So, what's changed in the past three years in MapleStory?

• Easier ways to get things that were previously nx.

• More independence although somethings still require at least another person. Still pretty great in terms of community if you join a guild or a big world :)

• Cooler equips and stats have changed so that you only have to level up one.

• Cubing and elite monsters have come (check the sidebar)

• Lots of new bosses :)

Try it again. It's fun!

It's been nerfed majorly. A lot of the big hang areas have been killed - no more Henesys hunting ground, etc.

The sense of community has been destroyed - it's nowhere near as social as it used to be...Windia seems like a ghost town lately. I can play all night and never see another mapler. It never used to be like that.

A lot of the fun has been killed because everything is handed to you with no effort. Christ, most of the times you accept a quest, they just teleport you to the continent where you need to be. No more having to get yourself there.

It used to be fun making your way around the map but they've nerfed everything and redid all the maps. Victoria is garbage now. It's no more walking from Henesys to Ellinia. I used to love taking those little journeys with 2 or 3 friends. Everything goes through the center of the map now.

All the fun things - discovering on your own - they've all been destroyed. Remember how cool it was to find pig beach? Or manage to find sleepywood? Gone. Every portal, even hidden ones, light up now.

Part of the fun was getting from victoria to Orbis! I used to spend those 15 minutes on the boat making a sandwich and chatting with other maplers on the ride. Hell, if you were feeling particularly cruel, you'd convince some noob to go outside and check for Balrogs! Hell, I did it to some noobs and you know what, my first ride to Orbis, someone did it to me! Damn, I still remember thinking, "What the hell was that?!" as my dead level 20 character floated above the tombstone while that damn Balrog flew back and forth.

Well - Not any more...everything now you can either teleport to or just buy single tickets and crap like that. No reason to ride the ships or train to Ludi or anything. A lot of the things that were responsible for building the community have been removed in the name of making the game so accessible to imbeciles that all you have to do now is just show up and everything gets done for you.

Making 2nd or 3rd job used to be a fun thing - your buddies would come with you and wait outside while you took your test...because it was long and hard work to make it to 2nd and 3rd job! Now you can make level 100 easy in a day - less if you grind hard.

All Maple is, is grinding and doing stupid quests. But the fact that you had to discover things, sometimes you needed friends to help you, and wait around helped build a lot of community and broke up the monotony of grinding and doing quests.

For example, back in like 2006 I was a level 50 ice wizard. I got a quest where I had to get tauromaci horns. Back then the game was hard as hell. Even at level 50, I showed up and they destroyed me. So I went back to sleepywood and found another mapler and said to them, "I can't do this quest....what should I do?" They told me, "You need to find a warrior to help you." Sure enough, I wandered around Sleepy until I managed to find a warrior who was killing time doing nothing and didn't mind helping me. She went back with me and kicked the hell out of the tauros and helped me get my horns! THAT'S the kind of stuff the game was geared towards. And you know what? To this day, her and I are still friends! We're on facebook and we still chat about old maple (and how bad off it is now). She doesn't really maple anymore as the changes really ruined the game and she lost her desire to play. I just trudge on out of nostalgia. But the game used to be more geared towards community and needing other maplers to help you. And helping others.

I mean, I remember trading with a cleric once because I needed those monkey dolls from the dead lupins and I couldn't kill them but the cleric could so she gathered dolls for me. And I helped her in a quest in Ludi where she was having trouble killing ratzs and I was able to use my chain lightning and just keep killing tons of them for her.

Hell, even now you can just make a party of one and solo most bosses. I mean, why would a game need a community, right?

The game is a shadow of its former self. I started playing in 2005 and it's really sad how it's been changed into this joke. People lose interest fast because there's nothing to work towards anymore. There's no community to be part of.

Hell, half the maps are disabled since like June 2014. They did some update and Omega Sector, Korea Town, Kerning City, and a whole bunch of others I can't remember, have been shut down. Nexon claims they're doing maintenance on those cities but it's over a year now and they're still grayed out on the map and surrounded by purple chains. Who knows if they're ever coming back.

I love how Nexon can't figure out why the game has been going downhill and the userbase has been shrinking, meanwhile it's them that did it.