Nexon : Maple Hot Time Fail

So yesterday (1/5/2012) was supposed to be the first of seven days of Hot Time ... well the NPC Cassandra gave everyone a "Here is your reward message" but no items were provided.

This followed with spamming smega's of complaining and the servers going to hell.

What do I mean by going to hell? Well chat was lagged, people could not see chat from Buddies, Guild, or Alliance. Also many people had the perception that they were no longer in a guild and their tag was missing ... this led to many questions and whispers on if their character was removed from the guild or if the guild had been disbanded ... both of these questions in my opinion are ridiculous.

We had sever, chat, and guild issues during the last Hot Time attempt in Scania. So no big surprise for me and it should not have been a huge surprise to anyone else ... if it was, well you are in quite a world of illusion!

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Currently Maple is going through a "Unscheduled Server Maintenance - 01.06.2012"
The say they are addressing "certain issues with item enhancement and monster familiars. Hot Time reward issue and the issues with mastery levels of certain Evan skills"

The notice left (as of 6:00pm EST)

-Time-
Friday, January 6, 2012
Pacific: 10:45 AM - 4:00 PM
Eastern: 1:45 PM - 7:00 PM

-What-
- The following will be unavailable:
All MapleStory game servers
-Fixes-
- Certain issues with item enhancement and monster familiars will be addressed.
- Players who participated in yesterday's Everyday Hot Time event, met the requirements, but did not receive the reward will be able to receive the Hot Time reward upon logging in.
- The issues with mastery levels of certain Evan skills will be fixed.


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This has since been updated (6:15pm EST) ...


-Time (Updated)-
Friday, January 6, 2012
Pacific: 10:45 AM - 6:00 PM
Eastern: 1:45 PM - 9:00 PM


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Well that extra 2 hours will help to prevent another server overload in anticipation of the Hot Time event that was to happen at 5:30 EST (30min after the first schedule completion time). So I guess that was a good move on their part, but most likely it is due to something else breaking or not going as expected, this is common in the IT world from what I've experienced. They are nice enough to state that they will be rescheduling today's hot time event and 2x that is missed.

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So what should you expect after this patch?
Nothing dramatic, there will still be glitches, hackers, exploits, stolen accounts, and frustration.

What can you do about it?
From what I know ... nothing. You can post on the forums, and as long as you are not sending a flurry of profanities and being disrespectful you might get a response. Otherwise we know very well that in game tickets don't work (sorry Bill) and raging on Basil Market or Reddit won't get you very far either.

Should you stop playing Maple?
Well if you are going to stop Maple I strongly suggest you drop all Nexon affiliated products, they have consistently been a disappointment for all products as far as I am aware or care to read about. I received an angry whisper from a new guild member swearing he was leaving the game because Nexon can't get things right. Do I think he made the right choice? Yes. Do I think he will stay off Maple? No ... he will be back.

Alright that's all the rage I have for the moment. Thanks for reading or feel free to post tl:dr if you feel so inclined.

I think the time will be update again after this 2h

I was so excited about the hot time event too. Well, simply cause I missed the last one >.>

Yea though! I mean, I haven't actually taken the time to bash on nexon, but that's because(personally) I guess I want to cut them SOME slack. Yea they might do things that make themselves look like money wanting buttfaces, but running multiple servers with huge amounts of content, coupled with a VAST amount of players with MULTIPLE accounts I must say, can be pretty difficult. I remember a friend of mine, not quite sure what his major was. He had to design some sandbox indie game for a project he had to do. Took him ages, and the game itself was extremely basic and didn't look to impressive either. I can only imagine the amount of effort it takes to run Maple. I'm no computer game expert, but I'm just looking at this from an extremely simplistic standpoint.

Now, before anyone flames me about how other games that are way more complex and have way more players dont have the same problems or are quick to fix theirs, I'm just giving my own thoughts~! =D In the simplest way possible. I've always believed that unless you're actually there to do their job and experience the problems they have to face, you can have your own opinions but too a certain extent, hold your tongue=x keep them to yourself<3 You'll never know how stressful it is until you're in their shoes/

It's obvious that by running a game made for the community, it's an obligation for Nexon to make quick work with the problem the game has, I'm sure it's much more encouraging without having like 463753658645 people bashing on them telling them there's a problem they already know exists. I guess recently, they have decided to give the community and overload in content(which is good, makes it interesting), but nothing comes without flaws.

They have the sincerity to finally do something about the issues we are having AS WELL AS reschedule the events, which I think is awfully sweet of them. At least they're trying=D

There's a difference between bitching and giving your own opinion. You can have an opinion without being a complete ***hole <3

(not implying anyone, just saying)

That's my 2 cents, feel free to disagree and all that jazz- let me know your opinion!

Tara~

Well I wouldn't say that I'm bashing Nexon in this post but addressing some complaints I've heard in guild chat and whispers.

First of all the game has been launched for at least 6 years now and they are a corporation not an indie development studio. I understand there are many complexities with development and coding ... well because I'm a developer myself (read : job as a developer). I'm not going to go into all that right now though.

And for all of you that have been off maple for a while and have no idea what is going on or what enhancements or familiars are ... welllll I'll explain what I can with as little text possible.

Here is an example of an enhancement hacked item

The intention of enhancements is improving the weapon with random stats at a risk.

100% enhancement scrolls work the first time and scale down from there

Enhancement Success Rate
1 success: 100%
2 successes: 90%
3 successes: 80%
4 successes: 70%
5 successes: 60%
6 successes: 50%
7 successes: 40%
8 successes: 30%
9 successes: 20%
10 or more successes: 10%

80% do the same but scale down faster

1 success: 80%
2 successes: 70%
3 successes: 60%
4 successes: 50%
5 successes: 40%
6 successes: 30%
7 successes: 20%
8 or more successes: 10%

this isn't even a popular item ... the most popular I've seen : 301 att Craven and ~600 att Stonetooth (i'm not sure on the stone tooth but it is something ridiculous)

As far as the familiars : now monsters drop familiar cards, these cards summon a monster identical to the one you killed. They provide a buff to either you or your party. They also do aoe damage to enemies and may either slow/push/pull them to a location.

Well in short, some people were able to hack these familiars to 1HKO any monster / boss. Yes this means Zakum, CZakum, Horntail, Lion Heart Castle Monsters (these are common mobs that have the HP of bosses but are lower level (think 120+) and provide a bunch of exp, also the map they are located on give exp boots to parties and the boost increases as the party size increases.

While we have had some clever and crazy hacks in the past these ones are producing game breaking damage from characters (max damage per attack 999,999 that you would generally only see on private servers) and producing many level 200 characters.

Once your character hits level 200 there isn't much along the lines of end game content ... once you hit level 200 generally you become a merchant and play the game's economy while purchasing better (aka godly) equips or just start leveling another character. The so called "end game" is non-existent as far as I'm aware.


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**Update 2** The maintenance is now expected to end at 7:30 PM Pacific as we need additional time to apply the fixes. All cash items will be extended by 24 hours. Please read on for more information. We truly appreciate your patience and support.

Looks like another update ... they are removing previously mentioned enhanced items it seems

http://maplestory.nexon.net/News/News.aspx?boardNo=101&contentNo=00DTU&pageIndex=1