My History With MS- Bandwagon

Having been in the Maple World since shortly after Beta (when Broa was the youngest world, to be exact), I feel obligated to follow in the footsteps of the other already posted bloggers.

Back then, I was in middle school (somewhere in there), and the bright spark of creativity, as well as naivety, twinkled in my eye. Only four adventurers stood standing back then: warrior, archer, magician, and thief. No pirates, no Cygnus Knights, no resistance, no heroes, no black mage, none of that existed back when.

My first bumbling character, of which still stands undeleted, was my bowman. I think he was meant to be a crossbowman, but he never made it to the second job advancement. The reason? His stats were more messed up than my current mental state. With an absurd-ish amount of INT and LUK, his future would be futile.

That was when I made my second, and most achieved, character. A magician, an ice/lightning mage, I made, back when the trends were to make clerics for party quests and parties. Although I did struggle to join party quests back then, my sociopathic personality made that difficult anyway, so off to exploring it was. But I wish to digress for a moment to peek at the early stages of this mage.

Before assigning the elements, back in first job, magicians were the bomb at Kerning Party Quest. The monsters featured in the PQ were particularly strong, though the most notable weakness were their low magic defense. With sufficient mana potions, a magician could single-handedly blaze through every combat-related level (and, being only two, it was pretty easy to blaze). Reports even ranged to soloing King Slime, no easy feat. Even the bonus favored magicians; green and horny mushrooms were also magic-weak.

That particular magician’s strongest weakness, however, was yet another folly in skill-handling. Pointed out by party-questing allies, my magic guard level was too low; I didn’t realize the significance of the skill at the time, and poured most of it into magic armor instead. Regardless of this Achilles’ heel, I prospered as an ice/lightning mage.

What followed was a mishmash and an olio of memories: Orbis’ magical pixies, El Nath’s biting cold, Ludibrium’s colorful-yet-murderously-grueling Eos Tower. Nependeaths, hectors and werewolves; red drakes, tauromaces, and balrogs; block golems, chronos and Ludibrium’s Crack Party Quest. Bains and vikings, lycanthropes and death teddies, grays and buffoons. I’ve probably fought every monster at least once from Victoria to Omega Sector, from the ends of Mu Lung to the beginnings of Korean Folk Town. A quest here, a level there, a new friend appears every now and then. A guild now, dissolve later, who knows.

For the most of post-third job, I spent a lot of time in the Ludibrium and Aqua Road Dungeons. If it weren’t squids and sharks, it were spirit vikings and buffoons. By this time, I had cooperative holdings on my account; another person was interested, and I was beginning to veer away from the game, as first-person shooters sought to enthrall my attention. That was the start of the Halo obsession, but that’s another blog.

Things kind of slowed down at that time; fourth job did not exist, and Papulatus and Pianus (whose name is still a joke at best) had succeeded Zakum as the big bosses. No Leafre, no Horntail, the best monsters were those in the dark depths of dungeons, or boss-hunting. The inherent flaw of not maxing out magic guard began to show here; I couldn’t withstand an attack from Pianus’ FIRING MAH LAZAH attack, and Papulatus’ dispel shut me down. In other words, I couldn’t boss.

From there, I fully delegated the account to the other person, and I had moved on. Of course, I would sometimes check on the account once in a while, as it sped through fourth job advancement, Leafre, and blizzard. Probably one of the best skills ever, shame it had to be “fixed.”

It was fairly intermittent from then on, since school, life, and other games got in the way. I did reconfigure the skill points when one of those SP resets came out, but little more than that. I have tried newer characters, including brawlers, thunder breakers, arans and evans, preferring breakers or brawlers personally. But they never really made it to level 50. And thus was my story.

Looking back at those fond memories brings a tear to my eye. Looking at what Maplestory has become makes me cringe in pain. Games are always the best at their youngest…