I haven't played in quite a while, probably several years. The last time I played was when they introduced several alternate classes I think? As in they had that class that fired arrows from the top of a panther as opposed to being just a regular archer.
I did notice that the game had become fabulously casual friendly/generally easier.
This is just going to be me rambling on about some of the differences between old maplestory and the new one so if you want to read ahead be my guest.
Health Regeneration
REMEMBER BENCHES!?!?!? Those areas were the shit back in old maplestory days. See back in the old days you didn't get like, a million bajillion potions just from killing mobs like you do now, you would have to buy potions or try and live off the few potions that would occasionally drop. The drop rate wasn't nearly enough to get you through the grinding necessary, so you had to either buy potions constantly, or you could just plonk your ass down on some benches and recover health at like...what was it 15hp instead 10hp at a time I think? Jesus it took forever to get anywhere in that through that method. However, I will say that I definitely like the fact that it was sort of a general area for people to just kind of hang out while waiting for hp to regen.
THEN CAME CHAIRZ! This was probably the solution that Nexon had to people probably complaining about the insanely slow regeneration rate. I think the rate was bumped up to like...50hp per whatever time period. That was pretty sweet. The fact that you could set it up pretty much anywhere was nice too. Yeah, benches were pretty much phased out at this point.
Now, POTIONS EVERYWHERE! The last time I played I was in absolute shock and awe at the potions that just came raining down on my face as I killed mobs. I was ACTUALLY SELLING POTIONS FOR MESOS. To be quite honest this blew my goddamn mind, but I honestly say that I liked this change in maplestory because it was MUCH easier to level up and constantly kill mobs without having to take a break. You can say that the game got easier/more casual, but I think that is a pretty good thing for maplestory. I feel like one of the main strengths it has is the seriously low system requirements, and the fact that tons of gamers have at least tried it because their friends were into it. I know I tried to get back into it several times because of that and it would have been nice to be able to quickly catch up to my friends.
Stat distribution!!
WHERE DO I PUT MY STATS?!?!? So, back in the old maplestory days you had the fantastic freedom of freely allocating your stats in whatever manner you desire. Sounds great right? Wait, I need dexterity in order to equip warrior stuff? BUT I THOUGHT ALL I NEED IS STRANGTH?!?! This probably wasn't a major issue for veterans of the game, but for new and casual players the fact that there basically were optimized stat distributions for each class kind of defeated the purpose of being allowed to freely distribute your stat points in my opinion. All it did was give you the opportunity to screw and have to re-roll a character. >.>
I LOVE THE AUTO-BUTTON! Now this was a thing I noticed in the newer version of maplestory. I believe that you can still individually allocate your stat points, but they included an auto button that I believe probably puts your points in generally the right place to have the right skill levels for the upcoming equipment etc. This was much more casual friend and easier than having to look up builds for each class.
Appearance!
Back in the old maplestory days there wasn't really a cash shop, or if there was it wasn't implemented/advertised very prominently. Also as a guy you had like 3 hair choices that all looked terrible. There was Bald/shaved, Disheveled, or something else that I don't even remember. Maybe it was a bald and shaved as two different hairstyles. Everyone looked the same at lower levels. I mean pretty much everyone. This definitely made the game feel slightly boring in terms of character appearance.
CASH SHOP! So yeah. This one should be obvious. The cash shop opened up a plethora of options for people to customize their character in a variety of ways such as weapons and clothes and hairs etc. I also think that they changed the starter hairstyles to a more reasonable variety of hairstyles as opposed to the old no hair, or messy hair system they had going on. The cash shop was another great improvement, even though I'll never get to use it.
That's really all I can think of at the moment, but I'll admit that I think the highest level I ever got in that game was probably one level higher than the second class upgrade. So...31 I think? So I can't really comment on the end-game in a significant fashion.
Also, MESOS PLOX? MESOS PLZ! FREE MESOS PLOXOR? Yeah. Good times.
