 |
|
I hope you've brought your gokiburi hoi hoi plus today, because you should've brought the whole damn isle. |
Today is
day 6576, the 30th of September - which means I've been playing EMS daily for 18 years now!
As promised in last year's blogpost, I'd like to take the opportunity to continue the evaluation about the state of EMS. In particular, this year is very important historically as it's the point of equilibrium where EMS has been as long under its current management of Nexon US as it has under Nexon EU. The contrast between these two nine year tenures is concerning at times, and while I would love to write a more in-depth post I just don't have enough time for that.
However, what I can do for today's blogpost is to write a concise evaluation that probably communicates the point a lot better than something of the length of last month's blogpost. Besides, a more casual conversation like this might be a good palette cleanser after all that raw data. I can always revisit certain topics that we'll discuss today in a future post. With a more casual approach to this blogpost, I'm also just going to be yapping in a less organized, impromptu matter.
So, I'll just rip the band-aid off by addressing the Shrelephant in the room: EMS has not been performing well under the current management of Nexon US. You'd be hard pressed to find people who would disagree with this statement.
I do believe this is a well-understood fact, but what is not is how damaging Nexon US and its community has been to EMS. Understandably not the prettiest topic to discuss, but it is unavoidable in today's topic given we'll discuss how little EMS has recovered from the migration purge and why that is. Understand that this topic is nuanced but I'll try my best to write it as best as I can within the week I've given myself. To my surprise, this wasn't the type of blogpost I was expecting to write because I was saving it for an autopsy whenever EMS kicks the bucket - yet here we are.
1. 3% across the pond"Also, if I can add a little to that, Europe is a very interesting market. It definitely has a lot of countries -- different countries. You mentioned about color in major areas. We cannot really divide into countries, based on performance, but I can give you a couple of examples, such as, first person shooting games -- they tend to do much better in the UK, Germany; Poland is one of the most important emerging markets. Another example, with Turkey, whereas, games like MapleStory tend to do better in The Netherlands or Israel, a new -- another new market.
So it really depends on which genre and which country we're talking about, but overall, Europe is a very exciting market for us, and we expect to see continuous growth there. And I think I mentioned in our previous call, we set up our Luxembourg office at the end of last year, and we are shifting our business from Korea to Luxembourg, and I think will -- that will provide us with a better infrastructure to stabilize and expand our business in the future." - Seungwoo Choi, the CEO of Nexon during Q2 2012.
Nowadays it's hard to believe, but Nexon EU is, or rather was, quite a financial powerhouse for how small it was. Even as early as 2011, the combination of Nexon EU, SEA, Taiwan, and Thailand surpassed the Nexon US branch. There's been many years where "Europe and Others" was evenly matched with the US despite the differences in population, with the former group even doubling the US performance in some quarters as well. This is because of the distribution of wealth and cultural differences as they are not equal. But it's a fact that all of these different regions have different needs, and it's financially justifiable to have regional versions that can cater towards these demands. However, this is easier said than done. Nexon acknowledges from time to time in their quarterly conference calls that they struggle to find the right balance - an observation that plenty of us have made by now.
Now, you might be wondering why Nexon EU no longer exists and why EMS is under the same management of GMS. Looking at the quarterly reports of that time, Nexon EU was doing quite well. So much in fact, that by Q1 2015 they were upgrading their Luxemburg office to a grander location in Germany after three years, and were mass hiring new staff. However, by 2016 the company was silently liquidated and finding evidence of Nexon EU S.A.R.L.'s existence was difficult for a while. Unfortunately what these quarterly reports don't tell us are the performances of each individual game per region and when it mentions "Europe and Others", that would include all other Nexon games in this region.
We've seen with MapleStory 2 that Nexon will shut down servers before they operate on a loss. We've also seen many regional versions come and go and never return in any capacity whatsoever. However, EMS has remained financially interesting enough to maintain as otherwise they wouldn't have continued it, unlike our Brazilians who were forced to play on EMS after BMS shut down in 2011. Now, if you've paid attention, you've noticed that 2016 is the year that EMS changed management from the late Nexon EU to Nexon US. The important question is: of all years, why 2016?
Obviously, you don't need to be a genius to understand it's about revenue. However, what caused this to happen is slowly been forgotten over time and I'm constantly reminded that not everyone remembers things as vividly as I do...
Return to Table of Contents
2. Hackwave of 2012
"Next question is, what's going on in North America and Europe? Why are the sales still declining?"
"In North America and Europe, we have high hopes for these areas since last year, but we're disappointed that these areas are not performing the way we hoped or expected. As we have addressed throughout this year we have had several operational issues we need to fix to grow our user base again and to bring our growth rate back to where it was two years ago that 30% to 60% year-over-year.
So right now, our focus is on fixing the operational side of the business as well as securing good titles for these western markets so that we can return to growing our user base again. In the meantime, we are cutting our forecast for those two territories because we do not expect the business to turn around yet in Q4. Next question please." - Seungwoo Choi, the CEO of Nexon during Q3 2012.
For the uninitiated, the most devastating blow to have ever hit EMS was the hackwave of 2012. This is an incident that I've referenced thrice throughout the past 14 years that I've been blogging, but I've never quite talked about it at length as I'm about to do. The hackwave of 2012 was an unfathomable security breach. It's really difficult to convey in words how much of a disaster it was, but I'll try. But make no mistake: unless you were there, you really can't comprehend it.
Nexon Europe's database got hacked, and all of the log-in data was stolen. As a result, all accounts were in jeopardy overnight. But what was done with this information is what truly showed us the scale of this operation, and how well-prepared and professionally done it was. None of us were adequately prepared for what was going to happen.
It was made clear very early on that this hackwave wasn't some kind of ransomware or an attempt to steal accounts. It was an endless, 24/7 operation where a large group of folks would log onto every single account as many times and destroy as much as possible. The goal wasn't to have your account; the goal was to make everyone give up and quit.
When I say endless and 24/7, it was endless and 24/7. These operators would delete all of your items, but keep all of your characters. Once that's done, they'll repeat this process indefinitely as long as they could log onto your account. And because they were with many, they could log onto accounts en masse ensuring it wouldn't take more than a few days before they'll get back to your account and undo whatever you've managed to recover. This affected everyone.
There were only two ways to combat the hackwave: change your passwords or deny them logging onto your account by being logged in 24/7 yourself. Neither were waterproof solutions. There was no silver bullet. If you've changed your password, you would only delay the inevitable. Lots of people tried to change their PICs but the operators brute forced their way in. If you disconnected or if a maintenance happened, you'd better log back in quick because they'd catch ya off-guard within a few hours. So, as you might've guessed: people sleep. The next morning: an emptied account.
Worst of all is that these were the early days of the internet. People made their accounts between 2007 and 2010. In order to change your password, you'd have to log onto your assigned e-mail and confirm your account details such as your name. This normally wouldn't be a problem... assuming everyone didn't fill in their account creation fields with random gibberish, just so they can get past the log-in screen to play the funny mushroom game with their classmates.
So uhm... I probably don't have to explain the aftermath. I don't have to explain the post-apocalyptic wasteland. I don't have to explain the social fallout. I don't have to explain how many caved in, gave up and never came back. The only thing I will explain however, is for how long this operation was able to continue.
Just because I said that this is the hackwave of 2012, doesn't mean it was over by 2013. In fact, Nexon EU has tried a lot of things but even they were powerless against such an endless operation. I'm sure you can understand that there is not a lot you can really do against this. This was almost a decade before Two-Step Verification became standard. Everyone who couldn't change their passwords would contact customer support, and if everyone flooded them at once then nobody could get helped (in time). To make things worse, how do you even debunk false account details and prove you are the original owner, if there's nothing you can give customer support other than "please trust me"?
To be honest, I don't precisely recall anymore if the following happened in 2013 or 2014, but Nexon EU decided to lock everything up. The idea is, if the hackers can't log onto your account, no further harm can be done. Users would have to contact customer support themselves to unlock that account, and this would allow them to change passwords and such. As you can imagine, nobody can be arsed to do this. Furthermore, the damage has already been done. Those who gave up were unlikely to return. Those who stayed already accepted their loss and lived within this new normal.
Unfortunately, locking everything up did more harm long-term than good, but at the time it was the correct move. To this very day, we still have no idea who were behind the hackwave. Some people told me it was a group of Eastern foreigners, others believed it was one of the terminally online gangs that wanted revenge on Nexon EU for banning them. Either way, all of it remains baseless speculation because Nexon has never named the culprits behind it.
Ultimately, the only thing that proved to work against the hackwave was creating a new account and start from scratch, which hardly is a solution and it had the same outcome as being robbed by the hackwave itself. And if it couldn't get any worse, I can attest to those who created a new account but would be purged in 2016. You're screwed either way.
Now, what is interesting to point out is that this incident was significant enough to be indirectly referenced during the quarterly conference calls around this time, as an example given in the quote at the start of this chapter. But always read between the fine lines. If Maple has been doing well enough, Nexon will try to butter up their investors. If it's not the case, they'll avoid talking about it unless their investors specifically ask about it (i.e. regional underperformance).
Return to Table of Contents
3. Point of no return
"And also and I noticed that Europe and North America continues to be quite weak, so I was hoping to get some color on when you expect those two regions to turn around"
"Going in product by product I'd say we're watching Maple Story very closely. We've got a tier one content update going on in Q2 for MapleStory. It's had a rougher road in the last couple quarters than it did previously and so we're watching that closely.
Switching to North America and Europe, we -- switching to North America and Europe we're -- we are working very hard on a couple fronts. One that we've talked about before is operational improvements that happen sort of under the hood in both those regions, so better execution." - Owen Mahoney, Q1 2013.
So, you can imagine that an incident of such proportions wouldn't be without ramifications. In fact, it's even worse that this happened to one of the few games that Nexon EU had to offer, and it was among their most important cash cows.
For the years that followed, reading the conference call transcripts show that Europe as a whole has consistently been forecasted to underperform. Not that these forecasts meant that Nexon EU was doing poorly - far from it. There have been quarters where Europe has performed beyond expectations, but those have unfortunately been rare and too few.
Now, in terms of the actual state of MapleStory Europe around these couple of years - it was rough. For starters, in the aftermath of the hackwave, Anna had to leave her position as the producer for EMS. I know I should dedicate an entire chapter about Anna herself, but I think what I wrote back in 2021 pretty much sums it up. If anything, not having her to continue to run EMS was a big mistake on Nexon's end because it only got worse from here.
 |
As someone who made sprites around this time, I participated in 2011's "design a pet for EMS" contest.
The concept for remote-controlled pet vehicles may not have won but we did see the Mini Bus pets later.
|
I honestly do not know who was responsible for the period between 2013 up till 2016, but all the wind was blown out of the sails of EMS at that point. Updates were rolled out on a snail's pace, certain updates were delayed by a full year. A notable difference around this time was the declining amount of EMS exclusive content. Our World Tour Veracent and the Supreme server were developed during the tail end of Anna's first tenure (2007~2013). EMS was also known for its European (themed) events; their quality and quantity of which steadily declined as well. Another feature that slowly dwindled over time was player-based polling for content. We had some influence on which updates we could choose, there were contests where players could design their own cosmetics (i.e. Shark, designed by Cristophery from EMS) and we even had a crossover event with MSEA where we could compete with SEA players for rewards. Most notably, an unfulfilled contest was one for an EMS exclusive class; the winning entry was an Early modern Europe era* fencing class which ultimately became the inspiration for MONAD's Alika, which also happened to continue Veracent's story.
*Early modern Europe was a frequent inspiration for the look and feel of EMS exclusive content. One notable example is our event NPC Charles.
However despite this period, slowly but surely EMS recovered both in terms of players and revenue. In fact, around 2015~2016 it felt like the hackwave never happened. The environment to play around in was also really good. Game Masters were frequently involved with the community both in-game and on the forums. The Terms of Use mattered so you couldn't get away with exploiting bugs, bullying other players through megaphones, using inappropriate names on characters and bots were pretty much non-existent. If there were problems, contact with Nexon Europe was not too far away and the developers were working together with us - a fact that will be important in the next chapter. So it may not have been all that great in terms of an update schedule, but everything else catered towards our needs in spades.
Around this time, Owen Mahoney - who promoted to CEO - saw an opportunity to bolster business in the EU.
"Turning to Europe. The financial contribution from this region remains small, but our efforts to reignite the business took a meaningful step forward in Q1. Specifically, we will be relocating Nexon Europe from its current base in Luxembourg to new space in Berlin. This relocation is intended to put us in a better environment for hiring, as Germany is now a leading talent center in the European game industry. The move should be completed in the third quarter." - Owen Mahoney, the CEO of Nexon during Q1 2015.
Unfortunately, this decision was seemingly not enough for Nexon Europe to get back on track. Even if playing EMS around this time was in a much better state than 2012~2013, EMS alone isn't enough for the EU branch to live off. And looking back at the quote from Q1 2013, it does seem that the aforementioned "operational improvements that happen sort of under the hood in both those regions" was possibly hinting towards preparations for the migration in 2016.
Return to Table of Contents
4. Migration and purge
"Lastly, I'd like to touch on our business in the West. We have recently made several changes to our Western organization by centralizing and integrating some of our operations there to better serve our Western player base. Previously, we had three entities responsible for operations in the West: Nexon America for PC publishing in North America, NEXON Europe for PC publishing in Europe, and NEXON M for mobile publishing in the U.S. and the EU. We've now consolidated Nexon America and NEXON Europe, and all of our future PC and console publishing operations in the West will be managed out of Nexon America." - Owen Mahoney, the CEO of Nexon during Q4 2017.
The migration of 2016 has probably been the most important update in the history of EMS. So many things changed - for better or worse. And while I am mostly negative about the migration and its long-term consequences, not all of it has been inherently bad as evident from the few positives we'll discuss in a bit. It's just that there has been little to no effort to support EMS under the new management of Nexon US because it only caters to the interests of GMS. Even worse, some of their decisions in favor of GMS have had grave consequences for the longevity of EMS as a whole.
Now, what even is this "migration" I speak of, and why was it beneficial to EMS during the first couple of years? The idea is to consolidate the EU and US branches and all of their product offerings. For MapleStory, they'd consolidate the launcher and unify the update schedule moving forward. They would migrate all the account data to Nexon US.
An understandable decision, if we were to look at the European underperformance at the time. While profitable, you'd still run the costs of the EU office. With a consolidation, you would only have to pay for the European servers. At least, that is the theory. In practice, it is incredibly complicated and it's very likely that the preparations for the migration has been worked on between 2013 and 2016 by whichever team succeeded Anna's in the aftermath of the hackwave.
Despite Nexon EU and US would consolidate, GMS and EMS remained separate entities. This is an important detail*, and the main reason why I'm always correcting anyone who erroneously uses the term merge over migration. Nexon US has always-but-once been referring to the process as a migration. When looking at the finer details, there's a good reason why in the case of MapleStory this wasn't called a merge but a migration.
*Not all games during this consolidation were as fortunate as EMS. While EMS accounts and its servers were migrated over to the new client, other games like Mabinogi Europe were not so lucky. European Mabinogians would have to start from scratch on the American servers on a new account.
The abridged answer is that everyone owns an American and an European account. I'll save you the technical details of the migration process but essentially there is no singular account. It's a two-in-one package and internally they do make the distinction between the two because they are separate. If you charge cash in EMS, you can only spend it in EMS. If you've unlocked an achievement in GMS, that's only for GMS. There is no "GMS Luna", because characters created on Luna are assigned to your European account. This also means that "once per account" results in "once for GMS" and "once for EMS", like how you can't do 3x Urus on both Scania and Bera but you can in Scania and then on Luna. If it truly was a merge, you'd have characters from Luna thrown in Scania. So yes, by all technicalities you can double-dip events but then I'll also remind you that if you are MVP Black in GMS, you are MVP Bronze 0 in EMS*.
*Because billing for GMS and EMS are separate, Nexon could in fact cook the books by exploiting players to pay on both as they've consolidated the American and European financial results starting Q1 2020. This may be something they could resort to if they ever need to appease investors.
While there's nothing wrong with the idea behind this migration, everything surrounding its process has been a mess. Consolidating both Nexon US and EU had the risk of being unable to cater to the needs for one of either playerbase, seeing as the needs for GMS are not the same as those for EMS. In an ideal world the consolidated Nexon branches can offer for both. However, that is simply not something that could ever happen for a branch as small as Nexon US, who has also been underperforming for many years around this time. And if anything has been proven in these nine years under the management of Nexon US, is that whoever's behind the wheel for MapleStory is important as they get to decide which of the two continents they'll cater towards the most. We've seen both sides catered with mixed results.
But before we dive deeper, let me explain the lead-up and what followed around the migration's announcement. It might be hard to believe for players from GMS, but the way Nexon EU treated their customers was much more long-term oriented than Nexon US. Yes, while it was true that we had many things in common - Slash Blast DEM and vac bots, mass duplication exploits ruining the economy and its customer support having an awful reputation - but never would your account be deleted, or your characters removed every once in a while. Because Nexon EU was small, it could not afford to lose players. The entire game operated on this idea that you could always return and pick up where you left, like
OSRS. This is how our community worked and it also thrived on it, as any MMO should.
Now, Nexon US did not understand or care. One of the first major missteps they did was not delivering on the promise that Nexon EU gave us. The biggest problem with the migration was the purge. The process of migrating required us to opt-in to the Nexon US Terms of Use to have your stuff transferred. Y'know, standard procedure. After the migration happened, Nexon EU promised that whoever missed out during this half year period could still migrate, but would be placed in a queue for later. Basically, transfers were scheduled to be done regularly, like public transport. Anyone that missed out were in time for the next. Because what company is retarded enough to delete accounts in short notice?
You've already guessed: none of these promises were kept. Only anyone that migrated in this half year could continue on their account. Everyone else that missed out had their entire account deleted. Customer support will not help you to restore your account. And you know what the worst part is? It's not the sheer amount of accounts lost, or the fact that everyone that had their account locked (because of the hackwave) could not migrate unless they unlocked it first. It's also not that numerous transfers were not properly done (where characters ended up on wrong accounts) or that GMS accounts using the same e-mail as your EMS accounts caused many problems. The worst phenomenon is that Nexon accounts were migrated over, but not together with the corresponding MapleStory account details. These so-called "half-migrated" accounts that have the log-in but none of their characters are the bane of my existence.
As I am affiliated with many in EMS, I did try to get as many players migrated as possible. Obviously, there's no way I could get everyone across the finish line. For someone as introvert with ASD/CFS as I am, it was incredibly difficult to get in touch with everyone, assuming I could still reach out to them. It was a race against the clock, and for everyone that I failed to migrate over, it's a burden I'm cursed to forever carry. So, you might ask: how bad can it possibly be?
On the last day before the migration, there were three million characters made in EMS between the 12th of April 2007 and the 16th of November 2016. This includes characters made during the Alpha/Beta on either the Kradia, Demethos and Supreme servers. On the first day on Luna... three-hundred thousand. 90% of the playerbase, gone overnight. My biggest concern was not those who got migrated and would continue to play. It were those who would inevitably return with no account left simply because they were out of the loop for a few months. That's such a stupid policy to have...
5. Starting with 300k
"You can't migrate them all Ray, but focus on those you can." - Carthager, member of FallenAngel.
We were off to quite a challenging start on our new server. But how exactly did we even get to the server name Luna?
Well, as you probably have guessed by now: the EMS tradition of polling. We were presented a handful of names to choose from. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to keep Kradia or Demethos because these already exist in GMS - even though EMS Kradia/Demethos predates the American counterparts. That's bollocks.
There was a poll for the new server name of Kradia, and another for Demethos. As you can imagine, server discord is a tale as old as time, hence why this was immortalized in the Kradia Pride and Demethos Pride medals to remind us of that fact. Kradia was by far the largest server of the two, and we were as petty as humans can be. Anyone could enter the polls, so we voted for the best name for Kradia, and the worst one for Demethos. Demethos did the same to us. As we reap what we sow, Nexon US took the piss on us before the new servers even started. Yup, we had it coming.
Officially, Kradia won the name Elysium, and Demethos won the name Luna. This was the original plan. Nexon US decided last minute to consolidate both Kradia and Demethos into Luna on the very last minute. This was so much of a late revision that on the day of the migration, the name for our new server was a mixed tomfoolery of Elysium, Luna and Scania. There was no consistent naming scheme and it was all over the place. But the reason why they settled on Luna is because the combined votes from both polls had accumulated in Luna's favor, so us voting to force Demethos with Luna backfired. Elysium was given to a server in GMS later, but ironically we could've easily just stuck with Kradia in the end because not even GMS Kradia, Demethos or Elysium have survived the many GMS server merges.
Now, what about the new server? In some ways it was awful, really. You see, we actually had more content than GMS around this time. When the migration happened, most content that did not exist in GMS were not carried over, such as the first
Neo Tokyo. And because so many accounts were deleted, many worthless items we had an excessive amount of became the
most expensive items on the server. This is still true today. Furthermore, marriages, the friend list and guilds were all reset. Some items were permanently deleted too, and we received no compensation including for paid items or paid systems no longer present. As you can imagine, this is not a good first impression of our new managers.
Even worse, a lot of great fundamental features of EMS were not carried over*. All those Game Masters I mentioned? Fired. Forum moderation? Missing. The Terms of Use? Spineless; bloody useless. Bots? Now everywhere. Duey was removed, as much as the (offline) message system that's commonplace in most other versions including KMS. To say that it was an infuriating experience is an understatement. GMS fully lived up to its abysmal reputation it had built up. We went from having a zero tolerance policy to having no policy at all. Recent incidents has proven that's a bad idea.
*An extensive list is out of scope for this blogpost but let's not forget the many problems caused by Additional Options and Star Force during the migration and the problems caused by their later reworks including the infamous "double-flamed" items and the few of these that still exist on EMS.
Consider yourself lucky if you are either oblivious or ignorant to what other versions of MapleStory are doing. For me, having such an extensive knowledge has certainly soured my enjoyment of EMS. In particular the handling of the past two years of content, with the most egregious being (permanently) skipping major content updates and fun events. Now, imagine the many problems we're inevitably going to face when they'll backport all of it, after "Go West" is over.
Of course, not everything was bad. For starters, we went from 14 to 20 channels. And we were going to need them, because the migration had a terrific rejuvenated interest from both EMS and GMS players alike. Our small ass server became the second largest populated server of both EMS and GMS, after Reboot. This is no small feat, especially not after the hackwave and purge. Despite all the shit, getting EMS back on track somehow worked...
However, all of this good fortune would not last very long. Because simply put, Dennis did not flipping care for EMS.
6. Stranglehold
"Looking at the data and their future patch plans, he said that they need to correct the mistakes that they made 10 years ago. Therefore, Reboot World will be changed to be the same as regular worlds over three updates." - Max from Orange Mushroom's Blog, transcript from KMST ver. 1.2.177, 2024.
The true test of time had begun. Under normal circumstances, all regional versions of MapleStory are region blocked. For most of the existence of EMS up till the migration, players from Europe could only play EMS. But since, everyone has the freedom of choice to choose between servers from either EMS or GMS. This of course, goes both ways.
During the heydays under Nexon Europe's management, Kradia would see all of its channels at least half full during prime time. This was around the early days of 4th Job. This was quite good, and for the longest time I believed this is the best EMS could do. As the migration shone the light on Luna, we've seen an unbelievable player count by 2018.
In particular, 2018 saw the
Black update. This update was heavily advertised, and of course it was a historical update because it released the Black Mage as the next raid boss. The main event was a server-wide invitation for everyone to participate in, where the true MMO experience came to life. Even with six additional channels, Luna managed to get every channel 75% full around prime time at minimum! This became the new record for EMS, and it has never seen these numbers ever again. However, this has proven that even under Nexon US, we can achieve success together.
Though this was also a great time of discord. With the removal of the official EMS website and its forum, we basically got tossed in the American cesspool. Unfortunately, there's quite a stark difference in politeness and ideology. Culture gap, or cultural differences - if you will. Going into the history of Reboot's exceptional popularity uniquely to GMS is a completely different subject matter that I will never do the displeasure of ever writing, because that's the equivalent of a career suicide and I already have too many who have wished me dead since I was born. But, to say that Reboot's popularity has been very polarizing and invasive is an understatement. I probably shouldn't have to explain any of this.
However, what I will say about it, is that Reboot has not helped EMS at all. For the longest time, any criticism towards it has been swept under the rug by those who want Reboot to be successful. Obviously, pot meets kettle. But nobody can deny that because Reboot is by far the largest population within the conglomerate, it has siphoned players away from all other servers. It has taken many years and pushback from the oppressed for it to be socially acceptable to criticize Reboot. However, at this point this cesspool has been ongoing for so long, that irreversible harm was done.
When asked by players to which server they should go to - the default answer has always been Reboot. You can't just suggest anything else without pushback. You can't even reason with most of them, or with the hive-mind mentality that it brought. With 90% of EMS accounts deleted, those who wished to return would be sent to Reboot by majority vote. Even if those who sent them shouldn't be allowed to meddle with our region to begin with, or speak in behalf of us. But that's the reality of the situation, and it's shown the stupid amount of power GMS could exert over EMS post-migration.
Now, you might rightfully point out: "well, if you don't like this, do something about it or suck it up". Believe it or not, but my work did not stop with the migration as I've continued to support and help players from EMS - Reboot or not. I'll tell you this: social responsibility is a full-time job. For as many conversations I have with everyone, there's not much I can do against the freedom of choice. Sometimes, it's as simple as "my friends told me to play on Reboot". And as much as I can spend hours in conversations lecturing why they shouldn't play Reboot and stick to Luna, you should be able to understand that by the time they've picked servers, they've already made up their mind. I can only do/try so much.
But nothing relays the damage as good as some ol' fashioned numbers. As you can recall, in the first nine years under Nexon EU, the combination of Kradia, Demethos and Supreme produced three million characters. Since the migration, we started out with three-hundred thousand. Nine years later... we're still under a million. That's not a lot, now is it?
To give context on how few this is, let me remind you that during the first nine years, owning more than five characters wasn't commonplace until at least after the Legends update of mid 2012 which introduced us to Link Skills. Nowadays, anyone that's seriously invested will easily surpass fifty characters - artificially inflating the numbers. Going from 300k to 960k is concerning because it says we've barely garnered players after nine years. By comparison, GMS Reboot (Kronos) has accumulated seven million characters since the 2nd of December, 2015. Not even the record-breaking results from Black managed to be meaningful for Luna. It was an isolated incident; an exception to the rule.
It's not that MapleStory has been struggling to find players. Far from it. Solis (the European Reboot), has only existed since the 25th of July 2018. It hasn't even run more than half of Luna's lifespan yet it now has 700k characters, that's more characters created than Luna since the migration. This proves that it's not a problem of a lack of players, but it proves that Luna now has to compete with too many servers. We only have enough time to play on one, after all.
We'll discuss additional reasons for Luna's decline in the next chapter, but first I'll have to mention a key observation in all of this. In a way, the region block that forces Europeans to play EMS during Nexon EU's tenure has proven itself to be paramount for its success. With it gone, it's shown that even under the best of circumstances, when left rudderless without Nexon's intervention, it simply cannot stand on its own because players are siphoned away. With region block, you'd at least stick players together and it would be protected from what unwanted foreigners have to say about it.
But I hope you can at least (start to) understand why I believe that GMS and EMS cannot simply co-exist in its current state. As they say: those who seek to please everybody please nobody.
7. Watermelon
"
Global MapleStory also exceeded our outlook, but declined year over year compared to the record-high sales in Q1 2024 driven by a large and highly anticipated update. However, service in the Western markets continued to demonstrate strength with a 35% year-over year revenue growth, driven by the hyperlocalized content developed by our team in Los Angeles." -
Shiro Uemura (CFO),
Q1 2025.
Don't listen to the Go West propaganda spewed by the likes of Inkwell. I'd much rather take the words of Nexon's CFO than the dirtbag with an ego the size of a planet. Because if there's something that has been more damaging than the invasive species that is the Reboot hive-mind, is bad management from Nexon US that doesn't properly care about us.
Actions speak louder than words. That is a life lesson I've had to learn the hard way after paying the ultimate price for it. As mentioned before, the migration wasn't off to a great start, nor has been the support for regular servers like Luna. This support has declined even further in the past couple of years as not only are we skipping (parts of) major events, we're also deliberately not including updates that would've greatly improved the game's experience. The most drastic update in over a decade was the (Additional) Potential revamp, which infamously has remained exclusive to KMS for over a year now. It's diabolical that highly desirable updates are withheld from us. It only fuels player dissatisfaction.
This doesn't help if Nexon wants to have a better position on the (European) market. It's not going to happen without effort; we're too smart for that. But Europeans will certainly throw money at our screen if you've earned it. I'll remind ya that while we are technically part of the GMS conglomerate, we're rarely included for official GMS contests, the merch store, or MapleFest for that matter. They want to have their cake and eat it too, but refuse to put in the required work.
For starters, Nexon has not been investing enough to promote the game in the west. While it certainly doesn't warrant the
monstrous advertising budget that KMS has earned, something would still better be nothing. While it's true that we do see advertisements for the conglomerate, it's only for big updates like Black. That update has proven that it works and that advertising should be done regularly. It may not convince everyone, but it increases the odds of seeing older players return and possibly entice new ones. Because if you don't, the alternative is that other games who frequently advertise will take the initiative. In this industry, we're all competing for a limited amount of customers, after all.
And if the lack of enticing players doesn't help, the current state under Inkwell's rule is undoing years of hard work as he's disfiguring the game for short-term revenue, without concern for the irreparable damage his decisions will cause. Not to mention the way they treat their staff, in particular the revolving door of community managers, is a meatgrinder compared to Nexon EU. They've certainly chosen to not to improve their otherwise
poor reputation, if anything.
While it's true that ever since the migration we've seen a genuine improvement on frequent bugfixes and patches (yes, this wasn't even commonplace from Nexon EU in the aftermath of the hackwave), the quality of Nexon US has been incredibly inconsistent. It's entirely decided by whoever's behind the wheel, and has proven to be nowhere as good as what we had pre-migration. If you ask me, Nexon US has only seen one good producer in these nine years.
As I've said earlier, Nexon US caters towards GMS, for better or worse. Long-term commitment, a healthy economy and stable client are exchanged for spectacle, short-term growth and unwise ideas. Players refuse to read and have increasingly become against anything from KMS, forming conclusive judgement before even seeing anything but are willing to give the likes of Inkwell a
free pass to dupe them. Post-migration EMS has seen at least four producers*, the results of which have been varied. Not in a good way. But what has been fascinating to see is the divide in reception between the GMS folks and us players from Europe for each producer's body of work. The only producer that was in favor of EMS was our producer Anna herself - who returned for a second tenure in 2020, which only lasted two years.
*The reason why I emphasize "at least four" is because we know little to what happened to Anna's understudy, Sally. We only know that she was supposed to succeed Anna alongside Mjolnir but we've never heard anything from her. Mjolnir took over and brought back Dennis until Inkwell.
To say that her second tenure was controversial for GMS players is an understatement. However, the decisions she's made has been typical of how EMS was ran before the migration. Hard calls are made and unhealthy meta's are dealt with but I cannot understand the polarizing reception from certain players. Of course, I understand that vocal minority doesn't represent all of GMS, as much as I was not involved with
this (if I was, I would've told them they are naïve and
should know better by now) but it does show us that GMS and EMS really do have different needs and should never have been consolidated under the same management. But I'll be remiss to not acknowledge the fact that whenever EMS is underperforming, it now has the benefit of its rivalling servers dragging its corpse through the mud so that it can live another day. It's at least something because I'm sure they would've shut EMS down, were it still independent.
I'll probably also have to talk a bit about the
Dutch Trade Restrictions. If you aren't from EMS, you might find it hard to believe that a majority of EMS players are from The Netherlands. Heck, if you've paid attention in chapter 1, even the CEO at the time acknowledged this himself during the 2012 Q2 conference call in the midst of the hackwave. You can imagine that these restrictions have done a lot of damage. In fact, Nexon had to get rid of these in their other games after it costed them a fortune. But for whatever reason, the MapleStory conglomerate is one of the few that has yet to remove it, which leads me to believe they'll only remove it out of necessity. At least, we're allowed to smuggle items...
8. So, what now?
"The numbers appear green from the outside, but it's red from the inside like a watermelon." - My dad.
To be honest, Inkwell returning to helm another MapleStory project could not have been timed worse. EMS has gone through so many incidents against it and Inkwell is yet another bad day. Recovering and thriving again seems such an impossible task, but looking at how KMS managed to make a full recovery after Inkwell's disastrous first tenure* has proven that with the right amount of diligence and commitment, it can happen. But
who am I even kidding, am I right?
*Out of scope for this blogpost, but Inkwell's first tenure burned everyone's goodwill in no time. It did so much damage that Nexon had to admit and apologize to their investors, start the Donxon campaign and they had to develop an entire game with MapleStory 2 as a contingency plan. KMS was bleeding much worse than either GMS or EMS at the time, and it costed Nexon a fortune to steer that ship, especially with MapleStory 2 bombing.
Reading the conference calls of the past few years, it appears that Nexon will continue to (as they call) "hyperlocalize" their regional versions of MapleStory. But as I'm sure you've painstakingly read this blogpost, you realize... this is not anything new. It's been how MapleStory has always operated. In fact, I'll go so far as telling you that the pretentious slop that is "Go West" isn't special and that every other version is doing the same right now, as it has always been. It's just that they slapped a fancy label to it, which means nothing to anyone who hasn't religiously kept up with the latest news. Though GMS is known for its subpar localization and has a history of unnecessarily labelling/renaming things.
What is even worse about this campaign is that it somewhat works. While there's an increasing amount of dissatisfied players who try to push the needle, there's still a baffling amount of ill-informed players who either mistakenly praise updates that originate from other regional versions (including KMS) and erroneously give Inkwell credit for it (as GMS exclusives), or pretend that we wouldn't have gotten the content without him.
Besides, every once in a while I do genuinely wonder why Nexon US hasn't tried more of the TMS playbook or other low hanging fruit such as the Master Label set, MVP-exclusive channels or Maple Coin Exchange. They keep shooting themselves in the foot and after all this time I'm still not quite sure if it's because they fear backlash or are just stupid.
I also find it bizarre that they put so much emphasis on bringing back Kwang-hyun Lim and assigned him as the GMS Development Lead. As he was
the former KMS Art Director, one might not expect someone of his stature to be suited as a development lead, but who am I to judge? Good for him, I guess. I'll be remiss not to mention the observation that the artstyle of our "exclusive" Go West content returns to his more familiar, old-fashioned style... Not a coincidence.
Now, unfortunately the timing of this blogpost has been incredibly poor, or poignant - depending on who you ask.
It's been nine years since the purge, and two weeks before I started writing this blogpost, but Nexon confirmed: what better way to celebrate it, but with
another one? We don't even have the luxury of six months. In less than two months, anyone that didn't log in since 24 September 2022 will be deleted. However, unlike last time I'm not concerned. While I can assure you that I'll try to save as many as possible, I do so with knowing that at least this time it'll hurt Reboot way more than it would hurt us. "
Een kale kip kan je niet plukken". The big question is... how many will we lose this time?
But as I said that today's blogpost is nuanced, that's also because despite the lackluster state EMS is going through, I have no reason to believe it's going to close any time soon. Even if Nexon gives up on the European market, Luna has many high-profile spenders who have been lavishly spending for years and show no signs of slowing down. The reality of the situation is a cynical one: EMS is unlikely to end in a climactic manner and operates between a rock and a hard place until either someone at Nexon gives it a mercy kill like how Changseop did for Reboot, or someone who shows with the same interest in Europe as Seungwoo Choi or Owen Mahony did a long time ago. It's quite an uphill battle.
The current campaign is scheduled to at least continue until 2027, but I'm very curious to see if the campaign will even last that long. By now, everything has been broken by Inkwell's circus, and while they can tryhard exclusive content all they want, we know there's a limit to how much you can steer away from KMS until the system collapses under its own ambition. But if anything, exclusivity in Nexon's terms just usually means highway robbery and nothing more. I'd wish EMS could exist in a better environment and I would've been convinced to recommend this game if we had the major updates and events we missed out on. I've been increasingly starting to envy our South Korean neighbors by the year.
Anyway, I'll wrap it up for today. To be honest, this casual write-up has been good for my state of mind. My outlook on life hasn't been stellar lately, to say the least. Do not misunderstand me when I say that MapleStory is by no means important to me. I have too much time on my hands and it's a pastime like anything else, but it's also suffering from the same problems. The eternal status quo; the decline of the few I enjoy, and a losing battle I'm unlikely to overcome. It's David and Goliath, but as long as it continues, there's always a chance. And that's all it needs: a perpetuated chance.
Cheers everyone, let's hope the next nine years on EMS isn't going to be hell. We're all in this together, whether if you like it or not. EMS is like gokiburi. We've survived much worse, and you'll find it quite difficult to get rid of us.
No comments:
Post a Comment