Maple Story

Maple Story is considered the classic success story of the free MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game) cluster, only bowing to Runescape in terms of popularity in Europe and America. It has over 50 million users worldwide and servers in 14 different locations, making it one of the most broadly disseminated games online. Maple Story is available as a free-to-play, Internet browser-based game, although a small download is initially required for the game to function. Unusually for an MMORPG, the game is two-dimensional in appearance and runs on a side-scrolling platform. This is allows for the low graphical complexity of the game to function on many machines; like Rune-scape, one of Maple Story's great strengths is that many low-performing computers can cope with the game engine, and thus it is disseminated in a far wider context than many other MMORPGs which require top-end processors and graphics cards to run.

Maple Story follows the conventions of most role-playing games. The player takes control of an avatar and completes quests or kills monsters in order to gain experience points, equipment, and treasure. At level eight or 10, players are able to choose a class—warrior, bowman, mage, or thief (pirate is also available in some versions), and are allowed to assign points gained through levelling in order to specialize within each class. As with most MMORPGs, these classes teach a series of specific abilities that players use to create characters with diverse skills. These allow players to form a character that is specialized in one area, rather than a master of all talents, in a direct echo of the class system created by the progenitor of all MMORPGs, Dungeons & Dragons. Interestingly, the ability to become a healing class, one of the staple abilities for many MMORPGs, is not available until level 30. Joining groups or forming more long-term relationships by forming guilds with other players is possible, but the game does not place as much emphasis on group play; this is a result both of the age bracket targeted and the capabilities of the game itself.

Maple Story has been criticized for the fact that despite advertising itself as “free-to-play,” users buy in-game currency (Mesos) with real money in order to buy themselves more powerful equipment, to change their appearance, and to purchase vanity objects such as pets. The act of charging players for secondary services either within or to improve the game's performance is, in fact, a relatively common action in nonsubscription games; Runescape and Silkroad Online provide premier servers to paying members, and Second Life (although not technically a game) functions almost wholly through the trade of Linden for real money (and vice versa). As with many free-to-play MMORPGs, the game tends to attract younger players who are not able to sustain the cost of playing subscription MMORPGs such as World of Warcraft. The content, narrative, and actions undertaken within the game tend to reflect this, including the formation of less complex social structures.

The game is represented through anime-style graphics as well as expressing visual, narratological, and ludic conventions familiar to both the anime and role-playing game genres. However, the play style is often criticized for the excessive amount of “grinding” (repeated activity of the same task to gain experience or coin) needed to progress; a strategy used by many free-to-play MMORPGs to retain players and, sometimes, to cover a lack of narrative complexity. Overall, however, the game's popularity suggests that despite these aspects, it provides a satisfying ludic experience that is supported by the huge amount of players around the world.

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