What was likely meant to be a watershed moment for MapleStory PR ended up being an alley-oop to the MMO’s own live dunking: Niru, a deeply dedicated player of the title, stopped himself from hitting a major in-game milestone live on stream to instead put the studio’s feet to the fire and walk away from the game entirely in front of 20,000 viewers.
Niru was just about to be the first MapleStory player to hit level 300 and was livestreaming his achievement, which was picked up by Nexon and promoted via in-game announcements and across social media, even going so far as to create an in-game banner and custom artwork. Instead, he stopped himself mere moments from hitting the level and laid out a 40-minute critique about a wide assortment of things he feels the game needs to do, including server merges, making fragments (a highly important material) tradeable, improving multiple drop rates, and fixing problems with cube items. After the rant, he stopped the stream and has since begun playing entirely different games on his channel.
“I am very sorry, but I just don’t want to do anything because I feel this needs attention and anything I do will take away from it, which is why I decided not to level up,” reads the video description. “I am very sad over this, and worked very hard to build up a Twitch page that I really wanted to do for years and I feel I am throwing it all away, but this is probably the best chance that I can think of to try and improve this and if not I just won’t return.”
The vast majority of comments on Niru’s video show overwhelming support for his stunt, either by stating that he’s speaking for many Maple players or just offering some general words of encouragement. “Level 299 on the rankings, level 300 in our hearts,” reads one such supporter.
