MapleStory 2 is Shutting Down. Nexon Announces Closure.

Yup, you read that correctly. No, it isn’t clickbait, an overexaggeration or anything other than an official confirmation of MapleStory 2 shutting down.
On March 18th Nexon made an official blog post on their website titled “MapleStory 2 Service Closure on May 27th, 2020.”
The blog went on to mention how deeply saddened the team is that they’re forced to shut down the global MapleStory 2 service in just 2 months.
You might be curious why they’re closing the game down, though, right? Of course you are. The game hasn’t even been out for long enough to warrant a shut down.

MapleStory 2 launched to over 42,000 concurrent players on Steam and a significant portion more via the official Nexon launcher.
Exactly how many players were active during its peak is unknown, but it was confirmed that there were millions of players total playing over the course of the first month of its life.
However, a mere year and a half later, the game is sitting at 200-300 players playing concurrently via Steam.. that’s an almost unparalleled drop for an IP like MapleStory, especially considering the original MapleStory – which only has a small portion of players playing through Steam averages 1,500 concurrent players each day.

After several months of complaints, Nexon came to the realization that players weren’t happy with the state the game was in.
While technically it catered to casuals, it also prompted you to level up as fast as you could so you could participate in end-game content.
The shocking thing is – or was, at least, was the sheer lack of content present at end-game. One of, if not the most pivotal part of any MMO is its end-game.
If you can’t keep players playing after they reach the level cap, then they’re going to leave. That’s just how it is, unfortunately.
MapleStory 2 offered little end-game content, and left players repetitiously grinding dailies and weeklies across all of their characters, because that was all there was to do.

They attempted to remedy this mid-way through 2019 with their “Project New Leaf” initiative that included a significant overhaul of many of the games systems, including a brand new expansion containing tons of new content.
However, as is evident by reading their closure blog post the team “tried to rework the game starting with Project New Leaf” but instead of seeing it through, they’ve instead opted to cancel the game completely.
MapleStory 2 attempted to provide players something different to its predecessor. It also attempted to offer players a non pay-to-win experience, something that Nexon clearly failed at as it resulted in the closure of the game.
At the very least, I’ll give the MapleStory 2 team credit for doing what they could with the game, but when the game lacks any form of sustainability – it’s only a matter of time before it inevitably shuts down.

Due to the approaching closure of the game they’ve disabled the option of purchasing Blue Merets and Meso Tokens in-game.
Apparently they’re going to continue to “support MapleStory 2 throughout the next couple months,” but we all know that the game is going into maintenance mode until it shuts down. Nobody is going to be working on it and nobody is going to be responding to support requests.

I only played MapleStory for maybe 10 hours total? Honestly it wasn’t a bad game at all. I never made it to end-game but I know a lot of people did and they all had more or less the same opinion of the game after experiencing it.
It had a lot of potential to be a really good-quality Anime MMO. However, whoever was in charge of designing end-game should really take a moment to look at, reflect on and understand why this failed.
It’s a sad day when an MMO shuts down. Well, maybe not every MMO. I feel as though a lot of people raised their hands into the air when Bless Online shut down but that’s one of the few games I think I’ve ever seen that happen with.
MapleStory 2 offered a lot of fun for players while it lasted. It had cute graphics, a very fun, intricate housing system and a fun storyline.
But obviously that wasn’t enough to save it from becoming another Nexon casualty.

At this point in time I think it might be more accurate to call Nexon Nexoff.