We take for granted some fairly basic things that have been around here
and are common knowledge to us but make new people look stupid because
they wouldn't know them unless they dug through some 50,000 threads to
find them one by one, so here is a list of the top things every newbie
should know before they post.
In no particular order -
1. GMs are Not Developers
A GM is generally an entry-level employee who sits at a desk all day
doing shifts of one of two things: patrolling in game to deal with
suspicious activity, and responding to tickets by searching an online
knowledge base for what the approved resolution for the nearest possible
match is, and closing the tickets with that answer. Most of their
answers are copy pasted because they have no ability to do much else. A
good chunk of their answers are wrong because they don't understand what
your issue is and/or don't have a knowledge article to address it in
the way they tried looking for it or the way you phrased it. A GM has no
control over the actual game code or the hardware. See #4.
2. Community Representatives Have No Power
(Examples: CM's & Forum Moderators) They're effectively desk clerks
in charge of the company newsletters. In many cases they're not even
truly comparable to what you think of as a GM. They writes up Notices to
say what they've been told to say. They collect user feedback and pass
it on to superiors who may or may not care. They have little authority
to enact change. It's not their fault, that's what their job is. They're
still limited by what they can get the people in power to do and how
well listened to they are by those people.
3. Wizet is part of Nexon. It never went away. 4, 5
Quote
Daniel Chin (NXNeutral)
Q) How did Nexon America begin and what exactly is Wizet’s relationship to Nexon? What is Wizet’s current status?
A) Nexon America is Nexon Corporation’s North American
publishing and game service arm. We started with the localization of
MapleStory for North America, and have grown to support multiple game
launches in North America. Wizet is the developer of MapleStory and also
a subsidiary of Nexon Corporation. The Wizet team continues to develop
and add content to MapleStory around the world.
Quote
We
were Wizet and NX Games until we finally became Nexon America. It’s
funny how people talk about how different things were during the early
days when Wizet was around, but Nexon America has always been pretty
much the same people doing the same things under a new logo. When the
site changes to BlockParty.com, we’ll probably hear about how much
people miss Nexon America.
4. All Nexon Development occurs in Seoul, Korea1
Every little thing has to be designed in Korea and then sent over to
local developers who do nothing more than apply it and see if it works.
If it fails, is buggy, or creates a giant disaster of an expoit, Korea
has to be notified, given as much information as possible, and then the
local teams sits on their asses and waits for Korea to come up with an
answer, receives the "answer", test it again, and see if it works. If it
doesn't work the whole thing starts over again.
5.New Content and Events Are Planned Months In Advance1
Because of #4 everything has to be planned out on a massive calendar of
what's intended to come up and what has to be done when in order for
each next step to occur. It's no coincidence that a shiny new item will
come out as gach only until you bleed for it, then be easily available
in six months. They didn't decide on a whim that it was so loved
everyone should have one; they planned from the beginning to get as much
money for it up front before letting it go public. They're a business;
that's what they do. They do not release content as surprises or on a
whim, and most especially do not release fundamentally new things as
compensation.
6. Nexon Corporate Headquarters is Tokyo, Japan2,3
We don't know why, either, but for some reason they decided to move
there for operational purposes. This may be due to them having picked
Tokyo's stock market as the best place to release their IPO, or it may
have been for tax reasons, or any other number of possibilities.
7. Asiasoft vs Nexon.
Asiasoft is a game publisher company who earned the rights to host
MapleStory in the South-east Asia region, they do not create contents
for our server. NexonKR are the ones planning & creating stuff for
us (Including our Enchanted Forest). Refer to #4 again.
8. Client vs Server
The portion of the game that runs on your PC is the client. Your client
connects to the game, which is the server. In a normal client/server
relationship your client is a passive recipient of events from your
server. You send what you attempt to do, the server parses it and reacts
accordingly, then sends the results to your client to update.
Nexon games have a serious flaw in that they allow the client to dictate
to the server what is happening, instead of the client telling the
server what it would like to have happen and the server making the
judgment as to whether it's a rational request. This why Nexon games are
so exploitable.
9. Server Check vs Update
A server check is when the servers are taken down for routine
maintenance. Windows updates, defragging, database cleanup, server
moves, name changes. They generally occur once a week. During server
check unreleased content that was added in previous updates may be
activated or deactivated in the form of special events and cash shop
content.
An update is when the game receives a new version, the WZ files get
updated. An update generally includes a server check in it, but a server
check does not necessarily mean an update. Content added in an update
may not be available in game for weeks, or even months. It can just sit
in the game data dormant until it's activated by a later server check.
Both server checks and updates are also known as "Maintenances".
10. Junk Scrolling Isn't Real
You can not manipulate the odds of a scroll succeeding by "using up" your fails.
It might sound reasonable, but that's not how a computer program works.
Every time you scroll it generates a number between 1 and 100. It
doesn't look at what your past results are and say "oh, you deserve a
success now". Your roll of the die is occurring at the same time as
hundreds of thousands of other players so it's entirely possible that
out of several hundred thousand players all rolling the odds
simultaneously you may fail a 90% chance, repeatedly, because 90% of the
other people didn't. For detailed math see Wikipedia's explanation of
the Gambler's Fallacy.
11. "Glitch" vs "Hack"
A glitch is a naturally occurring error in the game. This can be due to a
misconfiguration of the client or the server. A glitch can be positive
or negative. An example positive glitch would be bigfoot having been
poisonable originally. This was a mistake that meant he could be killed
quite easily for large amounts of experience. A negative glitch example
would be when phantom forest first came out and was missing a ladder.
Anyone who entered the map would crash and be unable to get back in.
Exploiting a positive glitch is a form of abuse. It doesn't matter that
it's Nexon's fault it's doable. It's your responsibility to know better
than to do it.
A hack is when someone uses a third party tool to modify the way the
game works. This can be editing a WZ file to change how it behaves,
using a packet editor to send commands to the server that the client
itself would not normally send, injecting a dll into the client to
rewrite how it behaves or any number of similar things. Regardless of
why they're done, they're all against the terms of service and they're
all wrong.
It could be argued that there's a third version; Modding. Modding is
when you use a tool to edit the physical appearance of the game, not the
actual gameplay. Some example usages of this would be changing the
dictionary to make it clearer which items are which by name, or editing
the sprites on certain mobs/objects to make them stand out more from
each other, or changing your character's appearance. Or making meteor
rain flaming sheep from the sky. The results of honest modding are only
visible on your own machine, and while mostly considered "legit", is
still a form of hacking and against the TOS.
12. If it's too good to be true, you should not trust it.
Nexon has said this repeatedly. If you do something they consider abuse
it doesn't matter who got away with it, it doesn't matter who else did
it. If they think you should be punished for it and are certain you did
it, you'll pay the price and depending on how moody they are at the time
the severity can vary wildly. Pay attention, use your head, and be
prepared to defend anything you do. "I didn't know it was wrong" is
seldom a valid excuse.
13. "It's just a game".
While true, the point of a game is to have fun. People who go out of
their way to ruin the fun of a game for other people as their own way of
having fun are known as griefers. They're a miserable excuse of a
player who should really find a different hobby.
References:
P.s. Full credits to Eos from Southperry.net, I claim no credits other than some minor edits.
Mission Add - Evolving System/Accelerator
Mission Add - Error Connecting to Link 6/7/8/9
Mission Add - Hard Difficulty Challenge!/Aim Gap/Strains of Anti-Virus/Temporary Energy Supply/Strengthen Monsters Mode
Monster add - Mikhail/Oz/Irena/Eckhart/Hawkeye
Monster's Level +3/4/5/7/9/10
Monster's HP x 1.2/1.5/5/10/20
Monster's Spawn Rate +20%/30/70/100
Monster's Skin - Classic/Fairy/Ghost/Plant/Thieves/bigSize
Background Music - Darkness/SnowDrop/DancingWithTheMoon/WindAndFlower/DragonDream/Cygnus/RisingStar/Opening
Background Skin - Ereve/Pantheon/Elluel/LionHeartCastle/ForbiddenTime
Party Play Zone +5%/10%/15% EXP
Drop Rate +5%/10%/15%/20%/25%/30%
Herb Drop Rate +10%/20%/30%/40%/50%/100%
Specific Herb Drop
Ore Drop Rate +10%/20%/30%/40%/50%/100% and Specific Ore Drop
Armor Drop - Level 100/110 Armor for Warrior/Mage/Bowman/Thief/Pirate
Rare Equipment Drop
(Special Core) Monster's Spawn Rate +50%/ Party Play zone +5% EXP/ Drop Rate +20%
on the left hand side of your map. 
. Place your HS mule near the portal "link 3" (second from the left) shown in the following diagram.
.
After 42seconds, the machine will "explode" again, and the monster are
no longer vacuumed to the center and flying in random direction. Go
chase them if you want. 
