Woah long time no see!

Well I took the remainder of November (and the first half of December) to finish up the semester's workload before I could jump on and game it up enough to write about it. However, now I've got a bit to write about, which means the work never ends.

I jumped a few levels up to 35 (mainly because I kept dying) during my trainings in Amoria killing those Sakura Cellions for a decent penny (seriously, the drop smile inducing wads of cash). Of course training them for any length of time is just begging to get your kills stolen and requested that you change channels... And that has just happened way too much there. I don't mind, the game isn't fun if I just power level, so try to sit down and socialize with the other players a bit when I cool down and regenerate. One thing that became apparent while I was there, was that you don't spawn in town when you die, and having not died there before I just now learned this. Hence the reason why it took so long to level--I kept dying over and over until I'd lose about 70% of the Exp bar. And that certainly did suck.

Days later I was still there trying to make up my level to where I was when I'd lost it all, when I saw the most insulting thing ever--two guys waiting on ladders below me until the coast was clear to rake my drops. I came right out and said "not cool..." and they just didn't care. I'm not sure if they're just new to the game, and they don't know any better, or they just don't care. I've seen this happen a lot by accident, but this is the first time I've seen it happen his deliberate though. I feel that proper etiquette should be held to teach them what what is acceptable, and what will make players absolutely hate them.

Which reminds me of the first time I noticed my Fame stat, I had always assumed it to be a prestige system so other characters would know how trustworthy you were, however, it just seems to be a popularity contest anymore... Someone with 100+ fame isn't going to be any more respectable than some guy who was spammed down to -30 fame because some guy's guild thought it'd be funny. Fame is only good for a couple things that I can think of that will actually affect players in the game, and that's equipment or quests--neither of which have I actually encountered yet. The sad thing is though, people will sit around, or run around, selling, buying, or asking for fame. It's completely sad. It just makes me wish Maple Story had RP servers, so people wouldn't focus on the "popularity contest" of the game. There needs to be a better system in the Maple community so that it can't be abused, and thusly proven meaningless.

I recently started on the Christmas quests that have just recently opened up. The new holiday quests seem just a tad broken. The one everyone is making a fuss over is about redeeming the presents that Maple Claws had lost. These presents are harder to drop than the Halloween candies, which means a lot of people are in the free market pawning them for more money than Grubber is willing to pay... The popular strategy is still to stalk slime tree and get a few hundred low level presents to redeem as a level 10-20 for whatever is going to make more money on the free market (either a Maplemas tree (spear) or a Versalmas cactus (polearm). I haven't had much luck finding presents, so I don't think I'll be selling any of the holiday items this year... The Hanukkah quest seems promising, but the altar pieces aren't dropping any better than the presents, and they only come from dark axe stumps--not something I can train on--it is repeatable every 24 hours, and I hear that you get a decent rare potion that you can sell to higher levels for wads of mesos at your choosing. The fake bosses are also back, but I've only been able to fight a few Slime Kings and a Balrog, but the cakes are certainly nice. There is a giant snowman that drops packages of items when you kill him running around, but I haven't seen him yet, but hopefully I'll nab some more cakes before it's all done at the very least.

Went to the Haunted Mansion, and found out that it isn't a place for a level 30 warrior, so I died left to go get some quests done... Found my way over to Orbis for the first time after that traumatizing Balrog raped me on the air ship... And now I just want to go back to Victoria... I haven't met any decent monsters that are easy for a page to kill just yet, and the worst part is that I'm all the way down in Aqua road (w00t!) almost stranded because I can barely afford more potions for the trip up. I plan on getting a few more quests done, and then I'm going to take the ship back to Victoria so I can be in my comfort zone again. Speaking of which, has anybody noticed that this trip takes forever and a day? Why don't any of the other trips take this long? It's like the game is all like "please insert Disc 2"... O.o

Aqua Road Radio just recently had a shindig that I was present at, I'm second from the left on their new banner. It was quite fun, and only had a few people trying to spoil it by spamming racist comments or wanting to buy or sell stuff. Shravan and Warez are pretty nice too, totally down to earth despite coming off as authority figures with their podcast. :P

That's it for now, I've got to down another air bubble before I start choking on sea water again... *glug glug*

Happy Dead Turkey Day!

Alright, it's finally Dead Turkey Day! So I hope everyone enjoys that one outside of the game too. :P

Also, the week is going to be finished out with 2x Exp, because of all the technical errors caused to many users lately, such as people being wiped clean of all their items or something. So hurray for that, it's already jumped me to level 29, perhaps during the twelve hour period tomorrow, I'll reach Pagehood... ^_^

It also seems like there's an event that they're throwing out just to make people buy the NX gift cards to win prizes. There are only about 112 people that are going to win anything assuming people don't win multiple prizes, so I think those are pretty bad odds to make people think they'll win something. I'd definitely buy a ten dollar card if the odds were a bit better for something at least, I mean what is one person going to do with 500,000 maple points anyway? The laptop grand prize I understand though, but why are they giving something of that value away for spending, at the minimum, ten dollars? I don't see this backfiring for the company though, because they've already got an established consumer loyalty with those game cards, so I doubt someone is going to buy just one and end up winning something. Meh, I'll probably only end up buying one for a custom hairstyle or something so I can start looking a bit more unique--the default hairstyles are kinda lame, I mean, they don't even have a bald option...

Enjoy your Turkey, your 2x Exp, and five day weekend from school if you've got one!

Dead Turkey Day Approaches!

So Nexon has already begun their Thanksgiving event goodness, and unlike the Halloween fiasco, it is available to all players--if you're tough enough that is... There are now Turkey commandos running around, and they cause a bit of sting when they're FIRIN'THE LAZER!!!. They do give a decent coin and 41 Exp, and only at about 3xx hit points from what I gather. Everyone wants to tag as many as they can because they drop some decent food items that can be redeemed daily for a quest to get Maple Points (which is basically going to be at a rate of 100pts a day if you're devoted to it) from one of the store vendors in the game. I personally like training on them, because they have much lower avoid ability than the wooden masks in the Excavation Site maps.

I jumped on the game Friday and totally found myself shocked by the fact that there was a CVS and a Target in Henesys... I guess they put them in there during the last patch to make the Thanks giving quest to get Maple points a bit more "articulate"... Personally I was a bit weirded out by it. It just seemed like a rather unnecessary advert in the game that I was hoping didn't end up happening to Maple Story, however it starts to make me wonder a bit. What if they begun to incorporate billboards around random spots that advertised things in real life that were market specific? Something like banner ads on a website. I definitely know this wouldn't be the first video game to pull that off, but I wonder if that would actually be a good idea or not. Hell, I found out about Maple through a banner ad on some website (it was either 8bit theater or VG Cats... I can't remember). The bad side to this happening is that it'l basically generate more revenue and that means Nexon is going to want to exploit that, so a flood of adverts can be a possibility. Either way, I'm interested in seeing what occurs next.

I still haven't gone into the Phantom Mansion! I've been meaning to check it out, because I hear it's a rad maz full of monsters to train on. But the train ticket is much too expensive (I'm a cheap bastard) to visit New Leaf City again, so I've been putting it off. This is why I've never actually taken my high level characters to Orbis, so I've never really been there either. I'll be sure to jump right on that as soon as I get done training on these turkeys and redeeming Maple points (which is going painfully slow, I might add).

I've already made level 26 on my sparse playing schedule, so maybe a realistic plan would be to make level 30 by next weekend--or sooner since I've got time off pretty much the entire week! I'll be sure to post a current screen shot by the end of today, because the one I've got up there now is totally out of date--I haven't worn that helm in ages... So I'll get on that. Be sure to hit me up in game with your opinions on this Holiday's events and whether you approve of advertising affiliates in your towns of choice? Until later! (which might be today, since I've got to update the snap shot)

Oh, I kinda forgot something...

Head on over to Aqua Road Radio for some entertaining perspective on Maple Story and the companies at fault, as your hosts Shravan and Warez give you their two cents and insider tricks to aid in your enjoyment of the game. Definitely give them a listen if you're tired of the in game music, because I'll tell you from experience that it helps... :P

20 Days Later...

Alright, it looks like I didn't reach the level I had anticipated that weekend. I blame myself...myself and responsibilities... I had to take a prologued break in order to pick up the slack that had been dropped on me from school and the regular life issues that pop up, which is fine by me seeing how I was about to stab myself in the eyes with how frustrated I was becoming with all the grinding. The game seems to feel pretty fresh now that I've taken half a month off from it, so now I can get back to trudging onto my job advancement. However, I'm pretty stuck where I am right now, because it's about that time where I'm debating whether to pump my dexterity so I won't run into inaccurate strikes, or create a low dexterity character. I've thought about going the "low dex" route, because the damage is oh so appealing, but I don't think I have the patience for it let alone the Mesos... I'm going to sit on training my dexterity for a while (at least until the next level up anyway), because I really want to start killing some bigger critters.

I get fairly fatigued when I game for prolonged amounts of time, and I believe I have had an instance where I've fallen asleep while the game was still running, however I've noticed that this isn't a freak occurrence in the game. I constantly see people standing in towns, AFK (away from keyboard) or merely just "sleeping" as their away message says. It doesn't occur so extreme in the lower populated channels, but within the first two I found hoards of colorful characters scattered around town sleeping at around 0300 hours. This gave me the overwhelming feeling that there are people who actually live in the game and wake up to play in the morning, which was somewhat frightening in some respects. I can see how people would enjoy being "Famed" or recognized in game, but the power used to run the all of those computers for no reason at all is just mind boggling. Don't even get me started on the server lag that's the result of it... I've been guilty of taking quick naps while I wait for my character to rest and recharge his health, but I wouldn't just leave it be like that, that's just such a waste for everyone else who would like to have a smooth experience in a popular channel without the lag and tackiness of a bunch of people snoozing and asking for fame in the middle of a high traffic area.

Another thing I've noticed is that the Halloween candies are still dropping from enemies... I wonder whether that's because they planned on having more people able to actually have candies in time for next year, or merely because they were too lazy to write them out of the game until October... Whatever the case, I imagine people stockpiling them and eliminating the need for the kill-stealing that occurred so much during the recent Halloween event, which means someone's going to make lots of Mesos if people are still event hungry to get pumpkin baskets. Personally, I actually got turned on to Malady's Candy because they seem to heal quite a bit: 100% HP/MP, 50% HP/MP, and 300 HP MP for blue, green and red respectively. I cashed in about fifty candies right on Halloween because I thought they'd be useless and vanish on November first (silly me), but I only came out with one Green candy... I'd suggest lower level characters selling their candy to higher level characters so that they can buy potions that wouldn't be wasted on a low amount of HP--at least it'd be more profitable than the silly pumpkin basket.

Speaking of Halloween, I still haven't gone into the Haunted Mansion in Masteria yet, despite the fact that it's open to the public. I hear that it wasn't at all worth buying a costume package for five bucks and running around a confusing maze Just for a couple of Event tied quests (which are unavailable now that Halloween is over I believe). As soon as I find enough time to make my way over to New Leaf City, I'll check it out and write up what I think about it, because it sounded very tempting to buy the akaranger outfit just to go in there during Halloween.

What do you think? I'd like to hear your thoughts on the homeless bums in the towns, the continuation of the candy drops, and about the Haunted Mansion. Hit me up in game or leave a comment, and I'll be sure to reply on a timely basis ^_^;;. Until next time! (which shouldn't be too long unless I get caught up writing papers again)

The first week, and the chore it has been...

Alright, I've finally gotten up to level 20 with my hectic gaming schedule, and I'm pretty excited and confident that I can reach level 25 this weekend. Hurray for my impending page-hood!

As far as things I've noticed, I did run into some 2x character asking me if I had 1k mesos. I thought he was begging for money like most people do, so I said I had some for him. He then opens up the trade window and starts placing ores in his offer, and then he said he was selling all of that for 1,000 mesos. It wasn't like two either, it was about 2-3 of about five different kinds of ores! As tempting as it was to pay him such a discounted price, I just couldn't because it just felt wrong. So I parted with 2k instead, because I wasn't sure what the ores amounted to either. I have no idea how he came to that amount, but I've got to impress that players should watch the economy of the game so that they don't get ripped off by underselling their wares or being abused by price gouging.

Another topic that's been worrying me is how the rate of kill-stealing has significantly increased. The reason for this, as I'm sure many of you (if you play the game) have encountered is due to the Halloween event quest. Monsters are now dropping candy at very random moments, so players are going out to kill as many as fast as they can just so they'd have more of a chance for the candy to drop. The candy is then redeemed at Kerning for either a pumpkin basket at a cost of 100 candies or a randomly selected piece of candy in exchange for 10 pieces of candy--which I find makes absolutely no sense what-so-ever (especially there is 25% probability of not getting any candy at all)... I've only seen about two or three characters carrying the pumpkin basket item, so I'm willing to guess the high levels are scoring loads of candy and buying the baskets to sell for oodles of mesos.

Which brings me back to the kill-thieves. They're usually very high level characters camping in low level hunting grounds so they rack up plenty of kills. This is extremely bad news for people below level 30, because all of the good training grounds are usually over crowded and much more frantic about killing for candies. It's been a bit frustrating for my training, because I've noticed it being ten times more difficult to level now than when my previous characters due to the fact that there weren't events like this going on during my low level stages. Hopefully Halloween passes soon and the next holiday doesn't doesn't spur such a free-for-all to hunt for certain rare items. On the plus side, there are plenty of opportunities for me to sell my candy for much appreciated mesos, so long I don't end up so curious as to save them up to attain the special items that will undoubtedly be sold for insane prices later in the Free Market.

I also find myself walking into shops where people are discussing semi-serious real life issues in the game. Upon stumbling in on these awkward moments, I attempt to sell my spoils as fast as I can and get out to limit any chance of eavesdropping. However, I do find amusement in hearing what people talk about in Maple, and what the social scene is like so I do find myself eavesdropping a lot in situations that don't feel invasive to people's actual lives (like relationship issues as an actual example). I wonder what any of the readers (should there be any at all...) think about this, and what you people talk abut in game--do you use it to meet up with friends on a scheduled basis, or do you find yourself talking and friending random Maplers?

Don't be afraid to drop a comment about anything from today's post, I'll be glad to hear your thoughts (and know someone reads this :P).

Every Journey begins at step one...

Robo is an attempt of mine to (finally) make (one of) the best Knight in Windia. My previous attempts were usually thwarted by spur-of-the moment enhancements to deal with the current problems--I kept maximizing skills such as Iron Body, which severely limited my attack power. At any rate, he's fairly new at just over a week old with play time confined to the weekends because I'm quite a busy guy. I plan on using this blog to comment and chronicle my experiences in game, about the game, and any such thing that relates. From here on out, I'll commonly refer to him (Robo) as myself (me) and refer to secondary/tertiary/mule characters in the third person (if another blog arises for them, or I generalize this blog, they would be spoken for in the first person in either case).

So onward and upwards into this strange logic-defying world! Hope to see you around...