[GMS] Nexon’s 2nd BasilChat Q&A

For the first Nexon BasilChat Q&A that took place on January 28, 2011 see here.

Nexon had another BasilChat Q&A on Friday, February 18, 2011 starting at 3:56PM Pacific (6:56PM Eastern).

Questions are bolded, answers or other statements made by a Nexon employee and italicized. Larger texts which are bolded and italicized are important and must-read answers.

Today we will only take casual questions and any operational questions you have for us. Sorry, everything else will not be answered today.

Hi folks and welcome to our second Dev Chat on Basil Market!

I’m hime, the Nexon MapleStory forum rep and here to take your questions.

Let’s go ahead and have the team here with us introduce themselves!

Hi, I’m Hadza and I am the associate producer on MapleStory. You may have seen my posts in the forums from time to time. I work with Hime a lot to get a feel for the current hot topics in the forum.

Hello everyone! I am Sabina, and am here to assist with taking questions!

Hello Maplers! I’m Yadeera and I am also an Associate Producer on MapleStory. I am looking forward to our second chat together =)

We also have 2 lovely moderators from Basil Market with us today as well… zora, ciel! Hello!

And mrbasil, who help put this all together for us! Big thank you!

Casual questions being fun and simple ones and operational question are more along the lines of what we do like the Dev Blog about maintenances.

Sabina and I will take questions through the Private Message system here through the chat. Please only message your question to either Sabina or I, not both.

nxhadza: Chaos is coming soon, but we can’t give an exact date. Expect some changes more dramatic than Big Bang.

nxhadza: I usually have about 3 cups of coffee during the maintenance. But it all depends on how long it is and the time of night.

hime: Yes! I do play MapleStory and have a couple of characters I play on. I’m not telling what!

nxyadeera: Our favorite junk food is cupcakes, hands down. Though just the other day we had some delicious honey flavored sweet potato chips – delicious!

nxhadza: Monster book is on hold for now. We have no plans to bring it back. Maybe with more refinement to make the system better than it’ll be worthwhile.

nxhadza: MapleStory anniversary events are held in May. We’re working hard on creating some original and cool content for you guys!

nxhadza: I became an Associate Producer because I love playing video games and getting paid for it

nxhadza: Von Leon is coming in March!

nxhadza: My favorite junk food is cheetos…what can I say I love glowing orange cheese powder.

nxyadeera: What does an Associate Producer do? Good question! The fact is, lots: every day is a new adventure. I work with our various internal teams such as Development, Marketing, etc. We address live issues and work with our QA team to test upcoming content.

nxhadza: We are planning to expand more channels bosses such as Zakum. So keep a lookout for an announcement.

nxyadeera: I became an Associate Producer on MapleStory so I can get sweet gear from the Cash Shop! =) Seriously, I’ve loved video games since I was a kid playing NES and arcade games.

nxhadza: We’re patching less, which means we want to have a big patch with time released content. This schedule gives us more time to plan for better content.

nxyadeera: When there isn’t any maintenance or patching, we are primarily planning, testing, and promoting upcoming content. We also work with our internal teams to monitor live game issues.
And we DO read the forums!!!
=)

nxhadza: I haven’t played fallout new vegas yet, but I loved fallout 3. But right now I’m hooked on Rift.

nxyadeera: My favorite TV show is Battlestar Galactica, the remake. Before that, Six Feet Under.
I haven’t played either of those Fallout games. Right now I’m playing lots of LoL.

nxhadza: I don’t read many blogs but I do read a lot of the forum on all the fansites. This gives us a really great idea of what’s going on in the game and address any issues.
Players are invaluable in providing leads on bugs, so thank you!
2x compensations are based on the severity of the inconvenience to our players.

nxyadeera: It’s hard to pick my favorite NES game, they are like children =) I really loved StarTropics, and of course the first Zelda.

nxhadza: I think if I met Justin Bieber I would be too star struck to say anything. And all i would hear is the lyrics, baby baby baby…

nxhadza: Ultimate Explorers are coming out sooner than you’d think.

nxyadeera: Yes, the whole Maple team plays MapleStory!

nxhadza: Large content updates takes months of planning. We get test clients that we test internally and basically a lot of time is spent in testing the game using test cases.

nxhadza: New Cash Shop items are designed by other MapleStory services. But our team comes up with proposals based on current pop culture items, trends in fashion. etc. There’s a lot of research for it.

nxyadeera: In my spare time I like to bicycle, watch TV, and of course play video games. And eat…lots of eating.

nxhadza: We have talked about expanding Masteria, but it’s all in the planning stages right now. I feel personally responsible to have to make it awesome, so it’ll take a bit of time.

nxhadza: When we integrate content from kMS or other MS services into gMS, we think carefully about how it will affect our game. Then we decide what features to include or not.
We also localize & translate all text including item names.

nxhadza: Chaos update is huuuuge so it will require effort from everyone, community, marketing, QA, and of course the players. We’ll be sure to open the test server when the time comes.

nxyadeera: Revenues collected from meso taxes go to Duey so he can enjoy his retirement }:>

nxhadza: Nexon headquarters is right by the beach…kidding actually it’s a none descript office building overlooking an oil refinery.

hime: I happen to enjoy the view of the refinery.

nxyadeera: My favorite NFL team is the New York Giants. I was sad to see them not make the playoffs this year, but at least the #6 seed went to the eventual NFL champs!

nxhadza: We have limited plushy merchandise like Yetis and Pepe, but there are no plans to sell it. It’s a good idea because the plushies look great!

nxyadeera: I like eels, especially as unagi

Do you have any people you work with that you hate? Or perhaps they’re kinda smelly? We want gossip.

nxhadza: I like all my coworkers. Especially Hime, she is a pleasure to work with.

nxyadeera: We plan to continue holding more chats like this one on a regular basis. We are very happy working in California, and have no plans to move.

Is there going to be anymore unique events like the Alien Event anytime soon?

nxhadza: The alien event was very popular and we keep that feedback in mind when we create new content. Who knows you might see spaceships again in the near future.

nxyadeera: One of my favorite pieces of background music in Maple is the piece from Ellinia.

Do you guys ever receive fan mail?

nxhadza: Yes, we do occasionally receive fan mail and we read them all. But surprisingly there are a lot of fan comments in the web event submissions. I always enjoy reading them.

When can we expect to finally be rid of the 7th day market?

nxhadza: We’re planning to remove it in an upcoming update, so rejoice!

nxyadeera: Donald will only deliver packages from GMs to players. Package delivery between players is no longer supported, sorry!

Do you have to say that you “make” the content?

nxhadza: Our team doesn’t do any of the programming or art. We mostly take feedback from players and propose new content to Nexon Korea. It’s a very collaborative effort.

nxyadeera: Our offices have lots of fun stuff in it, like a free coffee & hot chocolate machine =)

Is there any updates on what will be done for the elemental staffs/wands? Or will they be kept as they currently are?

nxhadza: We took the feedback from players regarding elemental weapons and made changes, but it’s being tested. We’ll make an official announcement when we are happy with the balance of the weapons.

With the Chaos patch, are you going to use real voices for the android and the new Cygnus boss, like KMS did?

nxhadza: Yes, you can look forward to some localized voice overs!

What can we look forward to in maplestory?

nxyadeera: We are planning all sorts of exciting content for our 6th Anniversary, so stay tuned! Until then, we will also release additional new content and events in March. We will announce details VERY SOON!

It’s okay nxhadza, you can tell us the truth. Does Hime bully you?

hime: I said don’t answer that!

nxhadza: Haha, no Hime is super nice. I think I’m the one being too demanding.

hime: Mwahaha. Excellent.

nxyadeera: Yeah, Hime is very nice. She’s no bully!

hime: Thank you for attending the second MapleStory chat hosted by Basil Market!

hime: We apologize if we were not able to get to your questions!

nxyadeera: Thanks everyone for submitting questions!!

sabina: Yes, thank you all for joining the chat today!

hime: We are working with our developers to resolve as many of the concerns that have been brought up today.