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Savage recently did an interview with Deathez of MapleParty where they talked about Maple-News’ humble beginnings, staff changes, rival sites, the future, and Maple-News’ upcoming 4th Anniversary on June 30th!

There’s an excerpt below but be sure to check out the full interview here with a preview of our new web design!

The MapleStory KMS, GMS, MapleSea, MapleEurope, and about everything about MapleStory! Including private servers (well mostly about the servers shutting down). Also a blog about Non-MapleStory. There are several staff members who blog for free. Its because they love MapleStory and money doesn’t matter. That’s a true Mapler. They give us news first from all MapleStory(s) around the world to tell us what’s happening.  Maple-News, is the one and only MapleStory news network dedicated to bringing the community frequently updated, unbiased, and interesting news about the game and its related topics.

I also got to interview the owner of Maple-News. Here’s the interview:

What’s your name (Owner a.k.a. Savage)? My real name’s Harry Metzler. Everyone was going by aliases when they made fansites back then, so I decided to continue with that precedent.

When did Maple-News start? June 30, 2007

How many workers worked for Maple-News when it started ?When Maple-News started it was pretty much just myself and my friend Justin (known as Iris). We had been part of other fansites, particularly an old forum/database site called “Happy Mapling”. We really got involved in that site and when things started going downhill with their management we decided to start our own site. My mom is a news anchor/journalist, so making a news site was obvious. We all loved writing and just wanted to contribute to the community. And then we had Loliness and some friends from MapleStory join and it kind of grew from there. It really depends, to be honest. We’ve gone through waves of staff members that have made great contributions to this website. But things change, and some of those staff members had to move on.

Whose your most loyal worker? I would have to say the most loyal worker is Iris. He’s been there with me since the beginning and even though he’s inactive when it comes to actually working on the site he still helps out with bills and helps plan big updates and such.

So I’d have to say him. But there have been tons of great staff members over the years.

 

Was there any huge problem with Maple-news throughout the years? When we first started the fansite community, it was very different. Everyone was doing it because they enjoyed playing MapleStory and wanted to share their experiences and contribute to the community. We met a lot of great people who helped us get off the ground but there were sites, most notably rival news sites, that frequently harassed us.

 

Name one rival news site that is still up or the biggest rival? There are none. There were three of them, in total but none of them lasted longer than a month or two. I don’t think they understood that you can’t just write random updates. Anyway, a lot of people don’t understand that a lot of work actually goes into writing news posts. It’s not copy and pasting news updates from the official site. A lot of thought goes into our posts.

 

What would you rate your site? I‘d give us a 7. I think we’ve come a long way but we can always get better.

 

Are you deciding to change the template? Yes. We’re planning to re-do the site template for our 4th anniversary on June 30th.

 

How much longer will Maple-New be running? We’ll keep running the site as long as we have the money to pay the hosting and the will and inspiration to keep writing about the game. As long as people still visit, comment, and show interest in the site, we’re motivated to keep on going.

 

How much money do you make a month? Surprisingly, we barely make any money on the site. It’s a popular belief that if you run a website you make money off of it but unless you’re running sites like Sleepywood or Basil Market you’re not making much money. I know even they don’t make too much. The site’s funded out of our own pocket and we only get a few donations a year. We didn’t decide to do this for the money (although some revenue would be nice and would allow us to make the site better). It really depends on who decides to buy adspace each month. That’s where we get our real revenue.