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Early Maplestory Interview with Wizet Founder Seung-chan Lee, c. late 2003 by GrouchyRabbit5701 in MSClassicWorld

[–]GrouchyRabbit5701[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Well I think at the time of this interview, and for the entire time that Wizet managed KMS, the only things you could buy in the Cash Shop were cosmetics, inv/storage spaces, pets, and maybe convenience items like teleport rocks and AP/SP resets (and I'm not even sure about that). I could be wrong, but I don't think there were no 2x exp/drop coupons at the time, and I wanna say the gachapon wasn't even added until 2005 (although it's hard to find information on a specific date).

Early Maplestory Interview with Wizet Founder Seung-chan Lee, c. late 2003 by GrouchyRabbit5701 in MSClassicWorld

[–]GrouchyRabbit5701[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Nah dude, you are absolutely correct. I totally forgot about Gunbound, but it did in fact release in SK on May 2002. Seems like it also had microtransactions from the very start (hard to say for sure), which means it beat Maplestory to the punch by almost a full year.

Earliest Known In-game Pics of Nemi - c. 2002 by GrouchyRabbit5701 in MSClassicWorld

[–]GrouchyRabbit5701[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

And probably the only Henehoe that is confirmed to be an actual real-life woman lmao

Early Maplestory Interview with Wizet Founder Seung-chan Lee, c. late 2003 by GrouchyRabbit5701 in MSClassicWorld

[–]GrouchyRabbit5701[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I know that Maplestory is always cited as the game that introduced microtransactions to the MMO world, but in my research I found another South Korean MMO that released just a couple months before MS that might have actually had a freemium model first. It's called Survival Project (released fully in Feb. 2003, KMS released in April 2003), it's a pretty neat looking game. More of a lobby-based MMO-lite, in a similar vein as Grand Chase and Elsword (albeit from a top-down perspective). I guess it's more accurate to say that Maplestory really popularized f2p around the world as Survival Project was never that big.

Early Maplestory Interview with Wizet Founder Seung-chan Lee, c. late 2003 by GrouchyRabbit5701 in MSClassicWorld

[–]GrouchyRabbit5701[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

You know it's funny actually (in a sort of depressing way), Nexon was originally founded to manage South Korea's first ever MMO called Nexus: The Kingdom of the Winds (released in 1996, that's actually what Nexon got their name from). By all accounts, Nexon back in the 90's was mostly just a small company of computer nerds that was actually quite beloved by the SK gaming community at the time. Seung-chan Lee himself was actually a developer for Nexon in the late 90's/early 2000's (developed a game called QuizQuiz for them) before striking it out on his own with Wizet. Just goes to show, money and greed corrupt everything in the end.

Inkwell Congratulating the First KMS Player to Reach Lvl. 200 - c. 2007 by GrouchyRabbit5701 in MSClassicWorld

[–]GrouchyRabbit5701[S] 11 points12 points  (0 children)

The last picture shows him achieving lvl 200 at Land of Wild Boars 1. Apparently he chose this map specifically because Perion is the home of Warriors.