Category Archives: Msupdate
[MSU] 1,200 Posts
Posting has surely slowed down over here but that doesn’t mean I’m not continuing. The Msupdate Blog has pushed over the 1,200 post mark as the blog celebrates FOUR YEARS.
[MSU] Zach’s Dictionary: On-Season, Off-Season, Player Boom, Secondary Season
Zach’s Dictionary is an archive of all of the terms that you’ll frequently see me use to describe events/scenarios/happenings/classifications/whatever else as related to MapleStory, Nexon, gaming and so on. The terms that are found in the dictionary are terms which either have frequently misunderstood or controversial meanings attached to them, have a meaning in MS/NX/gaming terms which differs from its official English language definition or that I have just made up in order to put a meaning to something. Most terms are pretty straight forward in their meanings. Although you may have never heard the term used in that way before, once you see it and the context it’s used in you can pretty easily figure out what meaning it holds. Others are a little more difficult. The terms are added to the dictionary only after they’ve been used by me in conversation and as quickly as possible after their first use.
This is the first time I’m putting entries into Zach’s Dictionary in a post. This is usually done in comments and therefore easily lost.
Player Boom
Used to describe the times of year when player activity in games is at its highest. These usually take place during holiday periods, such as Winter break, Spring break and Summer break.
Example: Global MapleStory’s player boom comes in July, August and December.
On-season
The periods when the biggest game content updates are added to a game. Many times strategically coincide with the player boom.
Example: Global MapleStory’s on-season is extreme late June, July, early August, December, extreme early January.
Off-season
Times of the year other than a game’s on-season. Usually coincide with lower player activity.
Example: Global MapleStory’s off-season is most of January, February, March, April, May, most of June, late August, September, October and November.
Secondary season
Periods of a game’s off-season which usually see an uptick in content delivery. Content updates are larger than usual off-season updates but smaller than usual on-season updates.
Example: Global MapleStory’s secondary season is late March, early April and the second half of October.
Listening To DFO Players Expressing Their Dissatisfaction At The Game’s Closing Is LIke…
Listening to DFO players expressing their dissatisfaction at the game’s impending closure is like listening to conservatives trying to argue their beliefs (I know some of my non-commenting viewers are going to HATE me for using this comparison :P). In other words, it’s terrible. I was going through the comments on the official DFO Facebook page today and came across COUNTLESS that I either made me laugh to death or incredibly puzzled at what the heck the comment poster had its his/her brain. But I’d like to highlight one. Not necessarily because it was the worst one, but because I’m in a rush and just picked one to make my thoughts known on.
Why can’t you guys be honest you’re closing this game for the same reason you closed Kart Rider, and Poptag. Lack of revenue. Nexon America is all about money you guys should be ashamed of yourselves I will not be playing any games from nexon America any long you guys are greedy as the Nation you’re in. I will not recommend this company to anyone else either have a good day.
WELL OBVIOUSLY THAT’S WHY NEXON IS CLOSING THE GAME. Although there are many reasons why a publisher would close one of their games, the reason for the closure of DFO is obvious. It didn’t have the PLAYERBASE to generate enough REVENUE to keep it ALIVE. I don’t recall Nexon ever denying this for their games. They said that both PopTag and Kart Rider lacked the expected base of players among the reasons for their closures.
The fact is that if a game is not making enough money to meet that standards of the publisher then it’s going to be shut down. It’s not about greed, it’s about business.
[MSU] Msupdate 2012: The Year In Review
It’s been such a fantastic year for me and I hope for everyone else. My work life has been incredibly busy but also just as fun. It is my hope that 2013 will be less busy and I can get back to being more active in my hobbies, including my regularly scheduled releases on this blog. You’ll see that starting in the next couple of days with my recap of 2012 in Global MapleStory.
As of 6:07pm PT on the final day of the year, The Msupdate Blog (TMB) received 646,812 views in 2012, down 24% from last year. There were 225 new posts this year, down 40.5% from 378 posts in 2011. Over 2,600 new comments of which Robbin (nightcodex/rakahs), Joey (gijoey/nexonupdate) and I accounted for over 90%. Most visitors came from the United States with Canada, Singapore, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Australia, Malaysia and Israel also contributing greatly. In all I received visitors from 155 different countries. Dragon Nest continued to help out my viewership numbers with the most viewed post for the second year in a row being Dragon Nest Class Guide. Google search continued to bring me traffic with referrals from fansites falling off significantly in the second half of the year. Probably due to nothing relevant being posted in the last 6 months. The AsiaSoft official forums though are full of referrals.
In 2013 I hope to resume the “Most Updated” and “Fastest Updating” rankings, This Month In Our Past (TMIOP), NX giveaways and update my Top Lists. I hope. Seriously though, I genuinely hope I’ll get off my lazy butt and do it.
My Character Progression
I made my own Global MapleStory account in July 2005 and have been playing actively ever since. I’ve played on Scania and Bera servers. I’ve had eight characters that I’ve raised by myself (mostly) over my time playing this game. Their current levels are as follows:
Priest (Scania): Level 100 (since Dec 2010)
Dark Knight (Bera): Level 200 (since Sep 2009)
Bishop (Bera): Level 160 (since June 2010)
Corsair (Bera): Level 200 (since Mar 2011)
Aran (Bera): Level 200 (since Aug 2011)
Mechanic (Scania): Level 120 (since Aug 2011)
Mercedes (Scania): Level 150 (since Sep 2012)
Phantom (Scania): Level 105 (since Aug 2012)
Through all of the tens of thousands (no exaggeration) of screenshots that I’ve taken and have not lost, all my notes, documents, discussions and estimations I’ve been able to create (with the help of my old classic friend Microsoft Excel) a graph showing the progression of each of these characters from their creation until now. There was quite a bit of estimating with my Scania Priest and Beran Dark Knight because back in the early days I didn’t do much documentation of my progress. For the last few years I’ve tried to screenshot every level up that I make.
Click for larger image
I’ll be updating this every month to every other month depending on my level activity during that month. I should be pretty active throughout the rest of this year with me planning to create several jobs this Winter and continue to push forward on my Mercedes.
The msupdate Blog 