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''MapleStory'' (2003-) is a [[AllegedlyFreeGame free-to-play]] {{MMORPG}} from South Korea that is both loved and hated for its unique graphics reminiscent of 16-bit games.
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''MapleStory'' (2003-) is a [[AllegedlyFreeGame free-to-play]] {{MMORPG}} from South Korea that is both loved and hated for its unique graphics reminiscent of 16-bit games.
games. Oh, and there's also an [[Anime/MapleStory anime version]], which has a plot with nothing in common.
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** The ''ultimate'' version of this is the Magician's ManaSheild, which is used for ''life''.
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** The ''ultimate'' version of this is the Magician's ManaSheild, ManaShield, which is used for ''life''.
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** The ''ultimate'' version of this is the Magician's Mana Sheild, which is used for ''life''.
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** The ''ultimate'' version of this is the Magician's Mana Sheild, ManaSheild, which is used for ''life''.
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** The ''ultimate'' version of this is the Magician's Magic Guard, which is used for ''life''.
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** The ''ultimate'' version of this is the Magician's Magic Guard, Mana Sheild, which is used for ''life''.
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Characters exclusive to a certain regional of MapleStory. Currently, two such classes exist; '''Dragon Warrior''' for CMS/TMS, and '''Jett''' for GMS.
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Characters exclusive to a certain regional area of MapleStory. Currently, two such classes exist; '''Dragon Warrior''' for CMS/TMS, and '''Jett''' for GMS.
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* '''Bowman:''' They are specialists in ranged damage, can take the Hunter/Ranger/Bow Master path and use fast but weaker bows or the Crossbowman/Sniper/Marksman who use slower but stronger crossbows. Definitely a GlassCannon.
* '''Magician:''' They are not exactly classified as a SquishyWizard in this game, as they have a skill that converts a large percentage of their damage to damage to their large MP pool. Depending on the path that they choose to take, they either cast offensive/defensive [[AnIcePerson Ice]]/[[ShockAndAwe Lightning]], offensive [[PlayingWithFire Fire]]/{{Poison|ousPerson}}, or support Holy spells.
* '''Magician:''' They are not exactly classified as a SquishyWizard in this game, as they have a skill that converts a large percentage of their damage to damage to their large MP pool. Depending on the path that they choose to take, they either cast offensive/defensive [[AnIcePerson Ice]]/[[ShockAndAwe Lightning]], offensive [[PlayingWithFire Fire]]/{{Poison|ousPerson}}, or support Holy spells.
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* '''Magician:''' They are not exactly classified as a SquishyWizard in this game, as they have a skill that converts a large percentage of their damage to damage to their large MP pool. Depending on the path that they choose to take, they either cast offensive/defensive [[AnIcePerson Ice]]/[[ShockAndAwe Lightning]], offensive [[PlayingWithFire Fire]]/{{Poison|ousPerson}}, or support Holy spells.
* '''Magician:''' They are not exactly classified as a SquishyWizard in this game, as they have a skill that converts a large percentage of their damage to damage to their large MP pool. Depending on the path that they choose to take, they either cast offensive/defensive [[AnIcePerson Ice]]/[[ShockAndAwe Lightning]], offensive [[PlayingWithFire Fire]]/{{Poison|ousPerson}}, or support Holy spells.
* '''Bowman:''' They are specialists in ranged damage, can take the Hunter/Ranger/Bow Master path and use fast but weaker bows or the Crossbowman/Sniper/Marksman who use slower but stronger crossbows. Definitely a GlassCannon.
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* '''[[BlowYouAway Wind Archer:]]''' Bowman, Wind and Bow user. Known as Wind Breaker[[hottip:*:[[{{Fartillery}} unfortunately]]]] in non-Global versions.
* '''[[PlayingWithFire Blaze Wizard]]''': Magician, Fire spell user. Known as Flame Wizard in non-Global versions.
* '''[[PlayingWithFire Blaze Wizard]]''': Magician, Fire spell user. Known as Flame Wizard in non-Global versions.
* '''[[PlayingWithFire Blaze Wizard]]''': Magician, Fire spell user. Known as Flame Wizard in non-Global versions.
* '''[[BlowYouAway Wind Archer:]]''' Bowman, Wind and Bow user. Known as Wind Breaker in non-Global versions.
* '''[[DarkIsNotEvil Night Walker]]''': Thief, Darkness and Throwing Star user.
* '''[[BlowYouAway Wind Archer:]]''' Bowman, Wind and Bow user. Known as Wind Breaker in non-Global versions.
* '''[[DarkIsNotEvil Night Walker]]''': Thief, Darkness and Throwing Star user.
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* '''[[DarkIsNotEvil Night Walker]]''': Thief, Darkness and Throwing Star user.
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'''5 - Chief Knights of Cygnus:'''
The five Chief Knights of Cygnus, Empress of Maple World, each holding dominion over a particular element. Their job is to protect the Empress, and also to train and advance new recruits.
* '''Mikhail: Chief Knight of Light:''' The first of the instructors to receive his own class in Spring of 2012 in KMS. He wields Swords and the [[LightEmUp element of light]] in addition to his special sup weapon, a shield called 'Aegis'.
Chief Knight Classes retain several benefits of Cygnus classes, such as extra EXP and being able to make a Ultimate Explorer at level 120. They, however can reach level 200.
'''6 - Region Exclusive Characters:'''
Characters exclusive to a certain regional of MapleStory. Currently, two such classes exist; '''Dragon Warrior''' for CMS/TMS, and '''Jett''' for GMS.
* '''Dragon Warrior:''' An Eastern themed sub-branch of the Pirate adventurer class currently exclusive to the Taiwan and China servers. They use Knuckles and Guns in combination with martial arts skills. Also [[PandaingToTheAudience Pandas]].
* '''Jett:''' A Space BountyHunter wanted for killing the King of the Planet Cerberus. She crash lands near Nataulus Harbor. She uses Guns and her advanced Alien Technology to fight. Like Dragon Warrior, she is also based as a Pirate class. Little is currently known about her and she will be released during the upcoming 'Renegades' patch. Currently exclusive to the North American servers.
So far, all region-exclusive characters can reach level 200.
The five Chief Knights of Cygnus, Empress of Maple World, each holding dominion over a particular element. Their job is to protect the Empress, and also to train and advance new recruits.
* '''Mikhail: Chief Knight of Light:''' The first of the instructors to receive his own class in Spring of 2012 in KMS. He wields Swords and the [[LightEmUp element of light]] in addition to his special sup weapon, a shield called 'Aegis'.
Chief Knight Classes retain several benefits of Cygnus classes, such as extra EXP and being able to make a Ultimate Explorer at level 120. They, however can reach level 200.
'''6 - Region Exclusive Characters:'''
Characters exclusive to a certain regional of MapleStory. Currently, two such classes exist; '''Dragon Warrior''' for CMS/TMS, and '''Jett''' for GMS.
* '''Dragon Warrior:''' An Eastern themed sub-branch of the Pirate adventurer class currently exclusive to the Taiwan and China servers. They use Knuckles and Guns in combination with martial arts skills. Also [[PandaingToTheAudience Pandas]].
* '''Jett:''' A Space BountyHunter wanted for killing the King of the Planet Cerberus. She crash lands near Nataulus Harbor. She uses Guns and her advanced Alien Technology to fight. Like Dragon Warrior, she is also based as a Pirate class. Little is currently known about her and she will be released during the upcoming 'Renegades' patch. Currently exclusive to the North American servers.
So far, all region-exclusive characters can reach level 200.
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Added Luminous information, cleaned up Evan\'s section, added to Mercedes to make it more straightforward. And did some minor edits to Aran.
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* '''Aran, the Ancient Hero (Warrior):''' An ancient [[BladeOnAStick Polearm-wielding]] warrior [[HumanPopsicle of the past]] who fought against the Black Magician with the other four heroes, and was cursed along with them. Aran wakes up in the present with [[LaserGuidedAmnesia his/her memories wiped out]], although the friendly inhabitants of Rien help Aran to regain his/her memories and former legendary strength while continuing the fight against the present day Black Wings. Aran's special trait involves a [[{{Combos}} combo system]] and skill usage reliant on button command sequences.
* '''Evan, the Dragon Master (Mage):''' A second-generation son/daughter of farmers living near Henesys who meets a huge dragon in a dream. The next morning, Evan finds a dragon egg, and a voice then speaks of a pact and a bond being forged with Evan. The egg later hatches into a baby dragon, who is later named Mir. Evan then sets out to find out why he/she was chosen, and find out exactly what Mir truly is. [[spoiler: He later meets the first generation Dragon Master and Dragon Familiar, Freud and Afrien (who is Mir's father).]] Evan's special trait involves using Mir to attack enemies, and has 10 job advancements (or stages of growth) compared to the usual 4. Qualifies as [[TheRedMage a red mage]].
* '''Mercedes, the Elf Queen (Archer): ''' An ancient Dual-Crossbow Archer [[HumanPopsicle of the past]] who fought against the Black Mage with Aran, Freud and the two other heroes. Wakes up later to travel the Maple World to fight the Black Mage again. Rides a Unicorn and is very acrobatic. Hails from the town of Eurel which was also cursed by the Black Mage.
* '''Mysterious Thief, Phantom (Thief): ''' A thief who became a hero to protect the world his love, the former empress of the Maple World, loved so much. He wields canes and [[DeathDealer cards]] and has the ability to copy other adventurers skills. Like the other heroes, he was sealed in ice after defeating the Black Mage, but once again travels the world in his flying ship, the Crystal Garden.
The Legends currently have a maximum level of 200. The fate of the Pirate Legend is not known at this time.
* '''Evan, the Dragon Master (Mage):''' A second-generation son/daughter of farmers living near Henesys who meets a huge dragon in a dream. The next morning, Evan finds a dragon egg, and a voice then speaks of a pact and a bond being forged with Evan. The egg later hatches into a baby dragon, who is later named Mir. Evan then sets out to find out why he/she was chosen, and find out exactly what Mir truly is. [[spoiler: He later meets the first generation Dragon Master and Dragon Familiar, Freud and Afrien (who is Mir's father).]] Evan's special trait involves using Mir to attack enemies, and has 10 job advancements (or stages of growth) compared to the usual 4. Qualifies as [[TheRedMage a red mage]].
* '''Mercedes, the Elf Queen (Archer): ''' An ancient Dual-Crossbow Archer [[HumanPopsicle of the past]] who fought against the Black Mage with Aran, Freud and the two other heroes. Wakes up later to travel the Maple World to fight the Black Mage again. Rides a Unicorn and is very acrobatic. Hails from the town of Eurel which was also cursed by the Black Mage.
* '''Mysterious Thief, Phantom (Thief): ''' A thief who became a hero to protect the world his love, the former empress of the Maple World, loved so much. He wields canes and [[DeathDealer cards]] and has the ability to copy other adventurers skills. Like the other heroes, he was sealed in ice after defeating the Black Mage, but once again travels the world in his flying ship, the Crystal Garden.
The Legends currently have a maximum level of 200. The fate of the Pirate Legend is not known at this time.
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* '''Aran, the Ancient Hero (Warrior):''' An ancient [[BladeOnAStick Polearm-wielding]] warrior [[HumanPopsicle of the past]] who fought against the Black Magician with the other four heroes, and was cursed along with them. Aran wakes up in the present with [[LaserGuidedAmnesia his/her memories wiped out]], although the friendly inhabitants of Rien help Aran to regain his/her memories and former legendary strength while continuing the fight against the present day Black Wings. Aran's special trait involves a [[{{Combos}} combo system]] and skill usage reliant on button command sequences.
sequences. He uses a Polearm exclusively, and many of his attacks are [[AnIcePerson ice-based]].
* '''Evan, the Dragon Master (Mage):''' A second-generation son/daughter of farmers living near Henesys who meets a huge dragon in a dream. The next morning, Evan finds a dragon egg, and a voice then speaks of a pact and a bond being forged with Evan. The egg later hatches into a baby dragon, who is later named Mir. Evan then sets out to find out why he/she was chosen, and find out exactly what Mir truly is.[[spoiler: He later meets the first generation Dragon Master and Dragon Familiar, Freud and Afrien (who is Mir's father).]] Evan's special trait involves using Mir to attack enemies, and has 10 job advancements (or stages of growth) compared to the usual 4. Qualifies He uses Wands and Staffs like other mages, and also has additional armor for Mir, his Dragon. Evan uses mostly [[PlayingWithFire fire spells]] but has a couple other elemental spells in addition to several buffs, qualifying him as [[TheRedMage a red mage]].
* '''Mercedes, the Elf Queen (Archer): ''' An ancient Dual-Crossbow Archer [[HumanPopsicle of the past]] who fought against the Black Mage with Aran,Freud Freud, Phantom, and Luminous. She was cursed after sealing the two other heroes. Black Mage, and as the ruler of the elves, her people, and her home, Eurel, were cursed as well, freezing them for many years in ice. Wakes up later to travel the Maple World to once again fight the Black Mage again. Rides Mage. Many of her skills involve quick movements, and she can gain a Unicorn as a mount. Her Weapons are [[ImpossiblyCoolWeapon Dual Bowguns with Magic Arrows]] that never run out of ammo. Several of her skills involve [[BlowYouAway Wind]] and is very acrobatic. Hails from the town of Eurel which was also cursed by the Black Mage.
[[ShockAndAwe Lightning]].
* '''Mysterious Thief, Phantom (Thief): ''' A thief who became a hero to protect the world his love, the former empress of the Maple World, loved so much. He wieldscanes Canes and [[DeathDealer cards]] and has the ability to copy other adventurers skills. Like the other heroes, he was sealed in ice after defeating the Black Mage, but once again travels the world in his flying ship, the Crystal Garden.
* '''Luminous (Mage):''' Luminous is the final Hero class, and is also a Magician Class like Evan. (This is explained by Pirate classes using 'new' technology, which wasn't around during the time of the Black Mage) Although not much is known about him plot-wise (Other than being one of the five heroes), due to him just being released in KMST, he does use a new weapon, the Shining Rod, and Orbs as a sub Weapon. He also uses a unique Light/Dark system for attacks. Using just one of them will strengthen attacks of the same time, but achieving a balance will make him much stronger.
The Legends currently have a maximum level of 200. The fate of the Pirate Legend is not known at this time.\n
* '''Evan, the Dragon Master (Mage):''' A second-generation son/daughter of farmers living near Henesys who meets a huge dragon in a dream. The next morning, Evan finds a dragon egg, and a voice then speaks of a pact and a bond being forged with Evan. The egg later hatches into a baby dragon, who is later named Mir. Evan then sets out to find out why he/she was chosen, and find out exactly what Mir truly is.
* '''Mercedes, the Elf Queen (Archer): ''' An ancient Dual-Crossbow Archer [[HumanPopsicle of the past]] who fought against the Black Mage with Aran,
* '''Mysterious Thief, Phantom (Thief): ''' A thief who became a hero to protect the world his love, the former empress of the Maple World, loved so much. He wields
* '''Luminous (Mage):''' Luminous is the final Hero class, and is also a Magician Class like Evan. (This is explained by Pirate classes using 'new' technology, which wasn't around during the time of the Black Mage) Although not much is known about him plot-wise (Other than being one of the five heroes), due to him just being released in KMST, he does use a new weapon, the Shining Rod, and Orbs as a sub Weapon. He also uses a unique Light/Dark system for attacks. Using just one of them will strengthen attacks of the same time, but achieving a balance will make him much stronger.
The Legends currently have a maximum level of 200.
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* FlatWhat: Demon Slayer gives one of these in the "Turn Me Back" quest.
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* CrossOver: For MapleStory's 9th Year Anniversary, Slave.In.Utero, author of ''TowerOfGod'', was asked to do a promotional cross over. [[https://orangemushroom.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/maplestory-vs-tower-of-god.png He delivered.]]
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** TrailAndErrorGameplay / HitboxDissonance: Maple Story was clearly not build to be a platformer.
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** TrailAndErrorGameplay TrialAndErrorGameplay / HitboxDissonance: Maple Story was clearly not build to be a platformer.
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* PlatformHell: The jump quests are usually this, for at least three reasons. The game is not a platformer, there are plenty of LedgeBats, and even if your class had some advantage, you are BroughtDownToNormal.
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* PlatformHell: The jump quests, for many reasons...
** CheckpointStarvation: They are really really long.
** TrailAndErrorGameplay / HitboxDissonance: Maple Story was clearly not build to be a platformer.
** '''LedgeBats''': Jumping segments ''overflow'' with them.
** LuckBasedMission: {{Knockback}} can be very unpredictable.
** BroughtDownToNormal: No class has an advantage.
** NintendoHard: The jump quests areusually this, for at least three reasons. The game is not a platformer, there are plenty of LedgeBats, and even if your class had some advantage, you are BroughtDownToNormal.plain difficult.
** CheckpointStarvation: They are really really long.
** TrailAndErrorGameplay / HitboxDissonance: Maple Story was clearly not build to be a platformer.
** '''LedgeBats''': Jumping segments ''overflow'' with them.
** LuckBasedMission: {{Knockback}} can be very unpredictable.
** BroughtDownToNormal: No class has an advantage.
** NintendoHard: The jump quests are
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* PlatformHell: The jump quests are usually this, for at least three reasons. The game is not a platformer, there are plenty of LedgeBats, and even if your class had some advantage, you are BroughtDownToNormal.
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** Well, they were, anyway. That was the original Silent Crusade story... the retconned new version, not so much for either of them.
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** Some of the TwentyBearAsses quests will deliberately require you to kill the monsters, as well as grabbing TwentyBearAsses, just so someone can't simply give you the TwentyBearAsses needed. [[GameplayAndStorySegregation No this doesn't make any sense in context.]] The game makes ''sure'' you have to work your ass off.
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*** The grind is no longer there. Even at higher levels it takes only a few hours to level.
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Immortality split into subtropes
* TheAgeless: Ever since Maya took the Weird Medicine, she hasn't aged a day up to the point in the Future.
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* {{Immortality}}: Ever since Maya took the Weird Medicine, she hasn't aged a day up to the point in the Future.
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* LivingRelic: Mercedes. Somehow, this is largely averted in the case of Aran, but this is possibly due to the relatively short lifespan before the freeze in comparison.
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** HP warriors. They're a warrior who doesn't level their stats up until the second job at lvl 30. All they do is add to HP. By lvl 30, it's something like 10,000. Furthermore, the second job grants the Power Guard ability, which deals damage back whenever you get hit.
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*** HP Priests. This is generally not recommended for the other two magician classes, but seeing as how many parties don't care for any abilities but your buffs, the priest/bishop may be able to get away with it (and it's actually an advantage for spam healing with minimal pot usage). That said, it usually requires many rare equips to pull off without extensive hp-washing (which could screw up the character offensively).
* Any other builds, including the somewhat impractical Str wizard (which is now largely useless, since mage weapons deal physical damage that is a fraction of their magical attack).
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** Really all the MP regeneration patch did was mess up further any hp-washed priests, forcing them to carry around pots. [[TheyChangedItNowItSucks Before, if they could survive the first hit, they could essentially camp in a boss battle, and spam heal]].
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*** Justified in this case, as Mercedes being [[LivingRelic being good at history]] but [[FishOutOfTemporalWater totally oblivious to everyday events]] has no concept about Athena Pierce, despite having ''passed by her hut'' at least ten times!
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** Clerics are possibly only class that it actually makes some sense to turn into a HP magician, since their Magic Guard drains from the one thing their heal can't restore, instead of healing them directly. Nevertheless, this pretty much has to be supplemented with HP equips and done by someone who really knows what they're doing, or you end up with a class that takes roughly [[NiceJobBreakingItHero 30 hits to kill enemies of an equal level]].
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* AntiHero[=/=]AntiVillain: Not only the backstory of Demon Hunter, but even the way he/she talks. While Evan is clearly a WideEyedIdealist, Demon Hunter's motive for joining the Resistance is outright revenge, and she talks more like a villain in general than any of the other heroes.
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* AntiHero[=/=]AntiVillain: Not only the backstory of Demon Hunter, but even the way he/she talks. While Evan is clearly a WideEyedIdealist, Demon Hunter's motive for joining the Resistance is outright revenge, and she he/she talks more like a villain in general than any of the other heroes.heroes (talking for instance about how he or she "can use this" Resistance to further their plans of payback).
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* AntiHero[=/=]AntiVillain: Not only the backstory of Demon Hunter, but even the way he/she talks. While Evan is clearly a WideEyedIdealist, Demon Hunter's motive for joining the Resistance is outright revenge, and she talks more like a villain in general than any of the other heroes.
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** Extractors. They basically allow people to rent your extractor to break down items into raw materials. They expire, much like androids. But here's the real great part, how do you make extractors? [[LogicBomb By extracting weapons, and gaining enough item crystals to put one together]].
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* WideEyedIdealist: Evan. He/she wants what's best for Mir the dragon, and actually [[spoiler: has a quest calling Condition for Joining the Secret Organization, where Evan gets duped into following the Black Wings.]]
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* CrutchCharacter: The entire point of the Cygnus Knights. They become stronger faster, and get access to more advanced skills at an earlier level, as well as skills unique to the Cygnus Knights, but have a smaller level {{cap}} at 120[[hottip:*:They still [[PointBuildSystem accumulate as much AP as an adventurer/hero/resistance member at around level 133]], where everyone else can eventually overtake them.
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* CrutchCharacter: The entire point of the Cygnus Knights. They become stronger faster, and get access to more advanced skills at an earlier level, as well as skills unique to the Cygnus Knights, but have a smaller level {{cap}} at 120[[hottip:*:They still [[PointBuildSystem accumulate as much AP as an adventurer/hero/resistance member at around level 133]], where everyone else can eventually overtake them. They are meant for people that plan on [[LevelGrinding losing their patience]] by then.
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* CrutchCharacter: The entire point of the Cygnus Knights. They become stronger faster, but have a smaller level {{cap}} at 120[[hottip:*:They still [[PointBuildSystem accumulate as much AP as an adventurer/hero/resistance member at around level 133]], where everyone else can eventually overtake them.
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* CrutchCharacter: The entire point of the Cygnus Knights. They become stronger faster, and get access to more advanced skills at an earlier level, as well as skills unique to the Cygnus Knights, but have a smaller level {{cap}} at 120[[hottip:*:They still [[PointBuildSystem accumulate as much AP as an adventurer/hero/resistance member at around level 133]], where everyone else can eventually overtake them.
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* CrutchCharacter: The entire point of the Cygnus Knights. They become stronger faster, but have a smaller level {{cap}} at 120[[hottip:*:They still [[PointBuildSystem accumulate as much AP as an adventurer/hero/resistance member at around level 133]], where everyone else can eventually overtake them.
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** And if you play as a [[ReviveKillsZombie cleric]], you won't need health potions either![[hottip:*:The cleric's heal works by healing you as well as five targets near you. If at least one of those targets aren't your party members, you can damage undead enemies. And also, the formula for heal damage is your max health, multiplied by three (if heal is maxed out), divided among you and the recipients you are healing.]]
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this isnt really a secret.
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* RandomEncounter: [[spoiler: Crimson Balrog]]. Escape is recommended if you aren't trying to fight it.
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* RandomEncounter: [[spoiler: Crimson Balrog]].Balrog. Escape is recommended if you aren't trying to fight it.
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** Someone in the Nautilus says "[[SesameStreet This message brought to you by the letter]] [[TalkLikeAPirate ARR]][[AWorldwidePunomenon RRR!]]"
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** Someone in the Nautilus says "[[SesameStreet "[[Series/SesameStreet This message brought to you by the letter]] [[TalkLikeAPirate ARR]][[AWorldwidePunomenon RRR!]]"
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YMMV sinkhole
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* LevelGrinding: '''And how.''' This game is famed for its level grinding, although in recent years its become much easier due to addition of party quests, experience needed to level up reduced by 25%, and the family system which lets even [[BribingYourWayToVictory non-payers]] get 2x exp for 15-30min. However, its still near impossible to level up at much higher levels. Of course, in the end, it all depends on [[YourMileageMayVary your mileage.]]
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* LevelGrinding: '''And how.''' This game is famed for its level grinding, although in recent years its become much easier due to addition of party quests, experience needed to level up reduced by 25%, and the family system which lets even [[BribingYourWayToVictory non-payers]] get 2x exp for 15-30min. However, its still near impossible to level up at much higher levels. Of course, in the end, it all depends on [[YourMileageMayVary your mileage.]]
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** Marco, an agent in a black suit and holding a big gun in Omega Sector, is based on Agent K (Will Smith) from Film/MenInBlack
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** Marco, an agent in a black suit and holding a big gun in Omega Sector, is based on Agent K J (Will Smith) from Film/MenInBlack
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* GodSaveUsFromTheQueen: Ariant Queen Areda. Also, [[spoiler: Empress Cygnus in the future.]]
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* GodSaveUsFromTheQueen: Ariant Queen Areda. Also, [[spoiler: Empress Cygnus in the future.]]]] Arguably the mook perspective on a high leveled Mercedes.
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** But because they moved the ς up, it appears to say "Sixtopia" to an unknowing observer, which is oddly fitting with six city-states on the surface of the island.
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** The look of the game is very similar to the WonderBoy series (esepcially the Monster World games).
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** The look of the game is very similar to the WonderBoy ''Franchise/WonderBoy'' series (esepcially (especially the Monster World ''Monster World'' games).
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''MapleStory'' (2003-) is a [[AllegedlyFreeGame free-to-play]] {{MMORPG}} from South Korea that is both loved and hated for its unique graphics reminiscent of 16-bit games.
Like most [=MMORPGs=], ''Maple Story'' is crawling with all sorts of people, including (but not limited to) kids, tweens, teens, adults, noobs, hackers, [[StopHavingFunGuys people who take it too seriously]], and normal people who want to have fun.
At first glance, ''Maple Story'' seems like a game that is generally marketed towards children due to the anime-style graphics and the general cute factor of many of the (early) monsters.
The various regions of ''Maple Story'' have differing backgrounds and plots. In order to really notice this information, the player has to finish certain quests and then connect the dots while looking through their completed quests log. These quests can be fairly boring since most of them are [[FetchQuest fetch quests]] requiring you to collect TwentyBearAsses. However some quests are worthwhile and have good rewards, but you [[GuideDangIt won't know this until you look at your 'In Progress' quest log AFTER accepting a quest (which most of the time shows the reward) or reading a quest guide on the internet beforehand.]] Interestingly, a few quests actually have some unexpected plot twists in them, but these tend to be ignored since the player is just clicking "Next" and not reading the text.
Recent ''Maple Story'' expansions [[hottip:*: As early as the release of the first new adventurer class, The Pirate, with there being many quests in the Nautilus referring to the Black Magician]] now hint that a shady character called the [[BigBad Black Magician]] and his minions, the Black Wings, are responsible for the activities of some of the major bosses (and the chaos happening within the regions where the major bosses reside).
There are currently four main character factions, known as the Adventurers, the Knights of Cygnus, the Legends, and the Resistance. All of them have ties to the ongoing Black Magician and his Black Wings plot, some factions having more [[hottip:*: The Resistance]] and some less [[hottip:*: Adventurers]] to do with the Black Magician.
'''1 - Adventurers:'''
The characters of the Adventurer (known as Explorer in the Global Version) classes start the game as a Beginner. These were the first classes in the game, and are thus the most basic in terms of skills. Their overall role in the plot is just as simple. Adventurers basically wander the world looking for glory, running across dangerous monsters that the Black Wings are responsible for in some way.
* '''Bowman:''' They are specialists in ranged damage, can take the Hunter/Ranger/Bow Master path and use fast but weaker bows or the Crossbowman/Sniper/Marksman who use slower but stronger crossbows. Definitely a GlassCannon.
* '''Magician:''' They are not exactly classified as a SquishyWizard in this game, as they have a skill that converts a large percentage of their damage to damage to their large MP pool. Depending on the path that they choose to take, they either cast offensive/defensive [[AnIcePerson Ice]]/[[ShockAndAwe Lightning]], offensive [[PlayingWithFire Fire]]/{{Poison|ousPerson}}, or support Holy spells.
* '''Warrior:''' One path they can take is the Fighter/Crusader/Hero who uses [[TheBerserker Swords/Axes]], who specialize in a Combo Attack, where their attacks gather orbs that further boost their damage. Another option is to become a MagicKnight with the Page/White Knight/Paladin path and have [[PlayingWithFire F]][[AnIcePerson O]][[ShockAndAwe U]][[LightEmUp R]] elements to complement the swords/[[DropTheHammer hammers]]/[[CarryABigStick maces]] they use. Then, there's the Spearman/Dragon Knight/Dark Knight path, [[CaptainObvious obviously]] specializes in [[BladeOnAStick Spears/Pole Arms]], and tends to CastFromHitPoints.
* '''Thief:''' The ever-so-popular [[FragileSpeedster fragile speedsters]] of the game. They can either take the Assassin/Hermit/Night Lord path and specialize in throwing stars, or become a KnifeNut with the Bandit/Chief Bandit/Shadower classes.
** '''Dual Blade:''' An offshoot of the Thieves. They [[DualWielding dual wield]] with a dagger and short blade. They are so different from the rest of the Adventurers in nearly every way, such as actually having a story and the fact that they have a separate character creation option.
* '''Pirate:''' They have two possible paths to take. The first being a Gunslinger/Outlaw/Corsair, who are possibly [[GlassCannon glass cannons]]. The second path being a Brawler/Marauder/Buccanner, who uses knuckles. Brawlers also tend to shove mobs around, functioning like a tank. They are [[MightyGlacier massively slow but hit hard]].
** '''Cannon Shooter:''' An offshoot of the Pirates. They use a Cannon and a Monkey companion. It can also summon the Nautilus at will.
After becoming one of the five Adventurer classes, the player character is expected to [[LevelGrinding level up]] [[PrestigeClass and advance]] to the second job of that class at Level 30, where they will permanently choose which weapon path to take. The player character advances to the third job at Level 70, and fourth job at Level 120. The maximum level of any Adventurer character is currently 200.
'''2 - Knights of Cygnus:'''
The Knights of Cygnus classes themselves are like [[ElementalPowers elemental variants]] of the Adventurers, but they only focus on one weapon or spell type from the very beginning. Their role in the plot is to protect Queen Cygnus, ruler of the Maple World, from the Black Wings. [[spoiler:In the future, they get [[HeelFaceBrainwashing Face Heel Brainwashed]] by a trap set by the Black Mage.]]
* '''[[BlowYouAway Wind Archer:]]''' Bowman, Wind and Bow user. Known as Wind Breaker[[hottip:*:[[{{Fartillery}} unfortunately]]]] in non-Global versions.
* '''[[PlayingWithFire Blaze Wizard]]''': Magician, Fire spell user. Known as Flame Wizard in non-Global versions.
* '''[[HolyHandGrenade Dawn Warrior]]''': Warrior, Soul and Sword user. Known as Soul Master in non-Global versions.
* '''[[ShockAndAwe Thunder Breaker]]''': Pirate, Lightning and Knuckle user. Known as Striker in non-Global versions.
* '''[[DarkIsNotEvil Night Walker]]''': Thief, Darkness and Throwing Star user.
Knights of Cygnus characters are generally identical to the main classes in terms of leveling and advancement, except that their maximum level is 120 (and they lack a fourth job). Though to make up for it they are overpowered compared to their adventurer counterparts at similar levels.
'''3 - Legends:'''
The Legends consist of five ancient heroes (or people related to a specific hero) that fought the Black Magician in the past and managed to seal him away. However, the Black Magician did not go down without a fight, and the five ancient heroes are said to have been cursed, sealing them in ice and wiping out their memories.
Each of the five Legends are all actual individuals (thus not really classes), hence the naming scheme and NPC dialogue treating the player as if he/she actually is the specific Legend. The Legends may use the same equipment and rely on the same stats as their Adventurer and Cygnus counterparts, but they have unique skills and abilities. Also, while all of the Adventurers and the Knights of Cygnus share the same general story across all of their respective classes, each of the Legends have a seperate story, with completely different starting points and quests.
* '''Aran, the Ancient Hero (Warrior):''' An ancient [[BladeOnAStick Polearm-wielding]] warrior [[HumanPopsicle of the past]] who fought against the Black Magician with the other four heroes, and was cursed along with them. Aran wakes up in the present with [[LaserGuidedAmnesia his/her memories wiped out]], although the friendly inhabitants of Rien help Aran to regain his/her memories and former legendary strength while continuing the fight against the present day Black Wings. Aran's special trait involves a [[{{Combos}} combo system]] and skill usage reliant on button command sequences.
* '''Evan, the Dragon Master (Mage):''' A second-generation son/daughter of farmers living near Henesys who meets a huge dragon in a dream. The next morning, Evan finds a dragon egg, and a voice then speaks of a pact and a bond being forged with Evan. The egg later hatches into a baby dragon, who is later named Mir. Evan then sets out to find out why he/she was chosen, and find out exactly what Mir truly is. [[spoiler: He later meets the first generation Dragon Master and Dragon Familiar, Freud and Afrien (who is Mir's father).]] Evan's special trait involves using Mir to attack enemies, and has 10 job advancements (or stages of growth) compared to the usual 4. Qualifies as [[TheRedMage a red mage]].
* '''Mercedes, the Elf Queen (Archer): ''' An ancient Dual-Crossbow Archer [[HumanPopsicle of the past]] who fought against the Black Mage with Aran, Freud and the two other heroes. Wakes up later to travel the Maple World to fight the Black Mage again. Rides a Unicorn and is very acrobatic. Hails from the town of Eurel which was also cursed by the Black Mage.
* '''Mysterious Thief, Phantom (Thief): ''' A thief who became a hero to protect the world his love, the former empress of the Maple World, loved so much. He wields canes and [[DeathDealer cards]] and has the ability to copy other adventurers skills. Like the other heroes, he was sealed in ice after defeating the Black Mage, but once again travels the world in his flying ship, the Crystal Garden.
The Legends currently have a maximum level of 200. The fate of the Pirate Legend is not known at this time.
'''4 - [[LaResistance The Resistance]]:'''
The evil group known as the Black Wings are dominant in the town of Edelstein, and do many awful things such as experimenting on humans. One secret faction in the town opposes them and challenges their authority, known as The Resistance.
* '''Battle Mage:''' They wield staves, have melee spells, and have a variety of [[BattleAura Aura]] skills that buff/debuff party members/enemies. Gets a nifty SpinAttack skill late game.
* '''Wild Hunter:''' They wield crossbows, have a few explosive weaponry, and have the ability to summon and ride a jaguar that even has skills and attacks of its own. They can drop ExplodingBarrels and capture monsters to use to fight other monsters, [[UselessUsefulSpell though these skills are of questionable usefullness]].
* '''Mechanic:''' They wield guns, but rather then using those, they summon a [[MiniMecha Miniature Mecha]] to ride and attack with. A few of the things their robots come with are, flamethrowers, giant hammers, [[RocketPunch rocket-propelled fists]], [[TeleportersAndTransporters portable teleporters]], [[GatlingGood gatling guns]] and [[WaveMotionGun laser cannons]]. Can later briefly summon a HumongousMecha to nuke their entire screen. Considered a LightningBruiser.
* '''Demon Slayer:''' A former general of the Black Mage army along with Von Leon, Orca, and Akyrum. His brother was killed by the hands of the Black Mage; therefore he betrayed the Black Mage in an act of revenge and was almost killed. When he woke up, he breaks free from his egg prison in Verne Mine. The mysterious J rescues him and sends him to the Resistance hideout in Edelstein. Uses a special Magic Gauge called Demon Force that replaces the MP Gauge. Uses one handed Axes and Blunt Weapons, and a new weapon type called Maces. Considered the Warrior Resistance member.
A fair word of warning while interacting with others in ''Maple Story'': To a significant amount of players in this game, just about ''anything'' can be grounds for some SeriousBusiness.
In short: Picture a 2-D RagnarokOnline and you get the idea.
Has a character sheet [[{{Characters/MapleStory}} here]]. It really NeedsMoreLove.
Not to be confused with [[VideoGame/CaveStory Cave Story]].
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!!This game provides examples of:
* AIIsACrapshoot: The main plot point of the Neo-Tokyo level.
* ATasteOfPower: Monsters that could kill any other class in one hit when they're first starting out are no match for Aran... until [[RestartAtLevelOne you finish the tutorial, anyway.]] The Demon Slayer tutorial allows you to use the 4th job Demon Slayer skills against a group of three Phantom Lykas summoned by Akyrum.... until [[RestartAtLevelOne he goes up against the Black Mage and is defeated.]]
* AffectionateParody: Basically almost every single area of the game and several weapons; even the BGM tends to do this.
* AllegedlyFreeGame: Although you can play for free, getting (good) hairstyles/faces, slot/experience boosters, and certain shop-only items require the use of real money. Real world money is also helpful if you want a chance at having higher leveled equipment or over 100 million [[GlobalCurrency mesos]].
** Though as of 2011, Nexon has partnered with various companies that offer NX rewards for completing "surveys"(advertiser spam) and other such offers. It is now technically possible to earn NX funds without buying it, but it often requires a lot of patience and a willingness to have an email inbox filled with spam to do so.
* AnachronismStew And how!
* AnimatedAdaptation: [[InNameOnly The only similarities]] were the monsters involved.
* AnIcePerson: Crossbowmen get Ice skills in the third job. Ice/Lightning wizards are partly this.
** Aran, in addition to his combination attacks, uses many powerful ice elemental attacks later on.
* AnnoyingArrows: Played with in the Bowman path: Initially, due to the wide damage range, they play this straight one moment, and horribly, ''horribly'' avert it the next. Finally averted later when skills narrowing the damage gap become available.
* AntiPoopSocking: "You have played Maple Story for X hours." (If X is greater than 3) "We suggest you take a break from Mapling." However, aside from the warning, the game does nothing else.
** Except in the Chinese version, where the game boots you off.
** Subverted, as well. Many of the MarathonBoss enemies require several hours to finish, and there are actual awards (in the Global version, at least) for actually being on [[BrokenAesop consistently for 3 hours or more]].
* ArtEvolution: While the graphics have remained pretty much unchanged since it's first release, if you compare the first soundtracks with the most recent ones, you'll notice big differences.
** Though recently, Athena Pierce was given a new sprite.
*** Dark Lord got a totally new character sprite as well. Though while both of them use the new sprites in their respective maps, the original sprites still appear on Maple Island.
** Maple Administrator got a new sprite in January 2012, only to revery back to the original in February. Then in March 2012, was given yet another new character sprite which was different from their previous updated artwork.
* AwesomeButImpractical: Androids. They follow you around, they look human... but they literally do nothing else. They can only wear clothing from the Cash Shop and do not attack or even pick up items. To make it worse, the hearts that operate them expire, requiring players to either buy replacements or find recipes and craft replacements quite often.
** Giant potions. These can be gained through alchemy. While it sounds fun to grow giant and step on foes, the fact you take the same damage as you would normally by touching the enemies makes it useless.
* BadassGrandma: Female Boss/Anego in Showa. To top it all off, she has one [[IncrediblyLamePun mother]] of an ArmorPiercingSlap.
** Though as with most enemies in the game, pre-Big Bang she was much more powerful than she is right now. It used to require a team of high leveled players to kill her, now it only takes a 4th job player a few minutes.
* BeefGate: Leaving Victoria Island before your second job advancement isn't a very good idea. Especially after the Big Bang, which drastically increased the levels of almost every monster outside of Victoria Island, the World Tour areas and the various {{Noob Cave}}s.
* BeehiveBarrier: The Battle Mage class has a Beehive Barrier that shields ''anyone in your party that stays inside it.''
* BigBad: After years without one, it finally got one with the Black Mage.
** Actually; the Black Magician has been there since Orbis was released; but because of the majority of the players not giving a crap about the questline no one really knew about him.
* BigFancyCastle: Lion King's Castle.
* BilingualBonus / MeaningfulName: Ludibrium is Latin for "plaything".
* BlandNameProduct: Just look at the Kerning Square.
* BlindIdiotTranslation: Poor, poor Athena (or most other clearly female [=NPC=]s for that matter). She is constantly referred to either as 'him', 'it', or 'they' by other [=NPC=]s.
* BlownAcrossTheRoom: The Dragon's Breath skill. Also, several boss monsters are capable of this.
* BoringButPractical: Fighters and Pages used their basic Power Strike and Slash Blast skills all the way until level ''120'', at least before the Big Bang patch. Assassins use Lucky 7 until level 120, and possibly later if they don't have the Triple Throw skill book.While they get additional attacks, those are entirely situational.
** The ''ultimate'' version of this is the Magician's Magic Guard, which is used for ''life''.
* {{Bowdlerize}}: Until the Big Bang, when the Bowlderization was reversed, Global version's Showa Town had human monsters turning into animals when they died (to show that you weren't really killing humans) and all guns were turned into hammers. It was feared this would happen to Pirates, but it didn't.
** Removal of Gachapon (slot machines) and introduction of Pigmy (egg-hatching pig, with prizes in the eggs) could also count, since it's Pigmy in Europe among others and gambling can get a + 12 on otherwise innocent game under Pegi.
* BossRush: The entire point of the Mu Lung Dojo.
* BottomlessMagazines: Mechanics cannot use bullets like their Gunslinger cousins, but they have gatling guns that do not use bullets.
* BreakingTheFourthWall: There is a quest where you give a guard named Mike three different HP healing potions. When you complete the quest, he says ""Maybe the effects will kick in later. That's usually how medicine works, right? It's supposed to Heal me right away? Haha! I don't know about that... It's not like this is a video game ore something.
* BribingYourWayToVictory: The Cash Shop used to only sell items (for real money) that were purely aesthetic. With the introduction of the Gachapon "coin op" machines, real money can buy items that can change gameplay.
** A few examples are items that: ''Double'' EXP gained (granted, it's for everyone), ignore EXP penalties upon death, and allow the user to teleport ''anywhere''. Sayonara, ships.
** Even that can be beaten. Two words: EXP Gachapon. You can buy your way all the way up to level 50.
** With the recent introduction of Evan (in the Global version), buying special skillbooks from the Cash Shop is currently required to increase the level of essential skills such as [[ManaShield Magic Guard]]. Cue many justified cries of Nexon (at least the branch running the Global version, as the original Korean version didn't do any of this) crossing the line and making the game no longer be truly Free-to-Play.
** Also in Global with the release of the Dual Blade, like Evan there's mastery books in the cash shop for several skills. The people angry about the Evan mastery books are in a state of blistering fury about these ones as well.
** Miracle Cubes in the cash shop allow you to reset an item's Potential trait. Using enough of them with the in-game purchasable Magnifying Glass can give you [[InfinityPlusOneSword Infinity Plus One Equipment]].
** Shielding Wards that allows you to use Equipment Enhancement Scrolls without penalty on an item up to 8 (12 in Korean Maple) stars.
* ButtMonkey: The game balance was never really kind to Archers. Their HP is among the lowest, have average DPM, and in general the buggiest class in the history of the game. The release of Wild Hunters also made this worse as they're basically Archers with superior mobility, DPM, and HP. Thought this was finally changed in a later patch.
** On the hand, before Big Bang, Archers could actually win against boss enemies several levels above them. Post BB, there is a [[TheyChangedItNowItSucks accuracy equation based on level difference that creates an automatic miss after 20 levels]].
* CallingYourAttacks: A toggleable feature when setting up macros. Sadly, it's [[WhatDoYouMeanItsNotAwesome less awesome in practice than in theory]] for [[StopHavingFunGuys various reasons]].
* CaptainErsatz: Several. This is a game which features a lot of lawyer-friendly cameos and such-
** Athena Pierce is likely based on Elwing from Shining Wind
** Grendel The Really Old is [[LordOfTheRings Gandalf]].
** Marco, an agent in a black suit and holding a big gun in Omega Sector, is based on Agent K (Will Smith) from Film/MenInBlack
*** and as of the Big Bang patch, Nexon America renamed the character to "Agent M" in the Global version which makes it even more obvious
** Stirgeman, a costumed character in New Leaf City, is based on {{Batman}}
*** Of the equip items he gives out, some are black and red, based on BatmanBeyond
** Icebird Slymm, mayor of New Leaf City, looks a lot like Mayor Tilton from ''Film/TheMask''.
*** though he's supposedly based on governor David Paterson, but Paterson is a rather skinny guy with some hair whereas Mayor Tilton and Icebyrd Slimm are rather overweight and balding
** Lita Lawless seems to be based on Xena (hence the similar name to Lucy Lawless) though she wears armor more inspired by futuristic anime.
** Bell, conductor of the subway to and from New Leaf City, looks a lot like [[ThePolarExpress another conductor of a rail vehicle]].
** Spiegelmann, the man who runs the Monster Carnival, is only a pointy nose off from being Batman's enemy Penguin.
** Tigun, the guard at Ariant castle (not Tigun The Advisor from Ludibrium) looks like a very overweight parody of Jonathan Frakes. No coincidence this character was created at a time Frakes was being hit with jokes about weight gain.
** The Mesorangers in Omega Sector are basically the [[MightyMorphinPowerRangers Power Rangers]], specifically based on the earlier years of the show. There are also Chury, Hoony and Gunny, three characters which wear Power Rangers costumes but not the helmets.
** A non character example would be many of the shops in Kerning Square, which often look so much like the real businesses that it's skirting very close to the legal line.
** Cake Boss Daniel, of the Cake VS Pie event, looks almost exactly like ''Hell's Kitchen'' host Gordon Ramsey
*** Pie Lord Tiara, of the same event, may be based on Rachel Ray but the visual likeless is not as strong
** Ghosthunter Bob of Ludibrium is probably based on the Ghostbusters, but he looks more like the Filmation Ghostbusters than the more well-known Dan Akroyd film/Real Ghostbusters series.
* CastFromHitPoints: Many of the Demon Slayer's skills use HP instead of MP, in addition to his character specific Demon Force. Also just about all the Dragonknight's skills.
* ChargedAttack: The Crusader's Combo Attack is a Collect type that's charged by hitting the enemy. On the 4th job, most classes get a Hold type.
** Don't forget the Brawler class tree, considering you pretty much rely on a skill that charges up to access half of your other skills.
* ChuckCunninghamSyndrome: The Maple World has a modern force of secret agents that are supposed to patrol the world. They were first seen in a massive event in version .72, and again in the alien invasion event prior to Big Bang, as well as one lone agent who was seen around the haunted mansion during a Halloween event. These agents are connected to the Omega Sector. But as of Big Bang, they've all but vanished, with only the original Agent Marco in Omega Sector remaining, as well as Gaga, who has had his role in the story changed since then. The rest of the agents have vanished with no trace or hint of showing up again, and their role in the world seems to have been replaced by the Edelstein Resistance and Silent Crusade with some possible retconning happening to the overall plot.
* ClassicVideoGameScrewYous:
** When taking the ship between Orbis and Victoria Island in either direction there is a 50% chance two Crimson Balrogs will show up and kill everyone on the ship (unless at least one person onboard is around level 100 or higher, which is around the level the Balrogs are at, and able to defeat them or if you spend the trip safely inside the cabin), making you go back to where you were.
** To get to Crimsonwood Keep, or just to the training maps before it, one has to go through two maps where a monster that does 10k or so damage randomly spawns. After that one has to do a jump quest which involves dodging giant totem poles that will OHKO you if you touch them. When one gets to Lower Ascent and the next few maps it's possible to fall off the map, forcing you to do the second part of the jump quest again.
** This game just looooooooooooooves to spawn monsters right where you're standing. This is especially frustrating as a Mechanic since the mech has no knockback and can block out quite a few enemy sprites. You suddenly take damage for no apparent reason until you move or the enemy comes into view.
** When you're trying to fight a mob one by one, your character either locks on one mook you hit first, regardless of where it is as long as it is within your attack range, while ignoring other mooks which are about to [[CollisionDamage crash]] onto you, or locks on random mooks in the mob, usually the furthest ones, even after you hit the one on your face, [[RunningGag while ignoring other mooks which are about to crash onto you]]. This is why multi-target attacks/[[HerdHittingAttack crowd control]] are extremely useful, and Wizet indeed seems to acknowledge this by giving most new classes some crowd control skills; when you can smack multiple mooks at once, it doesn't really matter which ones are almost out of reach and which ones [[OverusedRunningGag are about to crash onto you]]
* ClothesMakeTheSuperman: Some armors can have extremely powerful bonuses (e.g. up to 21% to your main damage stat)additionally before the Big Bang patch physical defense was entirely dependent on armor.
* CollectibleCardGame: The Monster Book. Doing this is beneficial, as once you collect enough cards of a specific monster, you can view basic background information about the monster, see everything that it RandomlyDrops, and be able to gain bonus experience from that specific monster for an hour after collecting their final card. This was reworked in a later patch after being temporarily removed.
** Also, the {{spinoff}} game ''MapleStoryITCG''.
* ConspiracyRedemption: The Evan [[spoiler: joins the Black Wings initially]].
* ContinuingIsPainful: All classes lose 10% exp when dieing, which isn't good considering the amount of LevelGrinding needed to level up at later levels.
** Having a higher LUK statistic used to reduce the penalty. In the past, mages that went "LUKless" would lose over 30% of their EXP if they died.
** As of Chaos and professions, building up the Ambition trait reduces EXP loss at death by a small bit every 5 levels it's raised.
* CriticalHit: All Archers, all Pirates (except Mechanics), Assassins, Cleric, Evans, and Battle Mages have skills that boost critical rate on all attacks. Other classes have only a 5% but some have skills that have separate critical hit chances. 4th advancement Archers can boost their entire party's critical rate and raise critical damage. Before the Big Bang only these classes (minus Clerics,Pirates and the classes that didn't exist at the time.) could critical hit at all.
* DarkerAndEdgier: The beginning of the Demon Slayer storyline [[spoiler: he was once a commander for the Black Mage, but does a heel face turn when the Black Mage orders the world to be destroyed for defying his rule, starting with the place where Demon Slayer's family lived, in a cutscene you visit their burning house and pick up a photo of his now-dead mother and brother.]]
* DarkIsNotEvil: A lot of the Battle Mage's skills involve some very "dark" themes (ex: "Dark Genesis", "Summon Reaper"), but the backstory of the Resistance faction puts them as the good guys. Additionally, the Knights of Cygnus' "Night Walker" class, and the Adventurers' "Night Lord", "Shadower", and "Dark Knight" classes - all involve some form of manipulation of shadows, darkness, or otherwise normally "sinister" skills. Also the Demon Slayer is a half-Demon good guy with very edgy, dark, spiky attacks. Even though he was a commander in the Black Mage's army, he [[spoiler: was only there to protect his loved ones.]]
* DemBones: A ''lot'' of monsters, from humans to dogs to fish.
* DiscOneNuke: Before you even make your second job advancement, a quest is available that requires you to kill one of five relatively easy bosses depending on your class, and the reward for said quest is a mask of that boss that boosts your class' main stat by 12, and even the defense of these masks is greater than many higher-leveled hats.
* EldritchLocation - The further down you get in the Ludibrium Clock Tower, the more the whole place seems ''off.'' It doesn't exactly help that a good portion of the monsters down there are technically ghosts, as well.
** Although that's only the right side the left side suffers from MusicalDissonce.
* ElementalRockPaperScissors: Fire hurts plant-based and ice-based monsters. Ice hurts fire-based and many fish. Holy hurts undead and dark. This is not true in all cases however; which tends to annoy the elemental-users because of how most of the game is biased towards those who specialize in non-elemental offensive methods.
** This is ironically enough one of the biggest reasons why Mages were nerfed retroactively after the Big Bang patch. Almost every area added after that patch contains neutral weak monsters making the Mages ability to exploit elemental weakness completely useless (it borders an InformedAblity.)
* EmotionlessGirl: Lilin, according to this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZM-jB855aM
* EngagementChallenge: In order to make an Engagement Ring, the male must acquire "Proofs of Love" from the various towns which are given by collecting certain amounts of items, as well as the materials to actually make the ring out of. The female has to get a blessing from her parents (Who are an in-game NPC), which also requires collecting "Proofs of Love". Of course, to actually get married, you have to buy a reservation from the Cash Shop.
* BuiltWithLego: The world Ludibrium, complete with toy monsters.
* {{Evolution}}: The monsters around [[spoiler: Ruined Henesys and Dark Ereve]]. They turn back to their original selves on death though.
* ExplosiveOverclocking: Dark Scrolls work more often than their regular counterparts, but can potentially destroy the item they're used on if they fail. Potenial and Equipment Enhancement Scrolls are like this too, but they WILL destroy the item they're used on if they fail.
* ExtremeOmnivore: A Wild Hunter's jaguar. At their second advancement, their mount can swallow a monster to grant its user a random buff. It works on any non-boss monster that is in an area that is not version specific. This ends up including monsters ranging from wooden signs, street lights, killer teddy bears, robots, possessed grandfather clocks and AnimatedArmor.
** [[BigEater The size of the monster isn't an issue for these Jaguars either]].
* FakeDifficulty: Leveling took several times longer than the current EXP curve brought by the Big Bang. It could take 10 straight hours of dedication to gain even a single level.
** One of the biggest problems with jump quests is that the game has this tendency to lock up for really short split seconds. This doesn’t interfere with most aspects of play. But it totally interferes with your ability to make precisely-timed jumps.
* FakeUltimateMook: The stone golems have become this as a result of the Big Bang.
* FantasticFoxes: An enemy.
* FantasyKitchenSink: Half the planet seems to be based on medieval times and ancient myths of magic and wizardry, with a strong emphasis on swords and knights. The other half? American Indian culture, an inner city slum, a town made of building blocks, a futuristic military base, ancient Japan, modern Japan, Japan in the future, pirates... you get the idea. It can be jarring walking from a town that looks like it came from a Tolkein book to a town that looks like Compton.
* FantasticRacism: The fairies in Ellinia and Orbis usually consider humans to be selfish, inferior, or sometimes just plain destructive. While some of the humans they talk about really are such things, and a few do have human friends, some will still talk down to the player without provocation, or make an offhand remark about how said friend is [[YouAreACreditToYourRace good for a human]].
* FluffyCloudHeaven: Orbis looks like one, complete with heavenly music and angels. However, there are still monsters that [[strike:will]] can kill you. Very fast if you aren't of high level.
* FluffyTheTerrible: Bob the Snail. And Pink Bean. Dear GOD, ''PINK BEAN.''
* FoeTossingCharge: All warriors except the Dawn Warrior will have this skill one time. Useful for grouping monsters together to kill them all at once, or shoving mobile bosses to a more convenient location or for some of their squishier friends. Notably this is the only movement skill the adventurer warriors get.
* FutureImperfect: Going through the Door of the Future in the Temple of Time shows you that [[spoiler:Henesys is now in ruins, and Ereve fell to the Maple World.]].
** The Alien Invasion event, prior to Big Bang, saw the Maple World in ruins, [[spoiler:polluted so bad that people had to wear protective suits just to breathe... all because visitors from the past kept stealing chunks of the big crystal that kept the world going, causing it to malfunction, polluting the environment.]]
* GameFavoredGender: Engagement ring quests for males involve collecting gold, diamond or other precious materials and gems, followed by the cost to make the ring. For females? Collecting Proofs of Love (which the males also do), and talking to your parents.
** Also in terms of hair and clothing options, the females choice is better.
* GatlingGood: Mechanics get a skill like this.
* GenderBlenderName: Evan, like any other class, can be either gender, but will still be called Evan even if she's female.
* GetOnTheBoat: With literal boats that take you places! Also comes in varieties such as airships, subway trains, random tour guides, and a cloth pouch carried by a crane.
** And even one that gets invaded by [[DemonicSpiders monsters]] while you're traveling.
** Notably, a flying boat made to resemble a brightly-colored plastic toy train.
** Aaaaand a giant genie. And a bird that has a platform to stand on that's [[NoOSHACompliance rather loosely attached...]]
* GlassCannon: Gunslingers. Near the endgame, they have the strongest attacks of all the classes. The problem is that they can't take hits like Warriors (massive HP), don't have workarounds like Magicians (Magic Guard), and can't dodge as well as Thieves (Evasion), although Evasion tends not to fare very well at the areas where you would be taking such high damages anyway. Archers are also like this; except they don't compare to Gunslingers.
** Also applies to most ranged classes with higher damage their hp tends to be lower than average.
* GodSaveUsFromTheQueen: Ariant Queen Areda. Also, [[spoiler: Empress Cygnus in the future.]]
* GogglesDoNothing: Lampshaded, on the item Spectrum Goggles there is a description saying "Allows vision in multiple dimensions. Who says the goggles do nothing?" [[spoiler: STR+1, LUK+1]]
* GoodBadTranslation: At places in English version. One of the most outrageous ones is the case of Horny Mushrooms in MapleStory Europe. Originally "Horny Mushrooms" in Global (mushrooms with horns. [[FreudWasRight What did you think?]]), they were changed into "Horn-shape mushrooms". And no, no typo there. However, they recently made them "Horny Mushroom" in Europe too, but forgot to rename the ETC-drop, which is still called "Horn-shape Mushroom Cap". Also, they couldn't decide how to translate the Knights of Cygnus; SEA and Global have different names for them and Europe (which takes most of stuff straight from Global) uses SEA names.
** And the [[UnfortunateNames "Wind Breaker"]] class, as mentioned above.
** There is a quest given by The Rememberer that requires you to kill a certain number of Horny Mushrooms. It's called "Raging Horny Mushrooms."
* GraffitiTown: Kerning City
* GratuitousGreek: The signs in Orbis and at the Victoria island airship port are English written with Greek Letters. Among other things, they say "Cloud", and "Welcome to Orbis" Especially gratuitous is the fact that they simply typed the words in Greek mode on an English keyboard, which meant that some English letters were interpreted as completely different Greek ones, leading to a sign that's supposed to say "Victoria" saying "ςΙΧΤΟΡΙΑ", which would be pronounced "Sixtoria." Oh and if it looks weird that the first letter is lower case and the rest is upper case, they even tried to cover that up by scooting the ς at the start up a bit so it would match the height of the others.
* TheGreys: Monsters in Omega Sector, which are even called Grays. Also includes purple octopus-like aliens (Mateons, their derivatives, and the appropriately-named Octopus).
* GroundPound: So many monsters do this, it's probably taught at monster school.
* GrumpyBear: Played with, with a bear. Edelstein's Checky, a man in a bear suit, is constantly picked on by kids trying to get a look at his real face under the hood, even going so far as to task the player into throwing snakes into his costume to try and make him take it off. He also sometimes has trouble breathing and must occasionally use a special respirator with a mask cast to fit the bear's face. He's not grumpy, really, and stays cheerful but he's always being annoyed about the bear mask despite his insistence that the only thing under the mask are "hopes and dreams". [[spoiler: But really, Checky is secretly the leader of the Mechanics in the Resistance, and he will eventually admit to the player that there is nothing under the mask because it's not a mask- it's his face. Checky is actually an anthromorphic bear who only seems to resemble a cartoonish bear suit]].
* {{Handguns}}: Every weapon a Gunslinger utilizes is a handgun resembling dated flintlock pistols.
** To put this in perspective, modern weaponry exists in the Maple World, but all job classes are expected to use medieval swords, bows and blunt weapons with Pirates being the most modern, but still quite outdated, in terms of equipment.
* HauntedCastle: The haunted Prendergast Mansion, and it has many, ''many'' ghosts and ghouls.
* HeadlessHorseman: One of the boss monsters.
* HeelFaceBrainwashing: Subverted. This happens to [[spoiler:The Knights of Cygnus and their Queen in the FUTURE.]]
* HeelFaceTurn: The Demon Slayer does this when his house is burned with his brother inside.
* HeroicComedicSociopath
* HeroicBSOD: Mercedes has one of these after finding out that the [[BigBad Black Mage]] cursed Eurel and the rest of the elves along with her she during her battle. The elf counsel breaks her out of it quickly, though.
* HollywoodDensity: The strongest of the Mechanic mech equips are made of pure gold and the second strongest are still made primarily of gold. Hopefully the Maple World's version of "gold" is not the same as ours because if it were, these engines and other pieces would literally mangle themselves upon use, as gold is one of the softest metals in existence.
* HomingBoulders: All projectiles home towards enemies when applicable.
* HorseOfADifferentColor: At level 70 or higher, adventurers can tame a pig for riding, Arans get a wolf, Evans learn to ride their own dragons. Cygnus Knights can get a bird at level 50 instead. A Wild Hunter can earn a mount at level 10 with the ability to tame a ''jaguar.''
* HubLevel: Victoria Island during the first and second job. Orbis becomes this from the third job onward, due to being able to get to almost any region from there.
** Victoria Island gets the Six Path Crossway from Big Bang; Instead of having to walk around the perimeter of the island to get from town to town, facing stronger monsters the further away from a town you got, all the towns are connected to the Crossway, with the monsters getting weaker the closer to it you get. The Crossway also holds the entrance to Sleepywood as well as the Airports.
* HyperspaceArsenal: At any given time a player is usually carrying hundreds of potions, twenty or so different armors and weapons (ranging from suits of armor to two handed weapons (The Berzerker)), [[strike:Hundreds]] thousands of etc. items, and don't forget the equipment that they already may be wearing! Those poor mounts.
* ImmuneToFlinching: Various class abilities can protect the player from flinching when struck by an attack (at varying rates, depending on the ability); these are often high-level abilities, but some classes like the Mechanic and Demon Slayer can learn them earlier than others.
* ImpossiblyCoolClothes: The Cash Shop has this in spades. There's even an outfit that can literally turn your character into a Centuar.
* ImprobableWeaponUser: [[AWorldwidePunomenon Pike (fish) on a pike (spear)]], snowballs, teddy bears, fans, lanterns, crazed pet cats jumping after catnip mice.. etc.
** And some of the non-NX Joke Items are [[LethalJokeItem even more effective than normal weapons.]]
** [[SelfImposedChallenge Permanent Beginners]] get stuff like Frozen Tuna and giant Sake Bottles with almost twice the base power of an equivalent regular weapon to make up for their lack of skills.
* {{Immortality}}: Ever since Maya took the Weird Medicine, she hasn't aged a day up to the point in the Future.
* InfinityPlusOneSword: The potential scrolls and equipment enhancement scrolls turn your equipment into this. However if the scroll fails, severe penalties are incurred. (see ''ExplosiveOverclocking'' above)
** Thanks to Nebulites from the March 2012 Alien event, it's now possible to have "infinity +2" equipment as nebulites stack with potential.
* JackOfAllStats: Archers qualify, which is why they aren't really picked over Thieves and Magicians for parties that need ranged attackers.
* TheJimmyHartVersion: ''[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJO4ctKnPWA Battlefield]]'', the tune that plays in the Showa hideout sounds a lot like ''[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsvwYU9K504 Battle Without Honor Or Humanity ]]'' from ''Kill Bill''.
** The Alien map music, [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ye-iYhVZpcI ''NLC Kidnap'']], from the March 2012 Alien event sounds quite a bit like [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceqb_cvQJM4 ''Phantasmagoria'']] from [[GunGirl2 Gun Girl 2]].
* JokeItem: Various holiday/seasonal items, like V-day roses, summer inner tubes, and Independence Day US flags.
** LethalJokeItem: Snowboards and surfboards are generally seen as the best weapons to use as an Aran, due to their attack speed being faster than most actual polearms. Although one would think that they would break after a combo of 100 or so...
* JustLikeRobinHood: You get tricked into thinking you're doing this in the Sand Bandits storyline, before doing it for real.
* KillerRabbit: One of the strongest bosses in the game looks like [[http://media.strategywiki.org/images/a/a0/MS_Monster_Pink_Bean.png this.]]
* KillItWithFire: Along with the Fire/Poision Wizards, Bowmen get fire-based skills and eventually even a fire-elemental bird to summon.
* KingMook: ''A lot'' of bosses.
* LethalLavaLand: Deep within the El Nath mines.
* LevelGrinding: '''And how.''' This game is famed for its level grinding, although in recent years its become much easier due to addition of party quests, experience needed to level up reduced by 25%, and the family system which lets even [[BribingYourWayToVictory non-payers]] get 2x exp for 15-30min. However, its still near impossible to level up at much higher levels. Of course, in the end, it all depends on [[YourMileageMayVary your mileage.]]
** The game changing Big Bang patch dealt with this issue somewhat by greatly lowering the exp curve though it's still in effect at higher levels.
** The insane amount of level grinding makes priests extremely valuable in parties. In addition to healing and buffs, priests have a skill called Holy Symbol, which gives 150% exp. It also stacks on top of family buffs and 2x exp events.
* LimitBreak: Possible in the Mu Lung Dojo, but very unlikely to happen unless you are really sucking against a boss and somehow still managing to survive, in which case it [[UselessUsefulSpell won't make a difference anyway]].
** However some classes with self healing skills can exploit this.
* LinearWarriorsQuadraticWizards: Pre Big Bang Maplestory was built on this. Mage!Beginners are weaker than the others because they don't added stat points to dexterity or strength (which affect weapons), while Warrior!Beginners add to strength so they out damage everyone else. The Mages advance to the first job earlier but in order to be optimal have to spend several levels building up passive skills before they could start building up their attacking skills while the other classes just raise their skill damage from the beginning. In the end of the first job thanks to built in mastery mages are the most powerful class. But when mages move to the next job they have to build up their mastery for every new spell while the rest of the classes only have to build but mastery for their weapon type (and they only have to do this once). So at the beginning of every job mages are the weakest while near the end they end up the strongest thanks to Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors.
** And of course the Big Bang changed this by giving mages a mastery skill and changing spells from having their own formula to multipliers which retroactively nerfed them. But later patches brought them back up to speed.
* LiteralStrawman: [[TheyChangedItNowItSucks Prior to Big Bang]], these were used for just suck a purpose, common but weak enemies that could be mass kill while being overlevel, to gain a lot of easy experience. With Big Bang, they changed the level of Mu Lung enemies, so this wasn't the case.
* [=Lost Marbles Quest=]: A lot of the "tutorial" quests on Maple Island.
* TheLostWoods: Ellinia, home of magicians.
* LuckStat: Much like STR is to a warrior/brawler, DEX to an archer/gunslinger, and INT to a mage, LUK is to thieves. LUK used to influence the amount of EXP lost when a player dies. Now, it only influences accuracy, avoidability, and a vague stat called 'hands' (Which was later removed).
* FantasyCounterpartCulture: Korean Folk Town, Mu Lung (China), Ariant (generic Middle East), Zipangu (Japan), and well; alot of other places.
* {{Machinima}}/{{FanVid}}: A growing number of these are on youtube, amazingly. Very subject to SturgeonsLaw, and varies from animated music videos and home made series to movie versions of romance movies.
* MagikarpPower: The Gunslinger class embodies this trope. Due to a wonky damage formula, and generally weak abilities, they do abysmal damage in first and second job even if they go a statless or low-stat build. Come third job they begin to catch up in damage thanks to a more powerful main attack and various abilities that increase their damage, and in fourth job they receive insanely powerful abilities, giving them top-tier DPM, rivaling Arans and Night Lords.
** Back when there were no other classes besides the original four, Archers suffered heavily from this. Compared to the Assassins (the closest other class in terms of general mechanics), Archers in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd job were underpowered and generally unwanted in training parties and the then current end game content. Cue 4th job which included MoreDakka (bow users only however) and the ability to give the entire party the ability to CriticalHit and they're suddenly they're a hot commodity.
* MarathonBoss: Many of them but Pink Bean is very notable, with his 2 BILLION health, 5 Statues (with a couple million to their names that MUST be destroyed) and Attacks that can one shot anyone. Oh and you gotta do it in a time limit. Did I mention that the statues can nullify your Magic or Physical Attacks?
** [[spoiler:In the current Korean version: Queen Cygnus is now the leader of this trope. She has the ability to call on her Knights with just as much health as herself, has the ability to lock you into place while you take damage over time, the ability to disable your [[InfinityPlusOneSword Infinity Plus One Equipment]], and inherits the traits of Pink Bean. The map also slaps you with a cooldown on potions. Brutal.]]
* MascotMook: Orange Mushrooms are featured prominently on the official website and the game's login screen. Ribbon Pigs and Iron Hogs show up a lot, too.
* MassMonsterSlaughterSidequest: Either you're committing genocide on the order of hundreds of creatures a quest, or you're [[TwentyBearAsses collecting random drops at the same rate]].
* MayflyDecemberRomance: In Magatia, [[spoiler:this was Dr. De Lang's motivation for trying to extend his lifespan; even his [[HalfHumanHybrid daughter]] Keeny would have outlived him by a mile, to say nothing of his fairy wife Phyllia. It drove him to do anything to live longer, including studying notes from the Black Magician. Unfortunately, not only did he learn far too much about Magatia's origins, but his experiment failed spectacularly, caused an explosion that threatened the town's livelihood, and made himself and his family into social outcasts.]]
* MightyGlacier: Warriors. Brawlers and Thunder Breakers as well to a lesser extent.
* MinMaxing: Putting all EXP towards the few stats crucial to the specific job class. EVERY class has some sort of formula for stat allocation. Typically, secondary stats should be some function of the player's level, while the rest goes into the primary stat. Don't even THINK about putting anything in HP or MP, let alone any other stats.
** Nowadays, the game will automatically optimize your character correctly, although you can allocate the stats yourself if you're doing something different, such as...
** HP warriors. They're a warrior who doesn't level their stats up until the second job at lvl 30. All they do is add to HP. By lvl 30, it's something like 10,000. Furthermore, the second job grants the Power Guard ability, which deals damage back whenever you get hit.
* ModestyTowel: Surprisingly, one of the best items to have while MinMaxing.
* MoneySink: Getting the class [[TheYoshi mounts]] costs ridiculous amounts of money. Taxi and Cabs can transport you to various maps and dungeons for a((n) ever increasing) fee. Also there's a quest when an Npc straight up asks for 5 million mesos for very little justification.
* MoneySpider: Possibly every monster save for the leprechaun, who actually has reason to carry money.
* MonsterIsAMommy: Mushmom, Zombie Mushmom, and Mushdad/Blue Mushmom.
* MoreDakka: All ranged classes except Cannon shooters with various degrees.
* MsFanservice: Kyrin is perhaps the closest example, given the chibi style of the graphics. She wears a tube top, leather skirt with a slit up the side, and thigh-high black boots.
* NiceHat: The [=GMs=]'s hat not only identifies them as [=GMs=], but is also what gives them their insane stats. Also the extremely high statistic hats such as the Zakum helmet; although arguably they don't look very nice depending on the person.
* NiceJobBreakingItHero: According to the stories on the official website, the Cygnus Knights do this twice. First, they invaded Von Leon's castle, causing him to turn to the Black Mage for vengeance. In the future, Cygnus also steps right into the Black Mage's trap because she wants to find the Tree of Life for her knights.
** The pre-Big Bang Alien Invasion event focused on [[spoiler:Dr. Bing, an Omega Sector researcher, developing a crystal in the future that basically powered all technology and kept the planet safe. That is until his past self peeks into the future, sees this crystal and takes samples to study it. This ruins the environment terribly and forces the population into protective suits, some of which are sent to the past to recover the stolen crystals and repair the damage... only to be mistaken as alien invaders which prompts the Omega Sector to send adventurers into the future to steal even MORE crystals, asusming the damage to have been caused by an invasion in the future, making things even worse!]] The end result relied on time travel and changing history to avoid the entire mess.
* NinjaPirateZombieRobot: Zombie mushrooms, ''giant'' zombie mushrooms, ghost pirates, toy octopi riding [[strike:LEGO]] generic block golems, just to list a few.
** The transportation from one continent to another continent. There's a boat-plane-train with candy paint and swirly propellers!
** [[BossBattle Papulatus]], a ghost vegetable thing riding a robotic clock that casts magic. That's pretty crazy.
* NoArcInArchery: The Archer class. Arrows only ever bend to show that the shot is flying towards a monster, and even then they're more likely to just show the arrows inexplicably come out at an angle without the player actually aiming at that angle.
* NoEnding: How does them original Silent Crusade questline end after the final boss? [[spoiler:Well, your partner quits offscreen before you can make your confession to him/her, and you never see him/her again after that.]]
* NoExportForYou: The Korean version gets updates first, natch, and then it goes the order of formation, but not always exactly. Some lands or monsters are country-exclusive.
* NoGoodDeedGoesUnpunished: Right before the Black Magician was sealed, he punished the heroes who fought him by casting a curse on them.
* NonHumanSidekick: The purchasable Pets. They can do various tricks when given verbal commands, and level up, learning more tricks and gaining the ability to talk. They're fundamentally all the same, though, with specific tricks they can do at certain levels, and after enough grinding, typically gain the ability to speak English. For extra money, you can deck your pet out in accessories which can make them more functional, allowing them to pick up items and gold for you, and even automatically use potions for you when your HP or MP get low. Handy!
** Cannoneer palls around with a handy monkey in a propeller cap who helps the character perform skills.
* NoobCave: Maple Island for the Adventurers, Ereve for Cygnus Knights, Rien for Aran, and Utah's Pig Farm for Evan. Subverted with Edelstein, the Resistance starting area, which is a very large city that still has quests and training locations available well into a character's third job, presumably due to there not being enough room on the map to put it anywhere near [[HubLevel Victoria Island]].
* NotSoHarmless: ''A lot'' of monsters.
* OneWingedAngel: Von Leon of the Lion King's Castle.
* OrganDrops: Some monsters have particuallry greusome drops, like the Evil Eyes who sometimes drop their tails and [[EyeScream their eyeballs]] upon death.
* OrgasmicCombat: [[spoiler:Queen Cygnus, SERIOUSLY. Listen to her voice while fighting her.]]
* PaletteSwap: Pretty much played straight with older monsters but there are subversions. But it's not avoided with many equip items- some armors and weapons can have up to 4 different color versions, each with specialized stats.
** Equips added after pirates were reslesed come in one uniform color which includes all pirate equipment and most items beyond level 100.
* [[MarthDebutedInSmashBros Pirates Debuted As Cygnus Knights]]: In Europe, at least, the update order created a situation where Thunder Breakers were in the game before Pirates, the class they were based on.
* PlayerParty: Encouraged with EXP boosts while partying.
* PlayerVersusPlayer: After years of bickering about the lack of this trope, it finally gets introduced in the Chaos Update.
* PrestigeClass: For example, magicians. They start as Magicians, then can become a Fire/Poison Wizard, Ice/Lightning Wizard, or a Cleric. The next job advancement goes onto Mages or Priests, then Arch Mages or Bishop. And that's ''just'' for Magicians.
* PurelyAestheticGender: Anyone can do any job. Gender-specific armor for females tends to be cheaper due to lower demand.
** This is partly because all players use the exact same base body sprites. Gender features are usually added by the face and hair overlays, and details such as breasts are hinted at by the way armor or clothing is drawn.
* RainbowPimpGear: Someone who's truly MinMaxing will probably be wearing a bathrobe, a Zakum Helmet (Complete with [[PowerGlows glow]]), some white gloves (with or without lightning bolt), shoes, earrings, and cape. Needless to say, [[BribingYourWayToVictory NX items]] are recommended.
** Big stone helmet with flashy glow, towel around the waist, pink cape. The standard adventuring gear amongst funded users. Animal mask optional.
** This has been somewhat averted with the advent of the potential system, which gives bigger stat bonuses on higher-leveled gear.
* RainOfArrows: Played straight with the Ranger's Arrow Rain skill. Inverted with the Sniper's Arrow Eruption skill (which has arrows ''shooting upwards from the ground'' instead).
* RandomEncounter: [[spoiler: Crimson Balrog]]. Escape is recommended if you aren't trying to fight it.
* RandomlyDrops: See entry on that page for details.
** There seems to be a serious case of NotAvailableInStores going on for all weapons and armor, past about level 35, making the game particularly painful in the case of item hacks.
* RecurringCharacter: Athena Pierce (also known as Helena), the main Bowman job instructor, has been frequently appearing as a plot-important character in recent Korean time travel expansions. Odd considering how the main job instructors for the other four classes are not featured as often, but [[OurElvesAreBetter not surprising since Athena is an elf]] who appears to have spent her entire life fighting the [[BigBad Dark Magician]].
** Athena Pierce is said to be over 1000 years old. By contrast, Dark Lord is a title, not a name. It's been mentioned in-game that the current one is the ninth to hold the title. The previous one was killed. The other two may have had their lives extended by magic but are showing their ages. Kyrin is rather young, having only recently founded the Pirates and was raised from childhood by Athena Pierce until running away as a teenager.
*** The Mercedes patch plot revealed that Athena Pierce is not only old, but she's the only elf(besides her late father) that was not frozen solid with everyone else in Eurel. Not only is she ancient but she's been the only one of her kind that's been around for centuries.
** Dances With Balrog DOES show up in the Ellin Forest area... although he's named Crawls With Balrog because he's only an infant.
* RepeatableQuest: They did not introduce these until later versions despite growing and rather vocal demand for them in the early days.
* RetCon: Done several times, mostly with the expanding story of the Black Mage. Mercedes used a bow in Aran's flashback, before it was revealed that she used [[ImpossiblyCoolWeapon Dual Bowguns]]. [[SpellMyNameWithAnS Freud/Freed]] was also having stated to have fled the battle to protect Afrien's egg, which eventually became Mir, Evan's dragon. However, in the new Silent Crusade quest line he and his dragon Afrien shown to have left early to [[spoiler:block off the moment in time when the Black Mage was sealed, using all his energy.]]
** Cassandra, the fortune telling NPC used in various event quests, was originally a middle-aged woman with gray hair... now she's a young woman with blonde hair. No explanation, of course.
** Hey, remember the Silent Crusade quest chain? The one where your character falls in love with a member of the Silent Crusade? As of the Alliance Rising patch of February 2012... well, none of it happened. They've reset the entire Silent Crusade story with a new quest series.
* ReviveKillsZombie: Heal and Holy/Light attacks damage undead types more. Also the only way holy magicians can mob monsters until they reach third job.
* RomeoAndJuliet: Plot used as a party quest in Magatia, where two alchemist groups (debating about the use of machinery in alchemy) are having a bitter rivalry.
* ScunthorpeProblem: Ever tried matching wits with [=MapleStory=]'s swear filter?
* SelfImposedChallenge: Some people choose to remain as a Beginner even after Level 10.
* ShamuFu: The Thunder Breakers throw sharks ''[[RuleOfCool made of lightning]]'' at enemies in their later levels.
* ShiftingSandLand: Ariant.
* ShortRangeLongRangeWeapon: The Bows, Crossbows, Guns, and Gloves (used for Throwing Stars), when compared in scale to characters, seem to only fly ''a few feet'' before the relevant projectile simply vanishes from existence. Justified overall in that there's no way to usefully have arrows and bullets fly the tens/hundreds of feet they could travel (like in real life), and further justified with the Throwing Stars and Gloves in that those are meant to be used at similar ranges in real life to their in-game counterpart.
** Pirates hold their handguns with one hand, and don't aim, so they probably only could reasonably hit monsters from that distance. Bow-wielding Hunters and Wind Archers seem to pull the bowstring back for only a little, so an arrow would be able to only fly a couple dozen feet at best anyway. Played straight for crossbowman, though.
* ShoutOut: Some ninja gear and attacks bring to mind ''{{Naruto}}''. Cash Shop items have referenced anything from Korean mythology to recent movies [[MagicalGirlLyricalNanoha to a certain anime about "befriending"]] others (Check the Cash Shop, and you will find Fate's Bardiche and Signum's Sword... somewhat.) Monsters have been anywhere from Shout Outs to affectionate parodies to "isn't this from another game?"
** The look of the game is very similar to the WonderBoy series (esepcially the Monster World games).
** The Evan class is highly reminiscent of the ''[[Literature/InheritanceCycle Eragon]]'' series. Everything from the character starting out as a farmer, to the symbol appearing on the character's hand, to finding the Egg in the woods which hatches a Blue Dragon basically screams ERAGON. (In the first Eragon book, the main character even uses the alias of "Evan" at one point.)
*** What's odd is that some Korean players theorized that the class was based on some Korean indie fantasy novel/comic book/whatever.
** In the Omega Sector, we have the [[PowerRangers Mesorangers]] and an NPC who is a WillSmith look-alike [[Film/MenInBlack that oddly enough sports a black suit and sunglasses]]. Not to mention that you find these [=NPCs=] in a level where you fight aliens...
** There is a place called the [[SuperMarioBros Mushroom Kingdom which has sentient mushrooms who want you to save their princess from their castle which is under the control of a tyrannical penguin.]]
*** Not to mention the area's story is the the same as Luigi's side story in VideoGame/PaperMarioTheThousandYearDoor.
*** [[{{Kirby}} A tyrannical penguin]], you say?
*** Also, the Wild Hunters get a [[PantheraAwesome panther mount]], who at higher levels gain the ability to hold enemies in their mouth, swallow them for buffs, or spit them out for offensive projectiles. The skill's name is [[VideoGame/SuperMarioWorld Jaguar-oshi]].
** Someone in the Nautilus says "[[SesameStreet This message brought to you by the letter]] [[TalkLikeAPirate ARR]][[AWorldwidePunomenon RRR!]]"
** While it's not as tight a fit as the Evan/Eragon connection, Aran awakening in the trailer is very reminiscent of Aang's awakening in AvatarTheLastAirBender.
** There is also an item in the Cash Shop called the Alchemist Overall. It consists of [[FullmetalAlchemist a red jacket, black pants and black shirt.]]
*** There is also an outfit that resembles Winry's work outfit, and headgear that looks like Alphonse's helmet.
** Starling and Crow, the two [=NPCs=] of the Silent Crusade, were name Sheryl and Crow in Tespia prior to the public release. No doubt this was changed to avoid some legal hassles with the singer.
** A robot NPC in New Leaf City is named T-1337
** It may be a coincidence, but both adamantium ore and plates are orange. An episode of the old 1990s Fox X-Men cartoon showed off a solid bar of adamantium as a scientist was showing off to Wolverine prior to his infusion. It was orange. Though the inclusion of adamantium as a metal could also count as a shout out.
** Also, the concept art for Mercedes looks like every elf in LordOfTheRings. And did I mention that she's an archer and the Elf Queen. Here [[http://maplestory.wikia.com/index.php?title=Mercedesℑ=Mercedes_intro-png]] and here [[http://maplestory.wikia.com/index.php?title=Mercedesℑ=Mercedes_F-png]]. Definitely a ShoutOut to Legolas.
** The various anime crossover projects between Nexon and Aniplex... Here's [[http://maplestory.nexon.co.jp/campaign/madoka-magica/]] an example.
** Ignoring the fact that the homes are meant for humans, almost every house in Henesys looks like the homes of the Smurfs.
** The Silent Crusade storyline(2012 version) centers around [[TheElderScrollsIVOblivion portals opening across the land that the player must enter and fight monsters, a secretive group of heroes that recruits the player to fight an evil threatening the land, and an ancient wizard who has returned and plans to release an unstoppable villain onto the world, said villain being the wizard's close mentor and leader.]]
* ShowsDamage: The boss Zakum slowly breaks down and falls apart as its health drops.
* SlippySlideyIceWorld: El Nath. Sliding can be prevented by buying and equipping snow boots.
** There is a scroll that can also add "spikes" to any pair of shoes as well as a scroll that adds cold protection to capes(regardless of available slots). During the Maker skill, they had to be crafted. Now they merely drop from monsters and Maker was removed in favor of Professions. Though it's only a 10% scroll, so good luck with that.
** Arans can exploit the sliding. The ice carries momentum and the Arans can use a quick jump boost to make them slide really fast. When it wears off... they're still sliding pretty fast.
*** Though with a bit of practice, almost anyone can use the sliding to their advantage.
** Outlaws (3rd job Gunlsingers) get this as well in the form of Recoil Shot, though its a backwards leap and deals damage to enemies.
* SoloClass: The Clerics and their Prestige Classes are the best solo classes after a certain level, as their heals damage undead enemies while affecting themselves as well.
* SoundtrackDissonance: From the cheery (and catchy!) music of the Swamp of Despair to calming underwater cave music while bone fish kill you horribly.
** Most places have this, mostly because the music in the game is so beautiful. There are a few exceptions, like for Zakum and Horntail. Otherwise, feel free to listen to the music as you spam your HP pots because you're dying horribly.
* SpamAttack: Some classes get a few skills that can do quite a few hits to one (or multiple) targets. Most prominently, the Dual Blade's attack pattern is all about this especially the 4th job move Phantom Blow.
* SpellMyNameWithAnS: Erev/Ereve/Ereb.
* SpikesOfDoom: Spikes, thorns, and bramble slow players down.
** Unless you exploit the damage recoil to make yourself go ''faster''.
* SquishyWizard: Magician class. Subverted in two ways: First, they have Magic Guard, which converts the majority of their HP damage into MP damage (and they get a ''LOT'' of MP). And second, they can learn the MP Eater skill which allows them to syphon MP from magical enemies. With those two abilities active (okay, the second one is a passive ability, but the first one is an activatable buff), a Magician technically has a LifeDrain combo going. It reached Gamebreaker levels after the big bang patch even though MP regenration was removed, the mp eater skill syphoned so much MP that attacking made your MP bar go up rather than down which combined with the Mages low hp (which means they can use low leveled HP potions much longer than other classes) made them cost nothing to play as and nearly unkillable.
* StoneWall: Subverted with the Paladin class after the Big Bang patch. They literally have up to eight different skills that directly affects the amount of damage they don't take, plus a dependable self-recovery skill that instantly heals them.
** ... And their DPM is surprisingly on par with many others even on neutral-element monsters.
* SuperDeformed: The graphics in general.
* SureWhyNot: Bob the Snail. Originally a random level 1 snail spawning in a level 50+ area, fans came up with numerous theories as to why he was there, and now he's an actual boss enemy.
* TreeTopTown: Ellinia.
* ToyTime: Ludibrium.
* {{Tsundere}}: Starling of the Silent Crusade. "Don't you dare treat me like a little girl.", "Do what you want! I don't care!", "Enough smalltalk. Get to the point.", "Me? Worry about you? Ha!"
** Crow of the Silent Crusade as well, particularly at the Magatia part of the questline.
* TwentyBearAsses: More like One Thousand Bear Asses.
* UndergroundMonkey: Mushrooms. THE MUSHROOMS. EVERYWHERE.
* UnderTheSea: Aqua Road. Popular for its [[MookMaker Goby Houses]] and especially for Poison users since it's very easy to move around the map and poison everything.
* UnwittingPawn: Evan is lured into joining [[spoiler: the Black Wings]] under the pretense that the organization is doing good for Maple World in the process he not only does their dirty work but [[spoiler: gets the Seal Stone of Ludibrium for them.]]
* VendorTrash: Pretty much every monster drops one. Or more than one. Some are used for quests; some are just useless other than for selling.
** And some of them can't even be sold as they have no monetary value, or can't be traded.
* VirtualPaperDoll: Cash Shop items let players dress up their characters.
* WhatDoYouMeanItsNotAwesome?: The usual argument for making a Thunder Breaker is that they throw sharks made of lightning.
* YouKilledMyFather: The Black Mage killed Athena Pierce's father, which drove her insane and led her to form an army to hunt him, and became almost as bad in the process. People began to fear her, until she was finally forced to confront her darker side in combat(which is the "clone" that Bowman players fight for the 3rd job advancement). Since then she's been the Bowman job instructor and a respected member of Henesys, her efforts redirected into teaching others how to fight and to oppose the Black Mage.
** This happened AGAIN with Kyrin. Both of her parents were killed by the Black Wings, and she was taken in and raised by Athena Pierce... until Kyrin overheard a conversation and learned what happened, then ran off on her own to hunt down the Black Mage. She eventually returned, as the head of the Pirates, though while she primarily serves as the captain of the Nautilus and Pirate job instructor, there are many in-game hints to suggest she's still hell-bent on defeating the Black Mage.
* YouShouldntKnowThisAlready: Manually going into the Resistance HQ to make your first job advancement as a Resistance member won't work; you ''have'' to use the invitation that the Headmaster gives you.
** At one point, Mercedes must track down and speak with Athena Pierce. It doesn't matter how many times the player has seen Athena before, or even if Mercedes has already accepted a completely unrelated quest from her; she still has to ask another NPC about her whereabouts.
* ZettaiRyouiki: Grade B. General Orca of the Black Wings [[spoiler:(Black Mage army)]] sports this in her [[http://i.imgur.com/JPkOm.png full screen shot.]]
** Mercedes also sports this.
----
Like most [=MMORPGs=], ''Maple Story'' is crawling with all sorts of people, including (but not limited to) kids, tweens, teens, adults, noobs, hackers, [[StopHavingFunGuys people who take it too seriously]], and normal people who want to have fun.
At first glance, ''Maple Story'' seems like a game that is generally marketed towards children due to the anime-style graphics and the general cute factor of many of the (early) monsters.
The various regions of ''Maple Story'' have differing backgrounds and plots. In order to really notice this information, the player has to finish certain quests and then connect the dots while looking through their completed quests log. These quests can be fairly boring since most of them are [[FetchQuest fetch quests]] requiring you to collect TwentyBearAsses. However some quests are worthwhile and have good rewards, but you [[GuideDangIt won't know this until you look at your 'In Progress' quest log AFTER accepting a quest (which most of the time shows the reward) or reading a quest guide on the internet beforehand.]] Interestingly, a few quests actually have some unexpected plot twists in them, but these tend to be ignored since the player is just clicking "Next" and not reading the text.
Recent ''Maple Story'' expansions [[hottip:*: As early as the release of the first new adventurer class, The Pirate, with there being many quests in the Nautilus referring to the Black Magician]] now hint that a shady character called the [[BigBad Black Magician]] and his minions, the Black Wings, are responsible for the activities of some of the major bosses (and the chaos happening within the regions where the major bosses reside).
There are currently four main character factions, known as the Adventurers, the Knights of Cygnus, the Legends, and the Resistance. All of them have ties to the ongoing Black Magician and his Black Wings plot, some factions having more [[hottip:*: The Resistance]] and some less [[hottip:*: Adventurers]] to do with the Black Magician.
'''1 - Adventurers:'''
The characters of the Adventurer (known as Explorer in the Global Version) classes start the game as a Beginner. These were the first classes in the game, and are thus the most basic in terms of skills. Their overall role in the plot is just as simple. Adventurers basically wander the world looking for glory, running across dangerous monsters that the Black Wings are responsible for in some way.
* '''Bowman:''' They are specialists in ranged damage, can take the Hunter/Ranger/Bow Master path and use fast but weaker bows or the Crossbowman/Sniper/Marksman who use slower but stronger crossbows. Definitely a GlassCannon.
* '''Magician:''' They are not exactly classified as a SquishyWizard in this game, as they have a skill that converts a large percentage of their damage to damage to their large MP pool. Depending on the path that they choose to take, they either cast offensive/defensive [[AnIcePerson Ice]]/[[ShockAndAwe Lightning]], offensive [[PlayingWithFire Fire]]/{{Poison|ousPerson}}, or support Holy spells.
* '''Warrior:''' One path they can take is the Fighter/Crusader/Hero who uses [[TheBerserker Swords/Axes]], who specialize in a Combo Attack, where their attacks gather orbs that further boost their damage. Another option is to become a MagicKnight with the Page/White Knight/Paladin path and have [[PlayingWithFire F]][[AnIcePerson O]][[ShockAndAwe U]][[LightEmUp R]] elements to complement the swords/[[DropTheHammer hammers]]/[[CarryABigStick maces]] they use. Then, there's the Spearman/Dragon Knight/Dark Knight path, [[CaptainObvious obviously]] specializes in [[BladeOnAStick Spears/Pole Arms]], and tends to CastFromHitPoints.
* '''Thief:''' The ever-so-popular [[FragileSpeedster fragile speedsters]] of the game. They can either take the Assassin/Hermit/Night Lord path and specialize in throwing stars, or become a KnifeNut with the Bandit/Chief Bandit/Shadower classes.
** '''Dual Blade:''' An offshoot of the Thieves. They [[DualWielding dual wield]] with a dagger and short blade. They are so different from the rest of the Adventurers in nearly every way, such as actually having a story and the fact that they have a separate character creation option.
* '''Pirate:''' They have two possible paths to take. The first being a Gunslinger/Outlaw/Corsair, who are possibly [[GlassCannon glass cannons]]. The second path being a Brawler/Marauder/Buccanner, who uses knuckles. Brawlers also tend to shove mobs around, functioning like a tank. They are [[MightyGlacier massively slow but hit hard]].
** '''Cannon Shooter:''' An offshoot of the Pirates. They use a Cannon and a Monkey companion. It can also summon the Nautilus at will.
After becoming one of the five Adventurer classes, the player character is expected to [[LevelGrinding level up]] [[PrestigeClass and advance]] to the second job of that class at Level 30, where they will permanently choose which weapon path to take. The player character advances to the third job at Level 70, and fourth job at Level 120. The maximum level of any Adventurer character is currently 200.
'''2 - Knights of Cygnus:'''
The Knights of Cygnus classes themselves are like [[ElementalPowers elemental variants]] of the Adventurers, but they only focus on one weapon or spell type from the very beginning. Their role in the plot is to protect Queen Cygnus, ruler of the Maple World, from the Black Wings. [[spoiler:In the future, they get [[HeelFaceBrainwashing Face Heel Brainwashed]] by a trap set by the Black Mage.]]
* '''[[BlowYouAway Wind Archer:]]''' Bowman, Wind and Bow user. Known as Wind Breaker[[hottip:*:[[{{Fartillery}} unfortunately]]]] in non-Global versions.
* '''[[PlayingWithFire Blaze Wizard]]''': Magician, Fire spell user. Known as Flame Wizard in non-Global versions.
* '''[[HolyHandGrenade Dawn Warrior]]''': Warrior, Soul and Sword user. Known as Soul Master in non-Global versions.
* '''[[ShockAndAwe Thunder Breaker]]''': Pirate, Lightning and Knuckle user. Known as Striker in non-Global versions.
* '''[[DarkIsNotEvil Night Walker]]''': Thief, Darkness and Throwing Star user.
Knights of Cygnus characters are generally identical to the main classes in terms of leveling and advancement, except that their maximum level is 120 (and they lack a fourth job). Though to make up for it they are overpowered compared to their adventurer counterparts at similar levels.
'''3 - Legends:'''
The Legends consist of five ancient heroes (or people related to a specific hero) that fought the Black Magician in the past and managed to seal him away. However, the Black Magician did not go down without a fight, and the five ancient heroes are said to have been cursed, sealing them in ice and wiping out their memories.
Each of the five Legends are all actual individuals (thus not really classes), hence the naming scheme and NPC dialogue treating the player as if he/she actually is the specific Legend. The Legends may use the same equipment and rely on the same stats as their Adventurer and Cygnus counterparts, but they have unique skills and abilities. Also, while all of the Adventurers and the Knights of Cygnus share the same general story across all of their respective classes, each of the Legends have a seperate story, with completely different starting points and quests.
* '''Aran, the Ancient Hero (Warrior):''' An ancient [[BladeOnAStick Polearm-wielding]] warrior [[HumanPopsicle of the past]] who fought against the Black Magician with the other four heroes, and was cursed along with them. Aran wakes up in the present with [[LaserGuidedAmnesia his/her memories wiped out]], although the friendly inhabitants of Rien help Aran to regain his/her memories and former legendary strength while continuing the fight against the present day Black Wings. Aran's special trait involves a [[{{Combos}} combo system]] and skill usage reliant on button command sequences.
* '''Evan, the Dragon Master (Mage):''' A second-generation son/daughter of farmers living near Henesys who meets a huge dragon in a dream. The next morning, Evan finds a dragon egg, and a voice then speaks of a pact and a bond being forged with Evan. The egg later hatches into a baby dragon, who is later named Mir. Evan then sets out to find out why he/she was chosen, and find out exactly what Mir truly is. [[spoiler: He later meets the first generation Dragon Master and Dragon Familiar, Freud and Afrien (who is Mir's father).]] Evan's special trait involves using Mir to attack enemies, and has 10 job advancements (or stages of growth) compared to the usual 4. Qualifies as [[TheRedMage a red mage]].
* '''Mercedes, the Elf Queen (Archer): ''' An ancient Dual-Crossbow Archer [[HumanPopsicle of the past]] who fought against the Black Mage with Aran, Freud and the two other heroes. Wakes up later to travel the Maple World to fight the Black Mage again. Rides a Unicorn and is very acrobatic. Hails from the town of Eurel which was also cursed by the Black Mage.
* '''Mysterious Thief, Phantom (Thief): ''' A thief who became a hero to protect the world his love, the former empress of the Maple World, loved so much. He wields canes and [[DeathDealer cards]] and has the ability to copy other adventurers skills. Like the other heroes, he was sealed in ice after defeating the Black Mage, but once again travels the world in his flying ship, the Crystal Garden.
The Legends currently have a maximum level of 200. The fate of the Pirate Legend is not known at this time.
'''4 - [[LaResistance The Resistance]]:'''
The evil group known as the Black Wings are dominant in the town of Edelstein, and do many awful things such as experimenting on humans. One secret faction in the town opposes them and challenges their authority, known as The Resistance.
* '''Battle Mage:''' They wield staves, have melee spells, and have a variety of [[BattleAura Aura]] skills that buff/debuff party members/enemies. Gets a nifty SpinAttack skill late game.
* '''Wild Hunter:''' They wield crossbows, have a few explosive weaponry, and have the ability to summon and ride a jaguar that even has skills and attacks of its own. They can drop ExplodingBarrels and capture monsters to use to fight other monsters, [[UselessUsefulSpell though these skills are of questionable usefullness]].
* '''Mechanic:''' They wield guns, but rather then using those, they summon a [[MiniMecha Miniature Mecha]] to ride and attack with. A few of the things their robots come with are, flamethrowers, giant hammers, [[RocketPunch rocket-propelled fists]], [[TeleportersAndTransporters portable teleporters]], [[GatlingGood gatling guns]] and [[WaveMotionGun laser cannons]]. Can later briefly summon a HumongousMecha to nuke their entire screen. Considered a LightningBruiser.
* '''Demon Slayer:''' A former general of the Black Mage army along with Von Leon, Orca, and Akyrum. His brother was killed by the hands of the Black Mage; therefore he betrayed the Black Mage in an act of revenge and was almost killed. When he woke up, he breaks free from his egg prison in Verne Mine. The mysterious J rescues him and sends him to the Resistance hideout in Edelstein. Uses a special Magic Gauge called Demon Force that replaces the MP Gauge. Uses one handed Axes and Blunt Weapons, and a new weapon type called Maces. Considered the Warrior Resistance member.
A fair word of warning while interacting with others in ''Maple Story'': To a significant amount of players in this game, just about ''anything'' can be grounds for some SeriousBusiness.
In short: Picture a 2-D RagnarokOnline and you get the idea.
Has a character sheet [[{{Characters/MapleStory}} here]]. It really NeedsMoreLove.
Not to be confused with [[VideoGame/CaveStory Cave Story]].
----
!!This game provides examples of:
* AIIsACrapshoot: The main plot point of the Neo-Tokyo level.
* ATasteOfPower: Monsters that could kill any other class in one hit when they're first starting out are no match for Aran... until [[RestartAtLevelOne you finish the tutorial, anyway.]] The Demon Slayer tutorial allows you to use the 4th job Demon Slayer skills against a group of three Phantom Lykas summoned by Akyrum.... until [[RestartAtLevelOne he goes up against the Black Mage and is defeated.]]
* AffectionateParody: Basically almost every single area of the game and several weapons; even the BGM tends to do this.
* AllegedlyFreeGame: Although you can play for free, getting (good) hairstyles/faces, slot/experience boosters, and certain shop-only items require the use of real money. Real world money is also helpful if you want a chance at having higher leveled equipment or over 100 million [[GlobalCurrency mesos]].
** Though as of 2011, Nexon has partnered with various companies that offer NX rewards for completing "surveys"(advertiser spam) and other such offers. It is now technically possible to earn NX funds without buying it, but it often requires a lot of patience and a willingness to have an email inbox filled with spam to do so.
* AnachronismStew And how!
* AnimatedAdaptation: [[InNameOnly The only similarities]] were the monsters involved.
* AnIcePerson: Crossbowmen get Ice skills in the third job. Ice/Lightning wizards are partly this.
** Aran, in addition to his combination attacks, uses many powerful ice elemental attacks later on.
* AnnoyingArrows: Played with in the Bowman path: Initially, due to the wide damage range, they play this straight one moment, and horribly, ''horribly'' avert it the next. Finally averted later when skills narrowing the damage gap become available.
* AntiPoopSocking: "You have played Maple Story for X hours." (If X is greater than 3) "We suggest you take a break from Mapling." However, aside from the warning, the game does nothing else.
** Except in the Chinese version, where the game boots you off.
** Subverted, as well. Many of the MarathonBoss enemies require several hours to finish, and there are actual awards (in the Global version, at least) for actually being on [[BrokenAesop consistently for 3 hours or more]].
* ArtEvolution: While the graphics have remained pretty much unchanged since it's first release, if you compare the first soundtracks with the most recent ones, you'll notice big differences.
** Though recently, Athena Pierce was given a new sprite.
*** Dark Lord got a totally new character sprite as well. Though while both of them use the new sprites in their respective maps, the original sprites still appear on Maple Island.
** Maple Administrator got a new sprite in January 2012, only to revery back to the original in February. Then in March 2012, was given yet another new character sprite which was different from their previous updated artwork.
* AwesomeButImpractical: Androids. They follow you around, they look human... but they literally do nothing else. They can only wear clothing from the Cash Shop and do not attack or even pick up items. To make it worse, the hearts that operate them expire, requiring players to either buy replacements or find recipes and craft replacements quite often.
** Giant potions. These can be gained through alchemy. While it sounds fun to grow giant and step on foes, the fact you take the same damage as you would normally by touching the enemies makes it useless.
* BadassGrandma: Female Boss/Anego in Showa. To top it all off, she has one [[IncrediblyLamePun mother]] of an ArmorPiercingSlap.
** Though as with most enemies in the game, pre-Big Bang she was much more powerful than she is right now. It used to require a team of high leveled players to kill her, now it only takes a 4th job player a few minutes.
* BeefGate: Leaving Victoria Island before your second job advancement isn't a very good idea. Especially after the Big Bang, which drastically increased the levels of almost every monster outside of Victoria Island, the World Tour areas and the various {{Noob Cave}}s.
* BeehiveBarrier: The Battle Mage class has a Beehive Barrier that shields ''anyone in your party that stays inside it.''
* BigBad: After years without one, it finally got one with the Black Mage.
** Actually; the Black Magician has been there since Orbis was released; but because of the majority of the players not giving a crap about the questline no one really knew about him.
* BigFancyCastle: Lion King's Castle.
* BilingualBonus / MeaningfulName: Ludibrium is Latin for "plaything".
* BlandNameProduct: Just look at the Kerning Square.
* BlindIdiotTranslation: Poor, poor Athena (or most other clearly female [=NPC=]s for that matter). She is constantly referred to either as 'him', 'it', or 'they' by other [=NPC=]s.
* BlownAcrossTheRoom: The Dragon's Breath skill. Also, several boss monsters are capable of this.
* BoringButPractical: Fighters and Pages used their basic Power Strike and Slash Blast skills all the way until level ''120'', at least before the Big Bang patch. Assassins use Lucky 7 until level 120, and possibly later if they don't have the Triple Throw skill book.While they get additional attacks, those are entirely situational.
** The ''ultimate'' version of this is the Magician's Magic Guard, which is used for ''life''.
* {{Bowdlerize}}: Until the Big Bang, when the Bowlderization was reversed, Global version's Showa Town had human monsters turning into animals when they died (to show that you weren't really killing humans) and all guns were turned into hammers. It was feared this would happen to Pirates, but it didn't.
** Removal of Gachapon (slot machines) and introduction of Pigmy (egg-hatching pig, with prizes in the eggs) could also count, since it's Pigmy in Europe among others and gambling can get a + 12 on otherwise innocent game under Pegi.
* BossRush: The entire point of the Mu Lung Dojo.
* BottomlessMagazines: Mechanics cannot use bullets like their Gunslinger cousins, but they have gatling guns that do not use bullets.
* BreakingTheFourthWall: There is a quest where you give a guard named Mike three different HP healing potions. When you complete the quest, he says ""Maybe the effects will kick in later. That's usually how medicine works, right? It's supposed to Heal me right away? Haha! I don't know about that... It's not like this is a video game ore something.
* BribingYourWayToVictory: The Cash Shop used to only sell items (for real money) that were purely aesthetic. With the introduction of the Gachapon "coin op" machines, real money can buy items that can change gameplay.
** A few examples are items that: ''Double'' EXP gained (granted, it's for everyone), ignore EXP penalties upon death, and allow the user to teleport ''anywhere''. Sayonara, ships.
** Even that can be beaten. Two words: EXP Gachapon. You can buy your way all the way up to level 50.
** With the recent introduction of Evan (in the Global version), buying special skillbooks from the Cash Shop is currently required to increase the level of essential skills such as [[ManaShield Magic Guard]]. Cue many justified cries of Nexon (at least the branch running the Global version, as the original Korean version didn't do any of this) crossing the line and making the game no longer be truly Free-to-Play.
** Also in Global with the release of the Dual Blade, like Evan there's mastery books in the cash shop for several skills. The people angry about the Evan mastery books are in a state of blistering fury about these ones as well.
** Miracle Cubes in the cash shop allow you to reset an item's Potential trait. Using enough of them with the in-game purchasable Magnifying Glass can give you [[InfinityPlusOneSword Infinity Plus One Equipment]].
** Shielding Wards that allows you to use Equipment Enhancement Scrolls without penalty on an item up to 8 (12 in Korean Maple) stars.
* ButtMonkey: The game balance was never really kind to Archers. Their HP is among the lowest, have average DPM, and in general the buggiest class in the history of the game. The release of Wild Hunters also made this worse as they're basically Archers with superior mobility, DPM, and HP. Thought this was finally changed in a later patch.
** On the hand, before Big Bang, Archers could actually win against boss enemies several levels above them. Post BB, there is a [[TheyChangedItNowItSucks accuracy equation based on level difference that creates an automatic miss after 20 levels]].
* CallingYourAttacks: A toggleable feature when setting up macros. Sadly, it's [[WhatDoYouMeanItsNotAwesome less awesome in practice than in theory]] for [[StopHavingFunGuys various reasons]].
* CaptainErsatz: Several. This is a game which features a lot of lawyer-friendly cameos and such-
** Athena Pierce is likely based on Elwing from Shining Wind
** Grendel The Really Old is [[LordOfTheRings Gandalf]].
** Marco, an agent in a black suit and holding a big gun in Omega Sector, is based on Agent K (Will Smith) from Film/MenInBlack
*** and as of the Big Bang patch, Nexon America renamed the character to "Agent M" in the Global version which makes it even more obvious
** Stirgeman, a costumed character in New Leaf City, is based on {{Batman}}
*** Of the equip items he gives out, some are black and red, based on BatmanBeyond
** Icebird Slymm, mayor of New Leaf City, looks a lot like Mayor Tilton from ''Film/TheMask''.
*** though he's supposedly based on governor David Paterson, but Paterson is a rather skinny guy with some hair whereas Mayor Tilton and Icebyrd Slimm are rather overweight and balding
** Lita Lawless seems to be based on Xena (hence the similar name to Lucy Lawless) though she wears armor more inspired by futuristic anime.
** Bell, conductor of the subway to and from New Leaf City, looks a lot like [[ThePolarExpress another conductor of a rail vehicle]].
** Spiegelmann, the man who runs the Monster Carnival, is only a pointy nose off from being Batman's enemy Penguin.
** Tigun, the guard at Ariant castle (not Tigun The Advisor from Ludibrium) looks like a very overweight parody of Jonathan Frakes. No coincidence this character was created at a time Frakes was being hit with jokes about weight gain.
** The Mesorangers in Omega Sector are basically the [[MightyMorphinPowerRangers Power Rangers]], specifically based on the earlier years of the show. There are also Chury, Hoony and Gunny, three characters which wear Power Rangers costumes but not the helmets.
** A non character example would be many of the shops in Kerning Square, which often look so much like the real businesses that it's skirting very close to the legal line.
** Cake Boss Daniel, of the Cake VS Pie event, looks almost exactly like ''Hell's Kitchen'' host Gordon Ramsey
*** Pie Lord Tiara, of the same event, may be based on Rachel Ray but the visual likeless is not as strong
** Ghosthunter Bob of Ludibrium is probably based on the Ghostbusters, but he looks more like the Filmation Ghostbusters than the more well-known Dan Akroyd film/Real Ghostbusters series.
* CastFromHitPoints: Many of the Demon Slayer's skills use HP instead of MP, in addition to his character specific Demon Force. Also just about all the Dragonknight's skills.
* ChargedAttack: The Crusader's Combo Attack is a Collect type that's charged by hitting the enemy. On the 4th job, most classes get a Hold type.
** Don't forget the Brawler class tree, considering you pretty much rely on a skill that charges up to access half of your other skills.
* ChuckCunninghamSyndrome: The Maple World has a modern force of secret agents that are supposed to patrol the world. They were first seen in a massive event in version .72, and again in the alien invasion event prior to Big Bang, as well as one lone agent who was seen around the haunted mansion during a Halloween event. These agents are connected to the Omega Sector. But as of Big Bang, they've all but vanished, with only the original Agent Marco in Omega Sector remaining, as well as Gaga, who has had his role in the story changed since then. The rest of the agents have vanished with no trace or hint of showing up again, and their role in the world seems to have been replaced by the Edelstein Resistance and Silent Crusade with some possible retconning happening to the overall plot.
* ClassicVideoGameScrewYous:
** When taking the ship between Orbis and Victoria Island in either direction there is a 50% chance two Crimson Balrogs will show up and kill everyone on the ship (unless at least one person onboard is around level 100 or higher, which is around the level the Balrogs are at, and able to defeat them or if you spend the trip safely inside the cabin), making you go back to where you were.
** To get to Crimsonwood Keep, or just to the training maps before it, one has to go through two maps where a monster that does 10k or so damage randomly spawns. After that one has to do a jump quest which involves dodging giant totem poles that will OHKO you if you touch them. When one gets to Lower Ascent and the next few maps it's possible to fall off the map, forcing you to do the second part of the jump quest again.
** This game just looooooooooooooves to spawn monsters right where you're standing. This is especially frustrating as a Mechanic since the mech has no knockback and can block out quite a few enemy sprites. You suddenly take damage for no apparent reason until you move or the enemy comes into view.
** When you're trying to fight a mob one by one, your character either locks on one mook you hit first, regardless of where it is as long as it is within your attack range, while ignoring other mooks which are about to [[CollisionDamage crash]] onto you, or locks on random mooks in the mob, usually the furthest ones, even after you hit the one on your face, [[RunningGag while ignoring other mooks which are about to crash onto you]]. This is why multi-target attacks/[[HerdHittingAttack crowd control]] are extremely useful, and Wizet indeed seems to acknowledge this by giving most new classes some crowd control skills; when you can smack multiple mooks at once, it doesn't really matter which ones are almost out of reach and which ones [[OverusedRunningGag are about to crash onto you]]
* ClothesMakeTheSuperman: Some armors can have extremely powerful bonuses (e.g. up to 21% to your main damage stat)additionally before the Big Bang patch physical defense was entirely dependent on armor.
* CollectibleCardGame: The Monster Book. Doing this is beneficial, as once you collect enough cards of a specific monster, you can view basic background information about the monster, see everything that it RandomlyDrops, and be able to gain bonus experience from that specific monster for an hour after collecting their final card. This was reworked in a later patch after being temporarily removed.
** Also, the {{spinoff}} game ''MapleStoryITCG''.
* ConspiracyRedemption: The Evan [[spoiler: joins the Black Wings initially]].
* ContinuingIsPainful: All classes lose 10% exp when dieing, which isn't good considering the amount of LevelGrinding needed to level up at later levels.
** Having a higher LUK statistic used to reduce the penalty. In the past, mages that went "LUKless" would lose over 30% of their EXP if they died.
** As of Chaos and professions, building up the Ambition trait reduces EXP loss at death by a small bit every 5 levels it's raised.
* CriticalHit: All Archers, all Pirates (except Mechanics), Assassins, Cleric, Evans, and Battle Mages have skills that boost critical rate on all attacks. Other classes have only a 5% but some have skills that have separate critical hit chances. 4th advancement Archers can boost their entire party's critical rate and raise critical damage. Before the Big Bang only these classes (minus Clerics,Pirates and the classes that didn't exist at the time.) could critical hit at all.
* DarkerAndEdgier: The beginning of the Demon Slayer storyline [[spoiler: he was once a commander for the Black Mage, but does a heel face turn when the Black Mage orders the world to be destroyed for defying his rule, starting with the place where Demon Slayer's family lived, in a cutscene you visit their burning house and pick up a photo of his now-dead mother and brother.]]
* DarkIsNotEvil: A lot of the Battle Mage's skills involve some very "dark" themes (ex: "Dark Genesis", "Summon Reaper"), but the backstory of the Resistance faction puts them as the good guys. Additionally, the Knights of Cygnus' "Night Walker" class, and the Adventurers' "Night Lord", "Shadower", and "Dark Knight" classes - all involve some form of manipulation of shadows, darkness, or otherwise normally "sinister" skills. Also the Demon Slayer is a half-Demon good guy with very edgy, dark, spiky attacks. Even though he was a commander in the Black Mage's army, he [[spoiler: was only there to protect his loved ones.]]
* DemBones: A ''lot'' of monsters, from humans to dogs to fish.
* DiscOneNuke: Before you even make your second job advancement, a quest is available that requires you to kill one of five relatively easy bosses depending on your class, and the reward for said quest is a mask of that boss that boosts your class' main stat by 12, and even the defense of these masks is greater than many higher-leveled hats.
* EldritchLocation - The further down you get in the Ludibrium Clock Tower, the more the whole place seems ''off.'' It doesn't exactly help that a good portion of the monsters down there are technically ghosts, as well.
** Although that's only the right side the left side suffers from MusicalDissonce.
* ElementalRockPaperScissors: Fire hurts plant-based and ice-based monsters. Ice hurts fire-based and many fish. Holy hurts undead and dark. This is not true in all cases however; which tends to annoy the elemental-users because of how most of the game is biased towards those who specialize in non-elemental offensive methods.
** This is ironically enough one of the biggest reasons why Mages were nerfed retroactively after the Big Bang patch. Almost every area added after that patch contains neutral weak monsters making the Mages ability to exploit elemental weakness completely useless (it borders an InformedAblity.)
* EmotionlessGirl: Lilin, according to this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZM-jB855aM
* EngagementChallenge: In order to make an Engagement Ring, the male must acquire "Proofs of Love" from the various towns which are given by collecting certain amounts of items, as well as the materials to actually make the ring out of. The female has to get a blessing from her parents (Who are an in-game NPC), which also requires collecting "Proofs of Love". Of course, to actually get married, you have to buy a reservation from the Cash Shop.
* BuiltWithLego: The world Ludibrium, complete with toy monsters.
* {{Evolution}}: The monsters around [[spoiler: Ruined Henesys and Dark Ereve]]. They turn back to their original selves on death though.
* ExplosiveOverclocking: Dark Scrolls work more often than their regular counterparts, but can potentially destroy the item they're used on if they fail. Potenial and Equipment Enhancement Scrolls are like this too, but they WILL destroy the item they're used on if they fail.
* ExtremeOmnivore: A Wild Hunter's jaguar. At their second advancement, their mount can swallow a monster to grant its user a random buff. It works on any non-boss monster that is in an area that is not version specific. This ends up including monsters ranging from wooden signs, street lights, killer teddy bears, robots, possessed grandfather clocks and AnimatedArmor.
** [[BigEater The size of the monster isn't an issue for these Jaguars either]].
* FakeDifficulty: Leveling took several times longer than the current EXP curve brought by the Big Bang. It could take 10 straight hours of dedication to gain even a single level.
** One of the biggest problems with jump quests is that the game has this tendency to lock up for really short split seconds. This doesn’t interfere with most aspects of play. But it totally interferes with your ability to make precisely-timed jumps.
* FakeUltimateMook: The stone golems have become this as a result of the Big Bang.
* FantasticFoxes: An enemy.
* FantasyKitchenSink: Half the planet seems to be based on medieval times and ancient myths of magic and wizardry, with a strong emphasis on swords and knights. The other half? American Indian culture, an inner city slum, a town made of building blocks, a futuristic military base, ancient Japan, modern Japan, Japan in the future, pirates... you get the idea. It can be jarring walking from a town that looks like it came from a Tolkein book to a town that looks like Compton.
* FantasticRacism: The fairies in Ellinia and Orbis usually consider humans to be selfish, inferior, or sometimes just plain destructive. While some of the humans they talk about really are such things, and a few do have human friends, some will still talk down to the player without provocation, or make an offhand remark about how said friend is [[YouAreACreditToYourRace good for a human]].
* FluffyCloudHeaven: Orbis looks like one, complete with heavenly music and angels. However, there are still monsters that [[strike:will]] can kill you. Very fast if you aren't of high level.
* FluffyTheTerrible: Bob the Snail. And Pink Bean. Dear GOD, ''PINK BEAN.''
* FoeTossingCharge: All warriors except the Dawn Warrior will have this skill one time. Useful for grouping monsters together to kill them all at once, or shoving mobile bosses to a more convenient location or for some of their squishier friends. Notably this is the only movement skill the adventurer warriors get.
* FutureImperfect: Going through the Door of the Future in the Temple of Time shows you that [[spoiler:Henesys is now in ruins, and Ereve fell to the Maple World.]].
** The Alien Invasion event, prior to Big Bang, saw the Maple World in ruins, [[spoiler:polluted so bad that people had to wear protective suits just to breathe... all because visitors from the past kept stealing chunks of the big crystal that kept the world going, causing it to malfunction, polluting the environment.]]
* GameFavoredGender: Engagement ring quests for males involve collecting gold, diamond or other precious materials and gems, followed by the cost to make the ring. For females? Collecting Proofs of Love (which the males also do), and talking to your parents.
** Also in terms of hair and clothing options, the females choice is better.
* GatlingGood: Mechanics get a skill like this.
* GenderBlenderName: Evan, like any other class, can be either gender, but will still be called Evan even if she's female.
* GetOnTheBoat: With literal boats that take you places! Also comes in varieties such as airships, subway trains, random tour guides, and a cloth pouch carried by a crane.
** And even one that gets invaded by [[DemonicSpiders monsters]] while you're traveling.
** Notably, a flying boat made to resemble a brightly-colored plastic toy train.
** Aaaaand a giant genie. And a bird that has a platform to stand on that's [[NoOSHACompliance rather loosely attached...]]
* GlassCannon: Gunslingers. Near the endgame, they have the strongest attacks of all the classes. The problem is that they can't take hits like Warriors (massive HP), don't have workarounds like Magicians (Magic Guard), and can't dodge as well as Thieves (Evasion), although Evasion tends not to fare very well at the areas where you would be taking such high damages anyway. Archers are also like this; except they don't compare to Gunslingers.
** Also applies to most ranged classes with higher damage their hp tends to be lower than average.
* GodSaveUsFromTheQueen: Ariant Queen Areda. Also, [[spoiler: Empress Cygnus in the future.]]
* GogglesDoNothing: Lampshaded, on the item Spectrum Goggles there is a description saying "Allows vision in multiple dimensions. Who says the goggles do nothing?" [[spoiler: STR+1, LUK+1]]
* GoodBadTranslation: At places in English version. One of the most outrageous ones is the case of Horny Mushrooms in MapleStory Europe. Originally "Horny Mushrooms" in Global (mushrooms with horns. [[FreudWasRight What did you think?]]), they were changed into "Horn-shape mushrooms". And no, no typo there. However, they recently made them "Horny Mushroom" in Europe too, but forgot to rename the ETC-drop, which is still called "Horn-shape Mushroom Cap". Also, they couldn't decide how to translate the Knights of Cygnus; SEA and Global have different names for them and Europe (which takes most of stuff straight from Global) uses SEA names.
** And the [[UnfortunateNames "Wind Breaker"]] class, as mentioned above.
** There is a quest given by The Rememberer that requires you to kill a certain number of Horny Mushrooms. It's called "Raging Horny Mushrooms."
* GraffitiTown: Kerning City
* GratuitousGreek: The signs in Orbis and at the Victoria island airship port are English written with Greek Letters. Among other things, they say "Cloud", and "Welcome to Orbis" Especially gratuitous is the fact that they simply typed the words in Greek mode on an English keyboard, which meant that some English letters were interpreted as completely different Greek ones, leading to a sign that's supposed to say "Victoria" saying "ςΙΧΤΟΡΙΑ", which would be pronounced "Sixtoria." Oh and if it looks weird that the first letter is lower case and the rest is upper case, they even tried to cover that up by scooting the ς at the start up a bit so it would match the height of the others.
* TheGreys: Monsters in Omega Sector, which are even called Grays. Also includes purple octopus-like aliens (Mateons, their derivatives, and the appropriately-named Octopus).
* GroundPound: So many monsters do this, it's probably taught at monster school.
* GrumpyBear: Played with, with a bear. Edelstein's Checky, a man in a bear suit, is constantly picked on by kids trying to get a look at his real face under the hood, even going so far as to task the player into throwing snakes into his costume to try and make him take it off. He also sometimes has trouble breathing and must occasionally use a special respirator with a mask cast to fit the bear's face. He's not grumpy, really, and stays cheerful but he's always being annoyed about the bear mask despite his insistence that the only thing under the mask are "hopes and dreams". [[spoiler: But really, Checky is secretly the leader of the Mechanics in the Resistance, and he will eventually admit to the player that there is nothing under the mask because it's not a mask- it's his face. Checky is actually an anthromorphic bear who only seems to resemble a cartoonish bear suit]].
* {{Handguns}}: Every weapon a Gunslinger utilizes is a handgun resembling dated flintlock pistols.
** To put this in perspective, modern weaponry exists in the Maple World, but all job classes are expected to use medieval swords, bows and blunt weapons with Pirates being the most modern, but still quite outdated, in terms of equipment.
* HauntedCastle: The haunted Prendergast Mansion, and it has many, ''many'' ghosts and ghouls.
* HeadlessHorseman: One of the boss monsters.
* HeelFaceBrainwashing: Subverted. This happens to [[spoiler:The Knights of Cygnus and their Queen in the FUTURE.]]
* HeelFaceTurn: The Demon Slayer does this when his house is burned with his brother inside.
* HeroicComedicSociopath
* HeroicBSOD: Mercedes has one of these after finding out that the [[BigBad Black Mage]] cursed Eurel and the rest of the elves along with her she during her battle. The elf counsel breaks her out of it quickly, though.
* HollywoodDensity: The strongest of the Mechanic mech equips are made of pure gold and the second strongest are still made primarily of gold. Hopefully the Maple World's version of "gold" is not the same as ours because if it were, these engines and other pieces would literally mangle themselves upon use, as gold is one of the softest metals in existence.
* HomingBoulders: All projectiles home towards enemies when applicable.
* HorseOfADifferentColor: At level 70 or higher, adventurers can tame a pig for riding, Arans get a wolf, Evans learn to ride their own dragons. Cygnus Knights can get a bird at level 50 instead. A Wild Hunter can earn a mount at level 10 with the ability to tame a ''jaguar.''
* HubLevel: Victoria Island during the first and second job. Orbis becomes this from the third job onward, due to being able to get to almost any region from there.
** Victoria Island gets the Six Path Crossway from Big Bang; Instead of having to walk around the perimeter of the island to get from town to town, facing stronger monsters the further away from a town you got, all the towns are connected to the Crossway, with the monsters getting weaker the closer to it you get. The Crossway also holds the entrance to Sleepywood as well as the Airports.
* HyperspaceArsenal: At any given time a player is usually carrying hundreds of potions, twenty or so different armors and weapons (ranging from suits of armor to two handed weapons (The Berzerker)), [[strike:Hundreds]] thousands of etc. items, and don't forget the equipment that they already may be wearing! Those poor mounts.
* ImmuneToFlinching: Various class abilities can protect the player from flinching when struck by an attack (at varying rates, depending on the ability); these are often high-level abilities, but some classes like the Mechanic and Demon Slayer can learn them earlier than others.
* ImpossiblyCoolClothes: The Cash Shop has this in spades. There's even an outfit that can literally turn your character into a Centuar.
* ImprobableWeaponUser: [[AWorldwidePunomenon Pike (fish) on a pike (spear)]], snowballs, teddy bears, fans, lanterns, crazed pet cats jumping after catnip mice.. etc.
** And some of the non-NX Joke Items are [[LethalJokeItem even more effective than normal weapons.]]
** [[SelfImposedChallenge Permanent Beginners]] get stuff like Frozen Tuna and giant Sake Bottles with almost twice the base power of an equivalent regular weapon to make up for their lack of skills.
* {{Immortality}}: Ever since Maya took the Weird Medicine, she hasn't aged a day up to the point in the Future.
* InfinityPlusOneSword: The potential scrolls and equipment enhancement scrolls turn your equipment into this. However if the scroll fails, severe penalties are incurred. (see ''ExplosiveOverclocking'' above)
** Thanks to Nebulites from the March 2012 Alien event, it's now possible to have "infinity +2" equipment as nebulites stack with potential.
* JackOfAllStats: Archers qualify, which is why they aren't really picked over Thieves and Magicians for parties that need ranged attackers.
* TheJimmyHartVersion: ''[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJO4ctKnPWA Battlefield]]'', the tune that plays in the Showa hideout sounds a lot like ''[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsvwYU9K504 Battle Without Honor Or Humanity ]]'' from ''Kill Bill''.
** The Alien map music, [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ye-iYhVZpcI ''NLC Kidnap'']], from the March 2012 Alien event sounds quite a bit like [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceqb_cvQJM4 ''Phantasmagoria'']] from [[GunGirl2 Gun Girl 2]].
* JokeItem: Various holiday/seasonal items, like V-day roses, summer inner tubes, and Independence Day US flags.
** LethalJokeItem: Snowboards and surfboards are generally seen as the best weapons to use as an Aran, due to their attack speed being faster than most actual polearms. Although one would think that they would break after a combo of 100 or so...
* JustLikeRobinHood: You get tricked into thinking you're doing this in the Sand Bandits storyline, before doing it for real.
* KillerRabbit: One of the strongest bosses in the game looks like [[http://media.strategywiki.org/images/a/a0/MS_Monster_Pink_Bean.png this.]]
* KillItWithFire: Along with the Fire/Poision Wizards, Bowmen get fire-based skills and eventually even a fire-elemental bird to summon.
* KingMook: ''A lot'' of bosses.
* LethalLavaLand: Deep within the El Nath mines.
* LevelGrinding: '''And how.''' This game is famed for its level grinding, although in recent years its become much easier due to addition of party quests, experience needed to level up reduced by 25%, and the family system which lets even [[BribingYourWayToVictory non-payers]] get 2x exp for 15-30min. However, its still near impossible to level up at much higher levels. Of course, in the end, it all depends on [[YourMileageMayVary your mileage.]]
** The game changing Big Bang patch dealt with this issue somewhat by greatly lowering the exp curve though it's still in effect at higher levels.
** The insane amount of level grinding makes priests extremely valuable in parties. In addition to healing and buffs, priests have a skill called Holy Symbol, which gives 150% exp. It also stacks on top of family buffs and 2x exp events.
* LimitBreak: Possible in the Mu Lung Dojo, but very unlikely to happen unless you are really sucking against a boss and somehow still managing to survive, in which case it [[UselessUsefulSpell won't make a difference anyway]].
** However some classes with self healing skills can exploit this.
* LinearWarriorsQuadraticWizards: Pre Big Bang Maplestory was built on this. Mage!Beginners are weaker than the others because they don't added stat points to dexterity or strength (which affect weapons), while Warrior!Beginners add to strength so they out damage everyone else. The Mages advance to the first job earlier but in order to be optimal have to spend several levels building up passive skills before they could start building up their attacking skills while the other classes just raise their skill damage from the beginning. In the end of the first job thanks to built in mastery mages are the most powerful class. But when mages move to the next job they have to build up their mastery for every new spell while the rest of the classes only have to build but mastery for their weapon type (and they only have to do this once). So at the beginning of every job mages are the weakest while near the end they end up the strongest thanks to Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors.
** And of course the Big Bang changed this by giving mages a mastery skill and changing spells from having their own formula to multipliers which retroactively nerfed them. But later patches brought them back up to speed.
* LiteralStrawman: [[TheyChangedItNowItSucks Prior to Big Bang]], these were used for just suck a purpose, common but weak enemies that could be mass kill while being overlevel, to gain a lot of easy experience. With Big Bang, they changed the level of Mu Lung enemies, so this wasn't the case.
* [=Lost Marbles Quest=]: A lot of the "tutorial" quests on Maple Island.
* TheLostWoods: Ellinia, home of magicians.
* LuckStat: Much like STR is to a warrior/brawler, DEX to an archer/gunslinger, and INT to a mage, LUK is to thieves. LUK used to influence the amount of EXP lost when a player dies. Now, it only influences accuracy, avoidability, and a vague stat called 'hands' (Which was later removed).
* FantasyCounterpartCulture: Korean Folk Town, Mu Lung (China), Ariant (generic Middle East), Zipangu (Japan), and well; alot of other places.
* {{Machinima}}/{{FanVid}}: A growing number of these are on youtube, amazingly. Very subject to SturgeonsLaw, and varies from animated music videos and home made series to movie versions of romance movies.
* MagikarpPower: The Gunslinger class embodies this trope. Due to a wonky damage formula, and generally weak abilities, they do abysmal damage in first and second job even if they go a statless or low-stat build. Come third job they begin to catch up in damage thanks to a more powerful main attack and various abilities that increase their damage, and in fourth job they receive insanely powerful abilities, giving them top-tier DPM, rivaling Arans and Night Lords.
** Back when there were no other classes besides the original four, Archers suffered heavily from this. Compared to the Assassins (the closest other class in terms of general mechanics), Archers in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd job were underpowered and generally unwanted in training parties and the then current end game content. Cue 4th job which included MoreDakka (bow users only however) and the ability to give the entire party the ability to CriticalHit and they're suddenly they're a hot commodity.
* MarathonBoss: Many of them but Pink Bean is very notable, with his 2 BILLION health, 5 Statues (with a couple million to their names that MUST be destroyed) and Attacks that can one shot anyone. Oh and you gotta do it in a time limit. Did I mention that the statues can nullify your Magic or Physical Attacks?
** [[spoiler:In the current Korean version: Queen Cygnus is now the leader of this trope. She has the ability to call on her Knights with just as much health as herself, has the ability to lock you into place while you take damage over time, the ability to disable your [[InfinityPlusOneSword Infinity Plus One Equipment]], and inherits the traits of Pink Bean. The map also slaps you with a cooldown on potions. Brutal.]]
* MascotMook: Orange Mushrooms are featured prominently on the official website and the game's login screen. Ribbon Pigs and Iron Hogs show up a lot, too.
* MassMonsterSlaughterSidequest: Either you're committing genocide on the order of hundreds of creatures a quest, or you're [[TwentyBearAsses collecting random drops at the same rate]].
* MayflyDecemberRomance: In Magatia, [[spoiler:this was Dr. De Lang's motivation for trying to extend his lifespan; even his [[HalfHumanHybrid daughter]] Keeny would have outlived him by a mile, to say nothing of his fairy wife Phyllia. It drove him to do anything to live longer, including studying notes from the Black Magician. Unfortunately, not only did he learn far too much about Magatia's origins, but his experiment failed spectacularly, caused an explosion that threatened the town's livelihood, and made himself and his family into social outcasts.]]
* MightyGlacier: Warriors. Brawlers and Thunder Breakers as well to a lesser extent.
* MinMaxing: Putting all EXP towards the few stats crucial to the specific job class. EVERY class has some sort of formula for stat allocation. Typically, secondary stats should be some function of the player's level, while the rest goes into the primary stat. Don't even THINK about putting anything in HP or MP, let alone any other stats.
** Nowadays, the game will automatically optimize your character correctly, although you can allocate the stats yourself if you're doing something different, such as...
** HP warriors. They're a warrior who doesn't level their stats up until the second job at lvl 30. All they do is add to HP. By lvl 30, it's something like 10,000. Furthermore, the second job grants the Power Guard ability, which deals damage back whenever you get hit.
* ModestyTowel: Surprisingly, one of the best items to have while MinMaxing.
* MoneySink: Getting the class [[TheYoshi mounts]] costs ridiculous amounts of money. Taxi and Cabs can transport you to various maps and dungeons for a((n) ever increasing) fee. Also there's a quest when an Npc straight up asks for 5 million mesos for very little justification.
* MoneySpider: Possibly every monster save for the leprechaun, who actually has reason to carry money.
* MonsterIsAMommy: Mushmom, Zombie Mushmom, and Mushdad/Blue Mushmom.
* MoreDakka: All ranged classes except Cannon shooters with various degrees.
* MsFanservice: Kyrin is perhaps the closest example, given the chibi style of the graphics. She wears a tube top, leather skirt with a slit up the side, and thigh-high black boots.
* NiceHat: The [=GMs=]'s hat not only identifies them as [=GMs=], but is also what gives them their insane stats. Also the extremely high statistic hats such as the Zakum helmet; although arguably they don't look very nice depending on the person.
* NiceJobBreakingItHero: According to the stories on the official website, the Cygnus Knights do this twice. First, they invaded Von Leon's castle, causing him to turn to the Black Mage for vengeance. In the future, Cygnus also steps right into the Black Mage's trap because she wants to find the Tree of Life for her knights.
** The pre-Big Bang Alien Invasion event focused on [[spoiler:Dr. Bing, an Omega Sector researcher, developing a crystal in the future that basically powered all technology and kept the planet safe. That is until his past self peeks into the future, sees this crystal and takes samples to study it. This ruins the environment terribly and forces the population into protective suits, some of which are sent to the past to recover the stolen crystals and repair the damage... only to be mistaken as alien invaders which prompts the Omega Sector to send adventurers into the future to steal even MORE crystals, asusming the damage to have been caused by an invasion in the future, making things even worse!]] The end result relied on time travel and changing history to avoid the entire mess.
* NinjaPirateZombieRobot: Zombie mushrooms, ''giant'' zombie mushrooms, ghost pirates, toy octopi riding [[strike:LEGO]] generic block golems, just to list a few.
** The transportation from one continent to another continent. There's a boat-plane-train with candy paint and swirly propellers!
** [[BossBattle Papulatus]], a ghost vegetable thing riding a robotic clock that casts magic. That's pretty crazy.
* NoArcInArchery: The Archer class. Arrows only ever bend to show that the shot is flying towards a monster, and even then they're more likely to just show the arrows inexplicably come out at an angle without the player actually aiming at that angle.
* NoEnding: How does them original Silent Crusade questline end after the final boss? [[spoiler:Well, your partner quits offscreen before you can make your confession to him/her, and you never see him/her again after that.]]
* NoExportForYou: The Korean version gets updates first, natch, and then it goes the order of formation, but not always exactly. Some lands or monsters are country-exclusive.
* NoGoodDeedGoesUnpunished: Right before the Black Magician was sealed, he punished the heroes who fought him by casting a curse on them.
* NonHumanSidekick: The purchasable Pets. They can do various tricks when given verbal commands, and level up, learning more tricks and gaining the ability to talk. They're fundamentally all the same, though, with specific tricks they can do at certain levels, and after enough grinding, typically gain the ability to speak English. For extra money, you can deck your pet out in accessories which can make them more functional, allowing them to pick up items and gold for you, and even automatically use potions for you when your HP or MP get low. Handy!
** Cannoneer palls around with a handy monkey in a propeller cap who helps the character perform skills.
* NoobCave: Maple Island for the Adventurers, Ereve for Cygnus Knights, Rien for Aran, and Utah's Pig Farm for Evan. Subverted with Edelstein, the Resistance starting area, which is a very large city that still has quests and training locations available well into a character's third job, presumably due to there not being enough room on the map to put it anywhere near [[HubLevel Victoria Island]].
* NotSoHarmless: ''A lot'' of monsters.
* OneWingedAngel: Von Leon of the Lion King's Castle.
* OrganDrops: Some monsters have particuallry greusome drops, like the Evil Eyes who sometimes drop their tails and [[EyeScream their eyeballs]] upon death.
* OrgasmicCombat: [[spoiler:Queen Cygnus, SERIOUSLY. Listen to her voice while fighting her.]]
* PaletteSwap: Pretty much played straight with older monsters but there are subversions. But it's not avoided with many equip items- some armors and weapons can have up to 4 different color versions, each with specialized stats.
** Equips added after pirates were reslesed come in one uniform color which includes all pirate equipment and most items beyond level 100.
* [[MarthDebutedInSmashBros Pirates Debuted As Cygnus Knights]]: In Europe, at least, the update order created a situation where Thunder Breakers were in the game before Pirates, the class they were based on.
* PlayerParty: Encouraged with EXP boosts while partying.
* PlayerVersusPlayer: After years of bickering about the lack of this trope, it finally gets introduced in the Chaos Update.
* PrestigeClass: For example, magicians. They start as Magicians, then can become a Fire/Poison Wizard, Ice/Lightning Wizard, or a Cleric. The next job advancement goes onto Mages or Priests, then Arch Mages or Bishop. And that's ''just'' for Magicians.
* PurelyAestheticGender: Anyone can do any job. Gender-specific armor for females tends to be cheaper due to lower demand.
** This is partly because all players use the exact same base body sprites. Gender features are usually added by the face and hair overlays, and details such as breasts are hinted at by the way armor or clothing is drawn.
* RainbowPimpGear: Someone who's truly MinMaxing will probably be wearing a bathrobe, a Zakum Helmet (Complete with [[PowerGlows glow]]), some white gloves (with or without lightning bolt), shoes, earrings, and cape. Needless to say, [[BribingYourWayToVictory NX items]] are recommended.
** Big stone helmet with flashy glow, towel around the waist, pink cape. The standard adventuring gear amongst funded users. Animal mask optional.
** This has been somewhat averted with the advent of the potential system, which gives bigger stat bonuses on higher-leveled gear.
* RainOfArrows: Played straight with the Ranger's Arrow Rain skill. Inverted with the Sniper's Arrow Eruption skill (which has arrows ''shooting upwards from the ground'' instead).
* RandomEncounter: [[spoiler: Crimson Balrog]]. Escape is recommended if you aren't trying to fight it.
* RandomlyDrops: See entry on that page for details.
** There seems to be a serious case of NotAvailableInStores going on for all weapons and armor, past about level 35, making the game particularly painful in the case of item hacks.
* RecurringCharacter: Athena Pierce (also known as Helena), the main Bowman job instructor, has been frequently appearing as a plot-important character in recent Korean time travel expansions. Odd considering how the main job instructors for the other four classes are not featured as often, but [[OurElvesAreBetter not surprising since Athena is an elf]] who appears to have spent her entire life fighting the [[BigBad Dark Magician]].
** Athena Pierce is said to be over 1000 years old. By contrast, Dark Lord is a title, not a name. It's been mentioned in-game that the current one is the ninth to hold the title. The previous one was killed. The other two may have had their lives extended by magic but are showing their ages. Kyrin is rather young, having only recently founded the Pirates and was raised from childhood by Athena Pierce until running away as a teenager.
*** The Mercedes patch plot revealed that Athena Pierce is not only old, but she's the only elf(besides her late father) that was not frozen solid with everyone else in Eurel. Not only is she ancient but she's been the only one of her kind that's been around for centuries.
** Dances With Balrog DOES show up in the Ellin Forest area... although he's named Crawls With Balrog because he's only an infant.
* RepeatableQuest: They did not introduce these until later versions despite growing and rather vocal demand for them in the early days.
* RetCon: Done several times, mostly with the expanding story of the Black Mage. Mercedes used a bow in Aran's flashback, before it was revealed that she used [[ImpossiblyCoolWeapon Dual Bowguns]]. [[SpellMyNameWithAnS Freud/Freed]] was also having stated to have fled the battle to protect Afrien's egg, which eventually became Mir, Evan's dragon. However, in the new Silent Crusade quest line he and his dragon Afrien shown to have left early to [[spoiler:block off the moment in time when the Black Mage was sealed, using all his energy.]]
** Cassandra, the fortune telling NPC used in various event quests, was originally a middle-aged woman with gray hair... now she's a young woman with blonde hair. No explanation, of course.
** Hey, remember the Silent Crusade quest chain? The one where your character falls in love with a member of the Silent Crusade? As of the Alliance Rising patch of February 2012... well, none of it happened. They've reset the entire Silent Crusade story with a new quest series.
* ReviveKillsZombie: Heal and Holy/Light attacks damage undead types more. Also the only way holy magicians can mob monsters until they reach third job.
* RomeoAndJuliet: Plot used as a party quest in Magatia, where two alchemist groups (debating about the use of machinery in alchemy) are having a bitter rivalry.
* ScunthorpeProblem: Ever tried matching wits with [=MapleStory=]'s swear filter?
* SelfImposedChallenge: Some people choose to remain as a Beginner even after Level 10.
* ShamuFu: The Thunder Breakers throw sharks ''[[RuleOfCool made of lightning]]'' at enemies in their later levels.
* ShiftingSandLand: Ariant.
* ShortRangeLongRangeWeapon: The Bows, Crossbows, Guns, and Gloves (used for Throwing Stars), when compared in scale to characters, seem to only fly ''a few feet'' before the relevant projectile simply vanishes from existence. Justified overall in that there's no way to usefully have arrows and bullets fly the tens/hundreds of feet they could travel (like in real life), and further justified with the Throwing Stars and Gloves in that those are meant to be used at similar ranges in real life to their in-game counterpart.
** Pirates hold their handguns with one hand, and don't aim, so they probably only could reasonably hit monsters from that distance. Bow-wielding Hunters and Wind Archers seem to pull the bowstring back for only a little, so an arrow would be able to only fly a couple dozen feet at best anyway. Played straight for crossbowman, though.
* ShoutOut: Some ninja gear and attacks bring to mind ''{{Naruto}}''. Cash Shop items have referenced anything from Korean mythology to recent movies [[MagicalGirlLyricalNanoha to a certain anime about "befriending"]] others (Check the Cash Shop, and you will find Fate's Bardiche and Signum's Sword... somewhat.) Monsters have been anywhere from Shout Outs to affectionate parodies to "isn't this from another game?"
** The look of the game is very similar to the WonderBoy series (esepcially the Monster World games).
** The Evan class is highly reminiscent of the ''[[Literature/InheritanceCycle Eragon]]'' series. Everything from the character starting out as a farmer, to the symbol appearing on the character's hand, to finding the Egg in the woods which hatches a Blue Dragon basically screams ERAGON. (In the first Eragon book, the main character even uses the alias of "Evan" at one point.)
*** What's odd is that some Korean players theorized that the class was based on some Korean indie fantasy novel/comic book/whatever.
** In the Omega Sector, we have the [[PowerRangers Mesorangers]] and an NPC who is a WillSmith look-alike [[Film/MenInBlack that oddly enough sports a black suit and sunglasses]]. Not to mention that you find these [=NPCs=] in a level where you fight aliens...
** There is a place called the [[SuperMarioBros Mushroom Kingdom which has sentient mushrooms who want you to save their princess from their castle which is under the control of a tyrannical penguin.]]
*** Not to mention the area's story is the the same as Luigi's side story in VideoGame/PaperMarioTheThousandYearDoor.
*** [[{{Kirby}} A tyrannical penguin]], you say?
*** Also, the Wild Hunters get a [[PantheraAwesome panther mount]], who at higher levels gain the ability to hold enemies in their mouth, swallow them for buffs, or spit them out for offensive projectiles. The skill's name is [[VideoGame/SuperMarioWorld Jaguar-oshi]].
** Someone in the Nautilus says "[[SesameStreet This message brought to you by the letter]] [[TalkLikeAPirate ARR]][[AWorldwidePunomenon RRR!]]"
** While it's not as tight a fit as the Evan/Eragon connection, Aran awakening in the trailer is very reminiscent of Aang's awakening in AvatarTheLastAirBender.
** There is also an item in the Cash Shop called the Alchemist Overall. It consists of [[FullmetalAlchemist a red jacket, black pants and black shirt.]]
*** There is also an outfit that resembles Winry's work outfit, and headgear that looks like Alphonse's helmet.
** Starling and Crow, the two [=NPCs=] of the Silent Crusade, were name Sheryl and Crow in Tespia prior to the public release. No doubt this was changed to avoid some legal hassles with the singer.
** A robot NPC in New Leaf City is named T-1337
** It may be a coincidence, but both adamantium ore and plates are orange. An episode of the old 1990s Fox X-Men cartoon showed off a solid bar of adamantium as a scientist was showing off to Wolverine prior to his infusion. It was orange. Though the inclusion of adamantium as a metal could also count as a shout out.
** Also, the concept art for Mercedes looks like every elf in LordOfTheRings. And did I mention that she's an archer and the Elf Queen. Here [[http://maplestory.wikia.com/index.php?title=Mercedesℑ=Mercedes_intro-png]] and here [[http://maplestory.wikia.com/index.php?title=Mercedesℑ=Mercedes_F-png]]. Definitely a ShoutOut to Legolas.
** The various anime crossover projects between Nexon and Aniplex... Here's [[http://maplestory.nexon.co.jp/campaign/madoka-magica/]] an example.
** Ignoring the fact that the homes are meant for humans, almost every house in Henesys looks like the homes of the Smurfs.
** The Silent Crusade storyline(2012 version) centers around [[TheElderScrollsIVOblivion portals opening across the land that the player must enter and fight monsters, a secretive group of heroes that recruits the player to fight an evil threatening the land, and an ancient wizard who has returned and plans to release an unstoppable villain onto the world, said villain being the wizard's close mentor and leader.]]
* ShowsDamage: The boss Zakum slowly breaks down and falls apart as its health drops.
* SlippySlideyIceWorld: El Nath. Sliding can be prevented by buying and equipping snow boots.
** There is a scroll that can also add "spikes" to any pair of shoes as well as a scroll that adds cold protection to capes(regardless of available slots). During the Maker skill, they had to be crafted. Now they merely drop from monsters and Maker was removed in favor of Professions. Though it's only a 10% scroll, so good luck with that.
** Arans can exploit the sliding. The ice carries momentum and the Arans can use a quick jump boost to make them slide really fast. When it wears off... they're still sliding pretty fast.
*** Though with a bit of practice, almost anyone can use the sliding to their advantage.
** Outlaws (3rd job Gunlsingers) get this as well in the form of Recoil Shot, though its a backwards leap and deals damage to enemies.
* SoloClass: The Clerics and their Prestige Classes are the best solo classes after a certain level, as their heals damage undead enemies while affecting themselves as well.
* SoundtrackDissonance: From the cheery (and catchy!) music of the Swamp of Despair to calming underwater cave music while bone fish kill you horribly.
** Most places have this, mostly because the music in the game is so beautiful. There are a few exceptions, like for Zakum and Horntail. Otherwise, feel free to listen to the music as you spam your HP pots because you're dying horribly.
* SpamAttack: Some classes get a few skills that can do quite a few hits to one (or multiple) targets. Most prominently, the Dual Blade's attack pattern is all about this especially the 4th job move Phantom Blow.
* SpellMyNameWithAnS: Erev/Ereve/Ereb.
* SpikesOfDoom: Spikes, thorns, and bramble slow players down.
** Unless you exploit the damage recoil to make yourself go ''faster''.
* SquishyWizard: Magician class. Subverted in two ways: First, they have Magic Guard, which converts the majority of their HP damage into MP damage (and they get a ''LOT'' of MP). And second, they can learn the MP Eater skill which allows them to syphon MP from magical enemies. With those two abilities active (okay, the second one is a passive ability, but the first one is an activatable buff), a Magician technically has a LifeDrain combo going. It reached Gamebreaker levels after the big bang patch even though MP regenration was removed, the mp eater skill syphoned so much MP that attacking made your MP bar go up rather than down which combined with the Mages low hp (which means they can use low leveled HP potions much longer than other classes) made them cost nothing to play as and nearly unkillable.
* StoneWall: Subverted with the Paladin class after the Big Bang patch. They literally have up to eight different skills that directly affects the amount of damage they don't take, plus a dependable self-recovery skill that instantly heals them.
** ... And their DPM is surprisingly on par with many others even on neutral-element monsters.
* SuperDeformed: The graphics in general.
* SureWhyNot: Bob the Snail. Originally a random level 1 snail spawning in a level 50+ area, fans came up with numerous theories as to why he was there, and now he's an actual boss enemy.
* TreeTopTown: Ellinia.
* ToyTime: Ludibrium.
* {{Tsundere}}: Starling of the Silent Crusade. "Don't you dare treat me like a little girl.", "Do what you want! I don't care!", "Enough smalltalk. Get to the point.", "Me? Worry about you? Ha!"
** Crow of the Silent Crusade as well, particularly at the Magatia part of the questline.
* TwentyBearAsses: More like One Thousand Bear Asses.
* UndergroundMonkey: Mushrooms. THE MUSHROOMS. EVERYWHERE.
* UnderTheSea: Aqua Road. Popular for its [[MookMaker Goby Houses]] and especially for Poison users since it's very easy to move around the map and poison everything.
* UnwittingPawn: Evan is lured into joining [[spoiler: the Black Wings]] under the pretense that the organization is doing good for Maple World in the process he not only does their dirty work but [[spoiler: gets the Seal Stone of Ludibrium for them.]]
* VendorTrash: Pretty much every monster drops one. Or more than one. Some are used for quests; some are just useless other than for selling.
** And some of them can't even be sold as they have no monetary value, or can't be traded.
* VirtualPaperDoll: Cash Shop items let players dress up their characters.
* WhatDoYouMeanItsNotAwesome?: The usual argument for making a Thunder Breaker is that they throw sharks made of lightning.
* YouKilledMyFather: The Black Mage killed Athena Pierce's father, which drove her insane and led her to form an army to hunt him, and became almost as bad in the process. People began to fear her, until she was finally forced to confront her darker side in combat(which is the "clone" that Bowman players fight for the 3rd job advancement). Since then she's been the Bowman job instructor and a respected member of Henesys, her efforts redirected into teaching others how to fight and to oppose the Black Mage.
** This happened AGAIN with Kyrin. Both of her parents were killed by the Black Wings, and she was taken in and raised by Athena Pierce... until Kyrin overheard a conversation and learned what happened, then ran off on her own to hunt down the Black Mage. She eventually returned, as the head of the Pirates, though while she primarily serves as the captain of the Nautilus and Pirate job instructor, there are many in-game hints to suggest she's still hell-bent on defeating the Black Mage.
* YouShouldntKnowThisAlready: Manually going into the Resistance HQ to make your first job advancement as a Resistance member won't work; you ''have'' to use the invitation that the Headmaster gives you.
** At one point, Mercedes must track down and speak with Athena Pierce. It doesn't matter how many times the player has seen Athena before, or even if Mercedes has already accepted a completely unrelated quest from her; she still has to ask another NPC about her whereabouts.
* ZettaiRyouiki: Grade B. General Orca of the Black Wings [[spoiler:(Black Mage army)]] sports this in her [[http://i.imgur.com/JPkOm.png full screen shot.]]
** Mercedes also sports this.
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