http://maplestory2.nexon.net/en/news/article/56486/service-discontinuation
While I actually enjoyed my time playing MapleStory 2, I guess I’m not surprised about this news. Nexon started off with some lofty goals of listening to the community (to remove the pay2win aspects that were prevalent in the Korean version) for the global version; it was obviously a challenge generating recurring revenue in a free to play title via mostly cosmetic items. Furthermore, there really isn’t much they could do regarding the typical Korean style endgame grind (RNG for example). It also didn’t help that Nexon has had internal organizational challenges after the failed bid to sell the company.
Myself, I sort of stopped playing in 2019; it wasn’t intentional though. Part of my time at the tail end of 2018 was playing Lost Ark (KR OBT) along with TERA. By March 2019, I was playing some other in-development titles including the early alphas of Torchlight Frontiers and Wolcen. In April, it was the Thai OBT of Ascent: Infinite Realm along with TERA’s level 70 update. Basically, MapleStory 2 fell off my radar even though I had plans to resume playing since I didn’t get far with the level 70 expansion (and associated new content). It wasn’t until July when I resumed for a short while (to play the Striker class which I only ended up creating, but never actually played). The Astellia Online CBT (July) and then Guild Wars 2 (starting in August) stole part of my time (while I chronicled my leveling to 70 in TERA) where MapleStory 2 again became out of sight, out of mind until this news.
Most of my characters in the game have the exact same names that I used in Devilian (which sort of makes me feel that I partially doomed this game to failure).
With this news, I’ll probably resume playing to see the game (and my characters there) off. I feel really bad for those folks who invested a lot of time into the game and their UGC, music, and/or home creations.
