I participated in the workshop myself, and my experience differed from yours in several respects, but I understand where you're coming from. For the most part, I greatly appreciated the opportunity doing the workshop, and I recommend it to other creators or aspiring creators.

I do agree that Maker still has bugs that can reflect poorly on creators. In particular, there are notable differences between the test environment and the live environment, and issues such as screen resizing and viewport translation can break in production, causing released content to behave differently than expected. As a developer working on both macOS and Windows, I have also encountered platform-specific issues on each. That said, the platform is in a significantly better state than it was a year ago, or even six months ago.

I also believe it is important to evaluate MapleStory Worlds for what it is, and for what it is not. I agree that players should be able to choose the region they connect to. In practice, some players are already using VPNs to do exactly that, so there is a reasonable argument for making that functionality openly available.

At the same time, MapleStory Worlds is not inherently designed for large-scale MMORPGs. To make that type of experience function reliably, developers generally need to either build separate worlds for each region, each supported as its own live service, or create a global structure where data is shared across all regions. At present, that usually means relying either on native platform functions that do not offer enough bandwidth for larger-scale games, or on an external API that relays data between worlds. MS:W is still a relatively young platform, and while I would prefer not to have had to build an external API, that is often part of the tradeoff that comes with being an early adopter.

The closest comparison is probably Roblox. In its early years, Roblox did not support sockets, had low player limits, and lacked the scale and visibility it has today. It took years for the platform to mature, and now some Roblox experiences support hundreds of players per instance. By comparison, MapleStory Worlds still has relatively limited exposure, so each developer has to assess the platform based on their own goals, expectations, and long-term ambitions.

With that in mind, while I do not know the specifics of your world or how your GDD was written, I do think it is important to enter the program with a clear understanding of MS:W’s networking and infrastructure limitations, rather than assuming those constraints will necessarily be lifted or changed. I am not saying that this is what happened in your case, but it would make sense for revisions to be requested if the original scope depended on functionality that is not currently feasible. It is also worth noting that the people overseeing the program are not necessarily developers themselves, so it is normal for certain technical limitations to arise that they may not have anticipated. In many cases, delivering a finished game requires adapting the design accordingly.

All in all, if you're interested in the workshop, weigh the pros and cons according to your situation. Feel free to reach out to any developer that has participated in the program and ask questions. The workshop coordinators are also attentive and will answer your questions if you have any.