Italian MMORPG news site, GameSource, recently did an interview with a representative of NEXON Europe about the European version of MapleStory. NEXON answers many questions regarding Maple Europe’s past, present, and future. NEXON Europe announced in the interview that the Knights of Cygnus will be released on July 1st, 2009.

MapleStory is growing very well in Europe, after a global success. So we met Nexon to talk about many upcoming contents and events for players of our countries.

GS: Why the choice to determinate the channel language by the client one ? Many European countries have problems to chat with people from other cultures (exp. People that play with german client can’t choose dutch channels) Don’t you think that have the opportunity to switch in game (without need to log out and re-log) from a channel to another could improve the interaction between players from different countries?

The primary idea behind this system was to enable players to chat with their fellow players in the same language without any difficulties, considering the different languages that are spoken in Europe. If players who speak different languages meet in one channel, the language difference may derive a communication barrier amongst users which we tried to avoid. However, players who want to meet people from other cultural or linguistic backgrounds can play in the “Europe” channel which is open to everyone regardless their language setting.

GS: Do you plan to introduce in the future some exclusive contents and maps for the european version?

We have a long list of ideas and suggestions about what we would like to bring to our service, as we want to make it as exclusive and unique as possible for our European players and at the same time integrate all the other contents that are also available in other MapleStory services.
As a start, we have the special annual events mirroring the cultural festive events in Europe.
However, we hope that we can update some Europe-exclusive contents and maps as we have them in mind in the near future – as you may know, whole new contents and maps require very much time to create, but the time will come eventually. As said, we have many ideas as of what we would like to facilitate.

GS: The 4th and the 5th jobs are not implemented yet in the european version. Any plans about that?

Definitely, the 4th job advancement is already planned for this year – in general, we have speeded up the release schedule and are trying to catch up with the global versions more quickly, so our players in Europe don’t have to miss out on anything.

GS: Celebrate European festivities is very appreciate by fans. Do you have some new ideas for this aspect that we can expect in the next months?

The European festivities have become a tradition for MapleStory Europe, and we already had the Dutch Queen’s day event earlier this year. The next one coming up is the Spanish La Tomatina event in August. We will also have the German Festival which reflects the German Oktoberfest in September, followed by British Guy Fawkes Day event in November.
The events may look exactly the same every year, but in fact, they are fine-tuned each year and the quests are slightly different from the previous year’s one. This is to avoid offering our players the same content every year, and we are definitely open to additional new cultural events as well. Something Italian is also not out of question, and we are also very happy to receive ideas from our users for new contents which we already do through our forums.

GS: Many European players have many characters on the Global one. Will it be possible, in the future, to add the opportunity to transfer these ones to the European version of the  game?

We know that many European players started with the Global service of MapleStory before the European version went live, and that most of them have the desire to transfer their accounts to the European service since they don’t want to give up on their hard-trained characters.
However, we have to understand that although we work very closely with each other, Nexon America and Nexon Europe are two different entities and transferring accounts from one service to another is a very complex and difficult issue. As for now, we don’t have a clear plan to enable account transfer. But this is also one of the reasons why we are accelerating our content release schedule, to even out the gap of content and to offer European players a similar level of playground and content as they used to have in the Global service. By then, we hope that European players who are currently playing in the Global service will find a reason to start over at MapleStory Europe – after all, we will have the same amount of contents plus some exclusive European features, along with a service that supports their national language in an playing environment full with passionate, fellow European players. Timely seen, it would also become a reasonable point to think about the account transfer possibility in more depth.

GS: Global and European version differ from number of contents, now. Are you waiting for to have more users in, to expand the old continent one? Are you satisfied about the European results?

Our answer to this may overlap with the one to the previous question. Yes, the current number of contents between Global and Europe differ a bit, which is mainly due to the fact that the Global service started 2 years before the European version got launched. But in the last two years, we have tried to catch up with the contents as quickly as possible, and are now even accelerating the process. Furthermore, we have some contents that the Global service doesn’t, such as the European event quests, and we don’t really see the European version being too dependent on the Global service or vice versa as we have different targeting groups in terms of their geographical location, and both Nexon America and Nexon Europe try their best to bring the best suitable content and service for their users.
Regarding the European results, we currently count more than 1 million registered users for the European service alone, which is very exciting and pleasing for us. But an even better part is that the numbers are still increasing steadily, and it shows that the growth potential of MapleStory Europe is far larger than we had expected. This is really encouraging.

GS: Do you plan to add more training zones also for high levels characters?

Training zones were initially designed to help new users to get on board quicker and smoother. Once a character reaches, let’s say, level 30, we believe that they have enough skills and knowledge to move on and don’t need a separate training ground anymore. Facing new challenges and completing the quests as such are the best and most effective training methods.

GS: Another important update is the Maple Trade System, to sell items for Nexon cash. Will we see this feature in Europe?

We are currently discussing the release schedule with our development team, and would love to bring it to Europe in the second half of the year as it seems to be very anticipated by our players.
As said, discussions are already ongoing and we will add it in the near future.

GS: More in general: in which direction will go your MapleStory intents about Global and European versions, gameplay and contents ? What we can expect from Nexon ?

As for MapleStory Europe, we can definitely expect far more contents and updates in the coming months – we have a very tight schedule with lots of new, large updates lined up, and are constantly planning on new events and features to bring more dynamic and fun to our players.
Our next big update will be on July 1st, including new maps within the Aqua dungeon, addition of mini dungeons and a massive improvement of the current game system. And to reveal a bit more, MapleStory Europe will have yet another enormous update this summer, and our players can look forward to a complete new experience with the introduction of “Knights of Cygnus”, which could be described as the “Season 2” of MapleStory.

Thx to Nexon for the interview.

Credits: Gamesource

Special thanks to Kenny Li.