Earlier this year, the team behind the western/global version of MapleStory announced that it was planning to fork away from the Korean version, basically giving up on parity forever. While it would still get some of the Korean content, the western dev team promised to go beyond mere localization and actually develop to the tastes of the playerbase, with the implication that some of the monetization shenanigans Korea is up to would not translate here.
“Over the past 20 years, we’ve seen great changes in the markets where MapleStory is serviced,” Nexon America’s Hanbyeol Oh said. “If we’re going to create the MapleStory that our fans are dreaming of, then simply localizing content created for [Korean MapleStory] is no longer enough.”
This caught my attention because usually, western and global playerbases are in a perpetual state of lagging behind the home game, and we hate it. Likewise, console MMOs nearly always lag behind the PC version, and nobody loves that either! But here, MapleStory was choosing to just go its own way.
Where do you stand on parity? Do you expect MMORPGs to maintain full regional and platform parity?
Every morning, the Massively Overpowered writers team up with mascot Mo to ask MMORPG players pointed questions about the massively multiplayer online roleplaying genre. Grab a mug of your preferred beverage and take a stab at answering the question posed in today’s Daily Grind!
