I guess I’ll start things off with a more recent personal experience before I go into the an analysis of anything. There are a couple of things that happened during this that I want to cover in my next post as well.
Personally, I never thought that when I started playing last December that I’d find such a devoted, funny, and cute person to play with. I didn’t think that she’d become my best friend either.
I can still remember exactly when and where (in-game) that I met her, and how we became friends in the first place. As I mentioned in my introductory post, I was a common Ludi PQ track for most of April, until around level 45. In early May, I went on a family vacation to Orlando for a week and a half and lost that status. The day after I got back, May 13th, I had finished converting all of my leftover money from the trip back into Canadian dollars and had bought a shiny new Nintendo DS with what I had left. (Because I’m a gamer that way) I got home and went on Maple for a couple of PQs.
As I was walking through Ludi, I came across SwtLyLAznGrl. (For those of you that have a trouble with Internet shorthand, it’s “Sweet Little Asian Girl.”) Usually these types of names are stereotyped as used by those by… well… people you usually don’t want to run into onto the Internet. However, she was different; she wasn’t the sterotype her name was. I had actually just started wearing an NX outfit for the first time that day as well, and so she spotted me, recognized me as a former common track and kinda latched onto me with her charm. She was a level 47 hunter, I was a level 45 hunter. She introduced herself as Desirée (or Dez for short), and that’s how this friendship sort of began.
Within a couple of days I was introducing Dez to a bunch of my other friends as well, and I got to know her troupe. As time wore on, our seperate groups of people started to combine into one, and our BLs actually started to look quite similar, spanning our different groups of people. She eventually sucked her boyfriend into playing Maple, as well.
As time wore on, Dez started to become more open, and a stronger bond started to form between the two of us. Through the 5x levels she and I competed to try to keep ahead of each other. I ended up beating her to 60, though. Ever since meeting her so many months ago, our bond has literally become unbreakable; We’ve gone through just about everything we can imagine. Just a while ago, she said herself:
“We’re the prefect best friends. Our friendship is like marriage, through thick and thin!” -SwtLyLAznGrl (Bera), lv70 Ranger
Dez was there when I made the jump to Ranger back in September. She was there for my time, and yesterday it was her time.
Dez trained at Coolie Zombies overnight until she got to 99%, then went to take a nap. At around 12:30, she came back and was all ready to get it over with. A group of about five of us went out towards Jr. Yetis in order to see her get her final 1%. I think by that this time, I was more excited for her getting level 70 than I was for myself when it was me making the big grind. We continued to follow her around for a while, with myself keeping my hand on my scroll lock so that I caught the screenshot at the right time.
At 99.98%, though, she did something that not even I was anticipating. First thing she did was have nick (magix27; 101 priest) cleared a space for her, then she partied me and directed me to level her. When I asked why, she simply exclaimed, “You’re my best friend.”
No point in arguing that, I guess. I waited for Nick to finish killing stuff, and one strafe was all it took to push her to level 70. I quickly charged some NX to my account so that I could super megaphone the milestone. As you can see by the screenshot, there was one whisper that was just flaming with hypocrisy that I wasn’t at all pleased about, which I will go over in detail in a later post.
The advance itself was kinda drawn out compared to mine, mainly because Dez was going to take her time with it at not rush through it like I did. People also joined us along the way between El Nath and Henesys. When we left El Nath, it was just Nick, Isreal (turkishmonky; lv83 I/L Mage), Lauren (GlitterxRose a.k.a. “Other Moof”; lv48 Cleric), and of course Dez. John (Teeshu; lv70 Hermit) joined us at Orbis Station, Lauren’s guildmate Ben (ShiningVoid; lv80 DK) showed up in Henesys to HB Dez for the upcoming battle against Athena, and DJ (Baile; lv81 CB) showed up toting enough NX to buy Dez her 5th Crush Ring as well. (And yes, Dez has a crush ring for just about every important male friend she has; her boyfriend Chad (Torquinet), John, Nick, DJ, and of course myself.)
Stupidly enough, John and Lauren proceeded to head towards Ant Tunnel Park, which is where the warrior Door of Dimension is located. Fortunately, the rest of us knew better and made our way down Sleepy Dungeon to where the bowman Door of Dimension is located. Once everyone gathered, we gave our best of luck and Dez went in to fight Athena; closing all lines of communication (except the occasional whisper back to me) while she went into the fight.
It was about a minute into the fight where she whispered back in frustration that she lagged and died. For her, the lag was bad enough for her to forfeit her chance to do it herself and give the reins over to Nick to finish the job. However, I strongly warned her against it as this is a “once-in-a-playthrough” opportunity, and told her to give it another go. Saying that, she restarted her computer to see if whether or not it would help with the lag situation. Unfortunately, it didn’t and with Ben gone we had no one to give her HB.
For the second try, once everyone was assembled yet again, I sent my 97 ATK (perfectly scrolled with all 60s) golden hinkel in with her to give her an edge. Unfortunately, her second attempt would last shorter than her first as she succumbs to lag. To make matters worse, during that attempt I encountered a rather unpleasant (virtual?) reality; a person on my buddy list proudly barging into our channel and hacking in the open proudly. That being said, that person is part of my buddy list no more. (As I said with another similar incident, this will be covered in a later post.)
At that point I told her that if it was bad enough she could let Nick do it, as it seemed it was lag keeping her from victory. As she was making her way back to Sleepy Dungeon for a 3rd time, we were talking about the fact that she has 5 CRs that she had, and she dropped in on the middle of it. That’s when she got the idea for whatever reason to wear my CR for “good luck” and give it one more shot. She went in for a third time, once again HB-less and with my 97 ATK hinkel. About 45 seconds into the fight, she started complaining about lag via whisper again. Fortunately, she was hanging in there.
“It takes 2-3 minutes to take down Athena with an average Hinkel. You’re given 20 minutes for the fight, so you’ve got lots of extra time. Take it nice and easy and don’t let the lag get to you.” -Moofey (Bera), lv78 Ranger
About 2 minutes later, she started celebrating in buddy chat, singifying her victory over the dark side of Athena Pierce. (I guess our CR was good luck after all.) We quickly regrouped in Henesys to make our way back to El Nath. We had a bit of time this time around, thus resulting in the screenshot pictured here, featuring Dez showing off all the crush rings of the men she had there, with Isreal and Lauren onlooking.
“Here’s Nikky’s (switch) DJ’s (switch), Moofey’s (switch) and John’s!” SwtLyLAznGrl (Bera), lv70 Ranger
After dealing with a few AFKs and some rather “disturbing” events… if you can call them that… the troupe made their way down to El Nath, and then onto the holy ground, but not without some hilarity.
We got to Ice Valley 2 where Nick and Isreal were mobbing YnPs (John and I fell behind as I was getting a screenshot of a hacker for use on MapleNoobs. Me, being the kind of guy I am, decides I can take these guys on as well. Well, it went good for a while, but I underestimated their numbers and the damage they were capable of doing, and they just kept spawning. Isreal died after a while of trying to keep going, and as I was arrow-bombing, I took my eyes off my HP meter for not more than a second and I fell as well.
Fortunately for me, only having 1% means I only lost 1%. Nick doored us back once they were at the top of the map and we continued forwards. Unfortunately for Lauren, who was only level 48, she had to use a dead mine scroll and make her way down from the zombie maps while being escorted down by DJ.
Determined to get through the second part without any help, Dez got through it on her second attempt, having brought three dark crystals up with her. Which question did she get wrong? I’ll keep that to myself as I’m sure you’ll have a laugh. Once DJ and Lauren caught up, we headed back down to complete the advance and make our little Dezzy not so little anymore.
Dez’s journey for 3rd job was quite the adventure; a bit crazy at times, and a bit frustrating at times, but in the end only one thing mattered:
In the end, I guess all’s well that ends well.
Congratz, Dez. You finally did it. You managed to brave the challenge that it is to get a hunter through this level. You’ve fought through all the hard times, the pointless e-drama, and yet you stand here today, in what might be in only a game, but for at least the next couple of months until we start seeing bow masters and such pop up, you have reached the top. This game requires so much hard work and determination to be successful, and with all the crap the Internet throws around, you were able to push that aside as well and become what I’ve been waiting for you to become for a long time. I was way more excited for you becoming a ranger than I ever was for myself becoming one.
It’s finally your time to shine. Now I can look forward to owning it up with you. :)
Contrary to popular belief, most of the quests made available to players were not couples-only quests. (In fact, the couples-only quests didn’t even seem to work at the moment. Hopefully the current server check will fix that.) There’s only two quests I know of at this point. The first one is a common level 35 quest that involves a new hunting ground map that was added to Amoria, called Purple Plains 1. (I assume they’ll be adding onto this earlier on.) This map is set up much like Henesys Hunting Ground 1, being populated with snails, mushrooms, and slimes. A new monster was introduced on this map; the Sakura Cellion, which becomes the fourth specie of “Jr. Kitties” that you usually find in Orbis. They only spawn here and, much like the turkeys, seem to make no sound.
The second quest is a level 35 “job-dependable” class; one for each of the main job branches. (Warrior, Thief, Bowman, and Magician) Unfortunately, these quests require a lot more traveling in order to complete. For example, the bowman quest requires you to go all the way back to Ludibrium for 20 toy ducks. Wow… let’s just waste an hour going to Ludi and back doing something that I can get done in 2 minutes! Unfortunately, there are quite a few quests in the game like this, so it’s something we’ve all gotten used to by now.
In addition, Nexon added two quests to celebrate the release of their Nexon Cash prepaid cards in the US, specifically for use with games provided by Nexon America, such as the upcoming Audition Online. (Of course, you can use these cards on gMS as well.) These quests are repeatable every 24 hours and warrant the user a 100 or 250 point prepaid card. At the end of the event, the character with the most points on the account gets the value of all of the cards put together in Maplepoints. For most, chances are they won’t get a whole lot, others won’t worry about it much because they already charge Nexon cash as it is, or they just went out and bought the prepaid cards.
In conjunction with the Nexon card quest, another event-like quest was added that, in the end, changes the player’s hair as if they had used an Amoria EXP hair and color coupon. This quest ends up being good only for people who wish to change their hair, especially those stuck with the default, non-NX styles, though it can produce some undesirable results from time to time. Most of the results I’ve seen have been fairly good, however, so most of it isn’t worrying about. Of course, if you don’t want to change your hair, don’t do the quest.
Probably THE most biggest surprise was the addition of a bunch of extra training maps that everyone had been waiting for the longest time now. These maps included Land of Iron Boar, a hidden street coming off of Land of Wild Boar 1 that contains a monster similar to the iron hog. Forest of Golem was added as a hidden street to Sleepy Dungeon 5, which produces an absolutely insane spawn of Mixed Stone Golems and Dark Stone Golems, making it an excellent alternative for late 2nd/early 3rd jobbers from coolie zombies. Getting a good 3 or 4 man party train here would probably produce excellent results. However, the map that everyone was waiting for is the one pictured above; The Grave of Mushmom. This map, a hidden street off of Ant Tunnel Park, is the home of boss monster Undead Mushmom. Whether or not Hwabi throwing stars drop from gMS’ version of this boss hasn’t been confirmed, but people are still looking for them.
Lastly, a nifty little feature was added for better communication; the Guild BBS. This acts as a simplified forum in which users can post messages for the rest of the guild to see. Jr Masters and above are automatically given moderator abilities over their guild’s BBS and can post a notice thread that fits into the blue “stickied” spot at the top of the page. This will make in-guild communication a LOT easier, especially for those guilds with members stretching across different time zones and don’t make use of their own website or GuildFire.
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