An all-nighter in MapleStory Classic World: six hours, midnight to 6 a.m.

Our experience

At six in the morning I closed the laptop after a full night, midnight to sunrise, on the new MapleStory Classic World server. And I already want to go back.

I am not new to this. Every year or two I come back to MapleStory for a month or two, then drift away again. Over the years I have tried almost every job, and my favorite has always been the pirate, for its skills and its play style. The pirate is not in Classic World yet, so this time I went with a thief.

The best moment came right at the start: making a new character and finding that everyone around you is also low level, just starting out. That feeling is almost impossible to get in a game that is more than twenty years old. Over the night I made it through all the main towns and reached level 16. That does not sound like much for six hours, and that is exactly the point: the pace is slow, so you actually experience the game instead of rushing through it.

Credit: Nexon, via Steam

The most frustrating moment: in Kerning City I spent an hour trying to get an item that drops from the octopuses, for a quest. I never got it. Every channel has so many players hunting the same monsters that there are simply none left. The same crowding makes every “kill this many monsters” quest harder.

What is actually in the game

The game ran smoothly all night: no lag and no disconnects. I played through the Nexon Launcher on a laptop.

The community is thriving. There are player shops everywhere, and chat never stops. Bots, the most common complaint on the forums, never crossed my path.

The pace is slow, and I like it that way. I enjoy the grind. Money is a bit tight, but not terrible. What does sting is how rarely items drop.

The Crafting system, which lets you make items yourself, won me over, though it takes a lot of grinding. I have not reached Citizenship, which gives perks to a town’s residents, yet. The real-money Cash Shop is small and not crowded with items, but the expensive bundles are hard to miss.

Credit: Nexon, via Steam

Some dry facts: Classic World is a separate client from regular MapleStory, for Windows and macOS, through Steam or the Nexon Launcher. It launched for everyone on 21 October at 18:00 UTC, after two weeks of early access for buyers of Founder’s packs. Every character starts as a Beginner on Maple Island and later picks one of four jobs: warrior, magician, bowman or thief. The level cap is 100, an account can have up to three characters, and Xbox and PlayStation controllers work too. According to Nexon, the Forgotten Hollow area opens in November. On 22 October Nexon also added a debt system against players who trade in-game currency for real money.

A little history

MapleStory launched in South Korea on 29 April 2003, made by the studio Wizet, which became part of Nexon. It reached North America on 11 May 2005, and Steam in 2012.

In 2010 the Big Bang update rebuilt large parts of the game: it changed the maps and the interface, and made leveling much faster. Ever since, many veterans say the “old Maple” is gone. Classic World is Nexon’s answer to that nostalgia: a recreation of the game as it was before the Big Bang, announced at the game’s 20th anniversary event.

Real money in MapleStory has a history too. In January 2024 South Korea’s Fair Trade Commission fined Nexon about 11.6 billion won, around $8.9 million, saying it misled players about the odds of the Cube items sold in the game. So when pricey bundles show up in the shop, it is worth remembering.

What players are saying

In the discussions on MapleStory’s Steam page, the same complaints keep coming up. The popular training maps are packed and players fight over every monster, exactly what I ran into in Kerning City. Several players call bots the biggest problem, though I did not notice it, and some say you can hardly progress without buying shop currency to resell. Players want more Party Quests, more channels or another server, and the areas and third job that have not arrived yet, like Orbis and El Nath. What they praise is the slow, familiar pace, and the feeling that this is finally the game they remember.

Who is it for

Everyone, really. If you have never played MapleStory, this is a rare chance to start an old game together with everyone else, from the same starting line. And if you played years ago and miss it, you get the thrill of the beginning back.

I am definitely staying. What I would most like to see next is the pirate, arriving in this world too.