for another decade, unless hard calls are made. Keep in mind that in only six years, we've gone from every channel almost full to more or less empty. Whales can only contribute so much.
According to the rankings, we've only had about 20.000 characters (not accounts or people) on Luna this September. Specifically, characters that have gained any EXP. This week, it's only been 6000 characters*. To give you an idea on how few 6000 is: every week I gain any EXP on about fifty. Granted, I'm an outlier in that regard. But with how Union artificially inflates the character count, we're realistically looking at only a few hundred weekly recurring players at best.
If there's anything most people seem to be unaware of, is that GMS/EMS is a small percentage in Nexon's revenue and that Nexon themselves report that it has a staggering operational cost for how little it generates. For that reason do I have a hard time believing a larger team and branching off the KMS roadmap can be financially justified unless they're planning to offset these costs by doubling down on monetization. The fewer players would need to pay more.
Anyway, don't forget that Changseop and Inkwell are both working under Wonky. Same plan. Although that doesn't mean that each team produces equal results. Obviously I'm curious to see the updates they're hyping up for the next two years, but I haven't forgotten the damage Inkwell and his prior did to MapleStory in its early years and how often EMS steered away from it. Fun fact: some KMS stuff we're not getting are those that changes Inkwell's old stuff. Oh.
Jokes aside, the last thing I want for EMS is to remain in a status quo. That's why I was excited for those major KMS updates, especially the rework for Additional Potential. With European Maple Points skyrocketing in price, it currently costs 400m (!) for a single Additional Potential reroll in EMS. And that price is only going up. It's also without the before and after selection. Imagine how expensive this becomes after totems are back, as that'll cause even more inflation. So much for addressing spawn modifiers over the past couple of years. All of that effort gone just for a quick buck.
And even if we dismissed the Potential rework, as far as basic changes from KMS are concerned, there's a lot we do not have. Guaranteed Potential rank ups, reduced Star Force costs, dynamic Boss Crystals, Maple Coin Exchanger, no more paid battle passes* and Sol Erda from Reward Points to name a few. Having daily caps for mesos and Sol Erda would've further helped to contribute towards an even playing field, get players to do dead content and combat inflation while also keeping the prices for staple goods in check. There's only one good roadmap: catch-up with KMS.
I'm sure that the new World Tour content will be fun 'n all, especially considering we haven't had many good ones in years. It's just that in the grand scheme of things, we need those drastic updates more than World Tour fluff. Look no further than how quickly abandoned that budget-shattering Phantom Forest revamp became. And as far as expensive efforts go, it's such a shame to then also leave out parts of KMS updates. Destiny, Ignition and New Age started that roadmap in improving the game drastically and we would've continued that streak of good will with the Dreamer and Milestone updates, weren't it for all of this. Then we also have to talk about the inevitable "Inkwell spaghetti code"...
But I digress. Regardless, past year did see good progress. Level 285, two Hyper Burnings and 9000 Union. Most of my equipment has Legendary Additional Potential and there's only one Grandis symbol left until 290. Although within the current economy, it's starting to become really difficult to proceed much further. Trade restrictions are a pain, and those monthly (Reward Point) Additional Potential cubes are worthless since we should've had the rework by now. Both Star Force and Additional Potential have become such poor value that I'm better off redoing my equips, rather than continuing with what I have. As such in the next upcoming year, I'm expecting to have my first pieces of Eternal.
Level 290 is likely to happen by the end of next year, as event EXP adds just enough to make that possible. Wouldn't be possible without (paying). As for 6th Job progression, Raging Blow VI is maxed out and I should have Sol Janus done before the end of the year. After that I'll max out Rage Uprising VI and start boosting some 5th Job skills. Next year we should have our guild Level 28 and have most of the Guild Castle unlocked. There's still a lot left to do, huh?
And let's not forget that this year also saw the release of the Destiny blogpost, which I was working on for almost two years. It's only been five months but KMS has introduced some changes that does solve some issues. Coincidence? Probably. But any change is any, and I'll gladly take them. That was the point of that post: to move (the game) forward.
Anyway, that's it for today guys. I'll see you guys again next post. The journey continues!
