Ding! Just fresh from the oven. Events end today, so that's another stack of rewards that contributes towards today's achievement. With Level 291 achieved early, I believe Level 293 as a goal is possible before the end of the year. The next symbol (Level 295) is still a long way off, but there's a lot of EXP-related quality of life updates to look forward to.
To continue on last month's objectives, I was very lucky with the results from all of this season's event cubes. All of my high priority equipment, including my recently-obtained Eternal Shoes, are now fully ranked up to Legendary Potential. This includes Additional Potential as well, and I hit the jackpot with my Reaper's Pendant! It is my first six-liner, which is a significant milestone considering the ridiculous odds of that ever happening. Furthermore, I was also able to land the first Spikes on Shoes, which is kinda funny given last month's tangent. Though now I'm stuck in Return Scroll hell because I do not have the luxury of redoing scrolls on these shoes. If only they sold the scroll in El Nath, like in JMS... As for obtaining the remaining two Eternal equips: I have enough mesos to buy one, but they're currently out of stock.
Anyway, the rush for this blogpost is intentional because I'd like to chime in on the discussion about recent events. Not that I really expect any of this to amount to much, given how meager the viewership is for this blog and how few seem to actually read anything here (especially true for new blogposts), but I do believe that in moments like these it's worth adding to the conversation. I feel like nobody is talking about two major issues and it seems to be caused by a lack of awareness on either subject matters. I'll try to keep it short because this could easily grow into two lengthy blogposts.
It was brought to my attention that multiple language support was recently confirmed for the EMS/GMS conglomerate. It's a legitimate cause for concerns because this was an ill-fated exclusive feature of EMS that caused many unfixable issues for the game. It was supported for about six years but there's good reason why this feature never returned. The technical details on how it worked is beyond the scope of this blogpost; all you need to know is that everything broke. The game is barely functional as it is. Adding more languages multiplies the required effort. EMS started out with five and had to axe two (including Spanish) after four years. The entire system was dropped after the hackwave of 2012 was over. Inkwell is a fool if he believes he can do what Nexon Europe couldn't, especially since this is well-trodden territory. It didn't work for EMS, it barely functions on MapleStory N and anything Go West has a terrible track record.
Now, the other point of discussion is the ousting of Wonky. Specifically: the dude that takes over the entire MapleStory franchise. I'd be careful about rejoicing if I were you, because historically Gaga's up there as one of Maple's worst. For those unaware, Gaga is Inkwell's mentor and his two-year tenure introduced everything we hate about the game. He may not have been the brain behind most of the game's horrendous monetization practices (that was mostly Inkwell's), but Gaga was the one that greenlit it all and then gave his position to Inkwell to further drive the game into the ground. His grossest contribution to MapleStory is the complete removal of all overseas content for Korea MapleStory in 2010; a decision so baffling that after 16 years I still don't know why they insist on enforcing this rule. If you ever wondered why KMS doesn't have certain classes or items, now you know. KMS players have never stopped asking to revert this decision and not even Changseop was able to give a sensible retort. You tell me: do we want the butcher of overseas content to oversee our version? If there's anything that threatens Go West more than its own deranged creator, it's the anti-overseas hardliner who gave the lunatic a career and put classic MapleStory into freefall. You have been warned.
Well, the future of EMS is certainly going to be interesting. Let's see if any of the withheld updates sees global release.
That's it for today - I'll see you guys again next post!