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Economics is child’s play
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Baopu He considers the lessons learnt from numerous years of Maplestory gameplay.
Nothing takes me back in my childhood greater than the soft guitar strumming that opens Maplestory’s login screen music. Ten years ago, that very tune signalled to my brain that I could let down my real-world awareness for around an hour and immerse myself with this brightly lit, colourfully pixellated realm of mages, thieves, archers and warriors. But as I nostalgically reflect upon my bygone youth spent within this MapleStory 2 Mesos for sale virtual idyll, I can’t help bear in mind one particular aspect of the experience—the economy was absolutely fucked. You thought the GFC was bad? Maplestory took it to the latest level.
Like all MMORPGS, Maplestory is premised around levelling up. As you progressed, you gained having access to better items, meaning you might fight stronger monsters and explore more dangerous areas with more lucrative item drops.
On paper, the more expensive level that you were on, the much more of Maplestory you could potentially enjoy. Just one catch—just as you were using a certain level, didn’t mean you may afford exactly what level gave you use of. In order to create any meaningful progression inside the game, you experienced to offer an ample supply with the in-game currency, referred to as Mesos.
As a novice, your in-game income depends mostly on monster drops and completing quests. Early game, this works perfectly fine, especially since every one of the armour and weapons you need is usually bought from NPC shops with prices that never change (a type of government price control perhaps?) But when you finally pass a clear point, the equips you may need are will no longer stocked in NPC shops, and will only be obtained either by massacring swathes of an particular monster hoping one ones will drop what you wish, or by going to your Free Market and hoping someone is selling what you would like at a price you may afford. However, the income you generate from questing and monster drops is not enough to the ridiculous prices for the Free Market. This is where problems begin.
Mesos could be made through sheer dedication. Like any economy, Maplestory does reward individuals who work hard. And by ‘bust your tail’, I mean play the experience non-stop for ungodly hours on the point the real world along with the virtual world become one plus the same. I stood a friend who created 5 side accounts, got every one of them to level 36 where they can play a one-off quest which provided an incredibly valuable scroll, and transferred that thus to their main account. But like a ten-year-old who could only play the sport on weekends, this wasn’t a possibility to me.
Another strategy for making mesos was using down to earth money to acquire “surprise boxes” or “gachapon tickets”—a almost lottery/gambling system which sometimes gave you incredibly rare and valuable items. While there was clearly an in-game shop where you may buy items (mostly cosmetic) using down to earth money, perhaps more alluring was the unofficial underground community, where you may buy mesos upright. However, convincing my frugal Asian parents to waste real money using a game seemed to be not an alternative.
So what then does a not so formal gamer do in order to ensure it is in the capitalism-on-crack-what-is-social-welfare wasteland of Maplestory?
“Here, take this” someone of mine says, from the in-game chat, before handing me ten million mesos. Year-Six-me is shook. I question how he made his fortune. He told me it absolutely was simple—he was hacking the sport. Or more accurately, he was “botting”, in places you download software which plays the sport for you, allowing the tedious strategy of levelling up and collecting mesos dropped by monsters to become fully automated plus more efficient. In any case, given that it absolutely was 2008 and that we were edgy primary school kids, it turned out probably worded such as “ima m4d h4xxor u n00b l0l ^_~”.
“It’s quite simple. I can educate you on how to complete it,” he tells me. I’m shaking with excitement and fear. Excited, because I no more had to be worried about money, and scared, because I honestly thought I was going for getting arrested. I thanked my pal, but said I would rather not risk it.
In numerous ways, he would be a victim of circumstance, driven with a life of crime by the society that failed hi— who am I kidding. If lots of ten year olds were busy hacking the shit out of the sport without any consequences, just imagine that this Maplestory economy was going. Not good. Hackers, from kids who botted to programmers who upright duplicated items and mesos, injected huge monetary excesses in to the in-game economy, resulting in the price of goods to sky rocket. Unable to access the products needed to sustain level growth, legitimate but casual players think it is harder and harder to progress with the game while those that have means manage for making more and even more.
The game moderators were hopeless at dealing using the root with the hacking problem, preferring to be on ban sprees every now and after that instead of consistent maintenance. A major shake-up last year known because the “Big Bang Patch” which greatly simplified levelling up and making mesos perceived to only exacerbate the problem. I quit Maplestory like a disillusioned 12-year-old this year. My friend, however, managed to create real world money by selling his pimped out account.
Within this experience were simple, but valuable lessons in economics for any child. Because of Maplestory, I first learnt tips on how to budget and manage money, ensuring I never were required to spend over I had to. I learnt the best way to bargain also to trade (once I had enough mesos, I decided to purchase items from others and selling them at higher prices. An investment portfolio, if you are going to). And I learnt about how precisely supply and demand affects market fluctuations. It’s not surprising why UNSW teaches their introductory microeconomics course through a casino game (aptly titled Playconomics).
In an ironic twist of events, in 2017, Maplestory announced that that it was removing the free market in the game. I’d make an analogy while using real world, however, from the immortal words of my good friend, “wateva rofl its merely a game XDDD”. Shop on MMOAH is safe and convenient where you can enjoy the wonderful shopping experience. With the fast development of world internet technology, they can provide cheap & fast MapleStory 2 Mesos.