This post was created as part of Nexon PEAK activities.

Hello.

There are countless online games on the market, but very few remain in service for more than a few years while continuing to perform well over the long term.

If that service period extends beyond 20 years, the list becomes even shorter. MapleStory, now celebrating its 23rd anniversary this year, is a notable example. Even recently, it has continued to show steady popularity, which gives it particular significance in this category.

For a game to keep players engaged over time rather than losing them, it needs to offer new forms of enjoyment from multiple angles. MapleStory does exactly that through monthly updates that regularly introduce new content. That content spans a fairly wide range, and in simple keyword form, it looks like this.

• New goals: new bosses / new content / new classes / level cap expansions, etc.

• New cosmetic items: new cash & cosmetic items released every month / Illusion Ring / hair & face coupons, etc.

• New story: recently, events have been running alongside it to accelerate the pace of the main story

• New events: new event formats and mini-games built around major event themes

• Major showcases: large-scale showcases held twice a year during the summer and winter update seasons

• MAPLE NOW: once a month, the director personally introduces Test World updates

All of these are important, of course, but in this article I want to focus on the event-related elements that I personally found especially impressive.

Events as the game’s extra layer of flavor

In MapleStory, the core repeatable content consists of EXP-focused activities such as hunting, Epic Dungeon, and Monster Park, along with bosses on weekly and monthly cycles. The monthly events are what add an extra layer of variety on top of that foundation.

The exact schedule varies, but roughly every two to three months, the main event lineup includes an attendance event and an event skill (buff tonic) event, with additional themed events in other formats running alongside them. The overall direction of MapleStory’s events feels quite different before and after Director Kim Changseop took office. Since his appointment, the main characteristics have been as follows.

• The participation process for effectively recurring staple events has been simplified

• Even in the off-season, events now launch with a reasonable amount of volume instead of functioning as so-called filler content

• A wider range of event formats than before

• When an event returns, it tends to come back in an improved form

I think these traits have played a meaningful role in keeping players logging in consistently. Let’s look at a few examples one by one.

The participation process for effectively recurring staple events has been simplified

First, the events that are effectively permanent fixtures in MapleStory are attendance events and coin shop events. At one point, players even referred to them as “Another Coin Shop,” but the format remains one of the most reliable and consistent when it comes to rewards.

For attendance events, the current format is much simpler: once you accept the event, attendance is completed automatically just by logging in. Before that, players had to press an attendance button after logging in, and earlier than that, they had to defeat level-range monsters to complete it, so the system has clearly become far more convenient.

A long time ago, there was even a period when players had to hunt for more than 30 minutes a day just to make use of the attendance event and coin shop. Coins were also required for rank-ups, which meant even sub-characters had to be sent out to farm. The image above is a meme that circulated in the community at the time. Just from the scene of smashing the responsible NPC’s head, you can infer what player sentiment looked like back then.

Event skills (buff tonics) have also become much more convenient. It has already been a long time since the system changed so that all of that week’s SP can be obtained at once immediately after the Thursday reset. In the past, it was tied to daily attendance, which made it fairly inconvenient.

Viewed over time, improvements like these likely contributed to making MapleStory easier to enjoy in a lighter and more accessible way.

Even in the off-season, events now launch with a reasonable amount of volume instead of functioning as so-called filler content

Another notable point is that even during the so-called off-season, MapleStory has continued to run more substantial events instead of simply scaling back. In the past, once the major summer and winter events that began in June and December had ended, the off-season period would often be filled with smaller events offering relatively modest rewards.

If I had to pick the clearest example, it would probably be the [Please Raise the Spirit of the Stone!] event, where the rewards shown above were essentially the full offering. Even though it unusually ran for a month from November into December, the event still felt quite sparse, even taking the timing into account, so it drew a fair amount of discussion at the time.

At present, by contrast, attendance events, coin shops, and event skill events continue in sequence even after a major seasonal theme ends. In November, the one-month gap before the December winter update, MapleStory has also run collaborations such as Dave the Diver and One-Punch Man. A collaboration with Blue Archive is also scheduled for this year.

A wider range of event formats than before

Under this summer season’s [Mission Ultima] theme, there were three sub-events in total, each running for one month. First was Specter Blast, a dungeon-clearing event where players selected a character to use.

The second was Ultima Squad, an idle mini-game that starts automatically when the event is accepted. As it progressed, the difficulty ended up being much easier than many players expected, but a large number of players still found the process itself quite engaging.

Lastly, there was Ultima Relic Exploration. In this event, players could naturally collect rewards placed across the map while hunting level-range monsters, and because it offered additional fun without requiring any complicated steps, it was received fairly well.

Going back a little further, there were also examples such as the Deep Sea King event, which used parrying, and Helena’s mini-game from Change Burning. More recently, however, events seem to be designed with lower difficulty and easier participation in mind, which I personally prefer. This experimental approach, aimed at keeping things fresh, also looks likely to continue going forward.

When an event returns, it tends to come back in an improved form

Lastly, there are cases where an event is reintroduced later in an improved form. There are many examples, but a representative one is Challengers World, which has now become the main event of the summer and winter seasons after going through exactly that kind of evolution.

Before Challengers World was introduced, there was an event called [Burning World].

It was first released in 2018 and continued steadily all the way through 2024, which is fairly recent.

Because Burning World shared the same overall schedule and core structure as Challengers World, it already included earlier versions of benefits that are now seen in the current Challengers World, as shown above. However, over time, the value of those benefits declined, and there were almost no meaningful improvements, to the point that players were no longer really looking forward to Burning World during each major update season.

Then, in winter 2024, Burning World ended and Challengers World began. Since launching with that event, it has now recently completed season 4. At this point, the benefits are substantial enough that it can practically be considered essential for both new players and existing users, which is why each season draws strong anticipation from a wide range of players. The differences between the two can be summarized as follows.

Differences	Burning World	Challengers World Season 4 standard
World-exclusive pass	None	Yes
Default burning benefit	Mega Burning	Tera Burning
Level achievement & boss clear missions	None	Yes
World-exclusive objectives (tiered ranks)	None	Yes
Rank-based rewards	None	Yes + meaningfully valuable rewards
World-exclusive boss (season boss)	None	Yes + meaningfully valuable rewards
Exclusive special skill ring support	None	Yes
Exclusive skill support	None	Yes
Honor rewards such as first-come-first-served medals	None	Yes

As shown above, the event has developed to the point where it could practically be considered a different event altogether. In MapleStory, unlike many other games, pass-style events had not really been adopted in a full-fledged way before. Challengers World can be seen as a case that actively applies both that format and a season-server structure built around step-by-step objective progression.

Season 4 in particular was shorter than previous seasons at three months, but it was well received for having well-designed milestone goals that could be completed within that time frame, as well as a more comfortable play environment than earlier seasons. As a result, the number of players who achieved Challenger exceeded 200,000.

In that sense, Challengers World, which grew out of Burning World, has become an event worth watching going forward. What is even more meaningful is that it did not start in season 1 with the same benefits and structure it has now.

For example, the season boss was introduced starting in season 3, while the notably generous Sol Janus level 30 support and the integration of Maple Auction with regular worlds, which reduced the burden of progression, were only added in season 4.

If these kinds of improvements continue to accumulate each season, then Challengers World should keep evolving from one season to the next, which makes the upcoming season something I expect to be quite enjoyable as well.

As time has passed, events have taken on a larger role, and I think that shift has helped keep players consistently engaged with MapleStory. Personally, I am also looking forward to the next Challengers World. I hope it offers even more than season 4 did. The season boss is also one of the elements I am especially anticipating.

Thank you for reading.