This is a new column featuring guest writer Charles. WTGFT will be a piece where writers risk life and limb to bring their other halves along for gaming reviews/events and try to understand What The GF Thinks! It may or may not continue based on the number of limbs said writers have remaining after the piece is published. You also probably shouldn’t expect WTWT, which is way deadlier.
Wow. It’s been ages since any of us has played Maple story. The camaraderie and the new friends gained from Maple story was a fun part in our university lives, but we’ve since closed that chapter.
It was re-opened all of a sudden when we were invited to review the new Chaos patch PVP features that were (finally!!!!) introduced into MapleSEA. It felt like we were going back in time, stepping into the venue, albeit with better (Alienware) laptops and much more awesome (level 200) characters with perfect stats.
Asiasoft (which runs MapleSEA) wasted no time in letting us pit our characters and skills against each other in a crazy Free-for-all informal competition with the iPod shuffle and Skull Candy earphones up for grabs. So the order of the day was to run around a map for 10 minutes and spam arrows/shoot/whack/throw things at each other as much as possible. Now I know why they called this patch Chaos. It really was chaotic, with words “CRITICAL!! NICE CRITICAL!! HITHITHIT COOL!GREAT!EXCELLENT! HITHITHIT!!NO-HIT!” flashing furiously instead of numbers that players would normally be used to. Depending on the quality of your HITHITHIT, you get points which eventually adds to your score. Surprisingly, I breezed through the semi-finals and on to the final 4 for the epic free-for-all battle. It was extra fun, knowing that we ladies were (somehow) taking charge of the leaderboard and showing the gentleman how it’s done (Hah hah!!).
It pays to play PVP as 10 minutes added a neat 4,000,000+ EXP plus Battle points (in your face, boys!), which takes away some of the monotony of training against NPCs. The battle points can then be exchanged for Gallant Emblems which in turn can be used for crafting or buying certain items.
One observation that we made though, is that ranged characters have a clear advantage in this PVP. The longer reach and spammable ranged skills of the classes allowed bow(wo)men to dominate the leaderboard. However, the PVP maps are designed with a eye towards higher mobility and we’re sure that tactics to counter such advantages are already being developed and tested!
MapleSEA has really come a long way since the first episode! Kudos to the developers for introducing these wonderful features that adds a whole lot of dimension to this 2D game.
As a side note: To make the experience extra special, the food was themed “blue vs scarlet” to bring up the competitive atmosphere. Where else can you get blue potatoes and red couscous you tell me!!! So interesting!
