Chapter 1: Humble Beginnings

We all had humble beginnings; mine started off with killing snails and mushrooms, desperately attempting to salvage whatever mesos that these monsters dropped just to buy a few potions and possibly a better weapon. As long as you have a decent computer and internet connection, anyone gets a chance to live a second life in Maplestory. What’s great about this life is that it completely defies physics, chemistry, biology and geography. You can die as many times as you want, and you will magically revive at the nearest town, perhaps losing some experience in the process. Speaking of which, losing experience? One does not simply lose experience in real life, and it is because of this absolute lack of logic, that’s why Maplestory, along with many other MMORPGs, is so popular. Besides, who doesn’t like to have super powers?

Almost all MMORPGs start off this way, you are given the option to choose how your in-game character looks like, in other words, your avatar. You might have black eyes in real life but you can choose your avatar to have blue eyes, and you can be male in real life but choose a female avatar. You start off with the worst of equipment, but you slowly upgrade yourself by killing monsters that terrorize your surroundings, or simply by completing the quests of NPCs. Some of you who are new to this article might be questioning, what are NPCs? NPCs are an acronym for Non-Player Characters. These people are not being controlled by other people, and are instead part of the system. These NPCs are crucial in ensuring that the game remains interesting, and that goods are circulated out to the market. Many items can be produced from intermediate materials by the users. Production happens via predetermined production paths and the drop-type production takes place as the users receive virtual goods that appear upon destroying various kinds of aggressive NPCs, such as monsters. One example would be leather (reptile leather) which drops from snakes. By killing the snakes and occasionally obtaining the leather that they drop, you would be able to craft a work glove with after buying a basic abrasive from the NPC. In MMORPGs, you can trade anything in the free market for anything else.

I started Maplestory after the Big Bang patch, and found out how easy it was to level up, so I did not really care much about the economy and just kept on slaying monsters, it was pretty inefficient I admit, but it was fun while it lasted. The most memorable experience was when I chanced upon this scroll after completing a quest: (Scroll for Gloves Physical Attack 60%). I did not really know the market price of it back then, so I just went to the free market and shouted out “Selling Scroll for Gloves attack 60%”. I was offered a trade in about 10 seconds, so when I entered the trade room, being kiasu and unsure of the market prices, I asked for an offer, and to my absolute surprised, the opposing party offered 20 million, of which I immediately accepted for fear of losing such a good deal. I was practically increasing my mesos by 20 fold just by selling this scroll.

With that, my “income” increased and I desired for more, spending on weapons and cheap scrolls and potions. It was not long before my mesos was back down to 10 million (albeit still a considerable sum for me that time). After all, I was only a Level 70 blade lord that just reached 3rd job.

End of Chapter 1

Click above for Chapter 2