Sleepywood – Online Since Beta

Sleepywood – http://www.sleepywood.net
Established: October 2004
Founder: rukmedes
Owner: Adura
Maintainers: Aria, AzureMoon, Congee, LordGeos, Rick, TheMagnolia
Activity: Over 58000 members have made over 1.4 million posts in over 83000 threads since it was established.

If you’ve ever looked for an out-of-game community for MapleStory at any time, chances are you’ve found Sleepywood.  Love it or hate it, you most likely have an account there as well.

Why? Because it’s so big, and because it pretty much is the first gMS-oriented community to exist it’s what everyone went to.  Even today, although the bigwigs prefer to play games other than MapleStory,(World of Warcraft anyone?) the forum is bigger and better than it ever has been.

Sleepywood has a somewhat complex forum structure, but is also broad enough to promote topicality.  Most of the regulars are fairly mature people, many of them young adults, and thus there is little tolerance for their n00b counterparts.  Sleepywood is also the only fan forum that I know of that offers World-specific forums for each world on gMS, (Scania, Bera, Broa, Windia, Khaini, Bellocan, Mardia, and global Kradia) MapleSEA, (Aquila, Bootes, Cassiopeia, and Delphinus) and eMs. (Europe Kradia)  Because of this, most guild and group recruiting seems to be done here, and a lot of the aspects with zakum runs, such as run schedules, are posted and modified here.

However, because of the world specific aspect, drama seems to run rampant among the world specific forums.  Sleepywood’s moderation team ends up having to keep a close eye on each of the 13 world forums as due to their closer nature an outbreak is more likely to happen.  Hacker accusations, scamming accusations, fake guild/zakum reps, and other things are a long line of problems that seem to plague this area of the forum.  Some worlds’ forums have had to be locked down from time to time, and others have gotten obviously close to reaching such a state.

On the contrary though, the forum’s rules are strictly enforced, and it’s hard to get away with anything off the ball due to there being a warning for just about any type of bad post.  New users would need to tread carefully and ensure they don’t cross the line.  The rules can be pushed a bit, but not too much.  One of the complaints is the fact that people have gotten temporarily banned for something as small as double posting; This is mainly as a result of an automatic tempban set in place if a user has a certain number of active warnings.  In addition, the community stands up to its “100% legit” namesake, not allowing hacker or ex-hackers at all.  If a hacker is identified, (s)he is banned permanently.

The forum’s current owner, Adura, rules Sleepywood with an iron fist and a no-BS attitude.  Now, out of all the forums I’ve been to, Adura has been the only one to do this in a positive way.  Most of his work happens behind the scenes but when he does show himself he is upbeat for the most part, meanwhile fooling everyone by his title by saying they give him… something… yeah.

So with that being said Sleepywood ends up being a fairly good community. (Probably better than how I’m putting it right now.)  Friendly and mature regulars are the big bonus here, along with a solid moderation team and a no-BS owner, it’s no wonder the site has managed to stay afloat for so long.  If you don’t mind big forums, you may want to check this one out.

Tomorrow: We take a look at Basilmarket, a site not just known for its eBay like trading function, but for its reputation as a rumor mill.  On Friday, we’ll take a look at the communities I have the most involvement with at the moment: Maplenoobs and MapleTowers.

Patch 0.46 and Canadian Nexon Game Card Update

I think this post just set this blog’s record for getting a pingback: 7 minutes. :P

Anyways…

Patch 0.46 goes tomorrow morning. I guess we’ll see if my patcher holds up this time or if my problem is terminal. (Hope not.) Do not, and I repeat, DO NOT expect anything out of this patch, this is most likely for opening the haunted mansion to everyone. If you think it’s gonna be more, I’ll probably be sitting here saying “I told you so” after the patch.

In addition, Nexon America’s Director of Operations Min “Stoveboy” Kim also made an announcement on the gMS website regarding Nexon Cards being stocked at all locations, he also added this tidbit about Future Shop and Shoppers Drug Mart for Canadian players:

In Canada, the Nexon Game Cards will be made available through Future Shop and Shoppers Drug Mart. The cards are currently being stocked and we have seen some reports of retailers carrying the cards. The Future Shop stores are beginning to stock the cards as of this week, and the majority of locations should be stocked by next week. Shoppers Drug Mart will begin stocking soon and should be fully stocked by November 15th.

-Min Kim
Director of Operations, Nexon America

This is the real deal, folks. Future Shop has said they should be in all stores by Friday, and there have been in-game reports that people have actually found the cards stocked. This is VERY good news for Canadian players.

Other than that, let’s hope tomorrow patch doesn’t cause the mass mayhem with the delayed installers and manual patches; Not to mention just how many people were having patcher problems last week. (Myself included)

Nexon – The Official Community and the Mob

First off, no patch post for me regarding today’s KartRider patch.  Not much to really talk about.  Just make sure to login to the game sometime today or tomorrow for a special item. :P

So anyways, on with this series:

Nexon Forums – http://forum.nexon.net
Esablished: April 10th, 2007
Owner: Nexon America
Maintained by Nexon’s PR team, mainly “NxJoeW” and “-Hime-”
Members (as of October 30th): Approx. 45000

If you’ve been around MapleStory as long as I have, you remember the “MapleGlobal Forums.”  Yes… the spam-ridden, seemingly unmoderated, n00b-infested abomination that NX Games had set up on the gMS website known as the MapleGlobal forums.  Back in the days you would go there and… just spam your brains out.  I remember the night of patch 0.26 when Dez and I just decided to look at the Bera forum and ended up creating our own spam topic that created lots of lulz for most of the evening… until we went to bed because the patch got extended for so long.  The forum that the sane community stayed away from because of its mindless spam.

And then, Nexon came on board one day and suddenly announced that it was setting up a forum that was to be opened the next day.  Of course, there were to be some obvious differences:

1. The Nexon Forum was properly structured, not just with world-specific forums like the MG forums, but providing proper areas for different types of discussion.
2. This forum wasn’t just for MapleStory, as it also had Audition and (eventually) KartRider forums as well.  (It should be noted that this is how many of us found out that KartRider was coming.)
3. Even today, the Nexon Forum is significantly better than the MG Forums by far.  Even today with the latter forum long gone and the amount of spam being picked up, it is still way better because it’s all spread out.  There are still n00bs that come in and just spam the bejeebus out of everything, but it’s usually contained and/or NxJoeW or -Hime- are on the case really fast.

The forum, as you might expect, is completely managed and moderated by Nexon America, or more specifically -Hime- and the much-well-known NxJoe.  Hime does most of the grunt work on the forum, as she seems to lurk for the occasional bad post from time to time during working hours.  Joe sometimes pokes his head as well, and usually only says something when there’s something that needs to be clarified when a user says something that is off the ball.  Both are friendly as you might guess; Then again having one of them stalk me in game (see a few pages back) I guess shows a bit of bias in that amount.

Of course, the big problem right now would be the vast amount of criticism that Nexon receives overall, and that seems to rear its head very often on this forum with the occasional “wtf nexon” and “nexon sucks” threads.  It actually doesn’t help when Nexon moderates these posts, but that’s because instead of being contructive with their criticism, the user decides to outright flame the company, calling them dumb, cash cows, slow at patching, not doing their job, etc… How should I know this?  Because I’ve posted my own criticisms as well and haven’t gotten the brunt of it.  Usually I’ll say something along the lines of “I kinda agree what’s being said, because blah blah blah and I think by doing blah blah blah it could make it better.”

So, what do I think about the Nexon Forum?  Well, I’m still there aren’t I?  In which case it can’t be so bad.  It’s a place where my voice can be heard as well.

Tomorrow: We look into gMS’ longest running fan forum, and how it’s become one of the best communities out there.

Maplenoobs and MapleTowers Merge Into One

On Saturday, MapleTowers officially announced that Maplenoobs‘ forum would be merging with theirs, and that the MN database will be hosted under it. This is something that was brought up as a possibility about 5-6 ago by Lindsay (Maplenoobs’ owner) and on Wednesday it was starting to become apparent that a merge was happening when she posted a welcome to all of Maplenoobs’ members on their forum.

This merger really only applies to each site’s forums. This should provide a significant activity boost for Mapletowers while also being beneficial for Maplenoobs’ community, which has suffered for the past seven months after the site’s original maintainer, Becky disappeared after the site went down, and from the lack of activity over the past month after its revival.

Ben (Maplenoobs’ owner) put out the call for help with hosting and donations on October 20th, at which point MapleTowers saw the makeshift forum that was set up. Lindsay pitched the idea to me as to whether or not it would be a good idea and I agreed that she should go see what Ben thought about it. (I’m guessing this was because I was one of the original 10 sysops MN had and have been on MT for a while.)

Although I would expect all of Maplenoobs’ current sysops would still have control over the wiki when it is finally back up. (The only thing we’re waiting for is the old database files from the old host… if they still have them.) Because the forum aspect is all controlled by MapleTowers now, it would be mostly their members managing the forum. Ben obviously has the ability to administrate the forum, as he would be managing his members as well, as well as JoeTang and myself taking on moderation duties.

The Maplenoobs database should be running as soon as the old data is properly retreived.

Tomorrow: Chronicles of a Bowman takes a look at Nexon’s official community.

The MapleStory Community Analysis Series

Okay, so now that I’m back from my weekend adventure, I can now start on my first series here.  What I’m going to do is for every day until I get through every community, I’m going to take a look at gMS’ biggest communities and see what all of them are like, and what each community has that is unique to them.  Some communities may take longer than others, (such as MapleTip or Hidden-Street) because I don’t frequent them.  For the communities that I do frequent I will give myself one day to do, but for the others I will try to do over two days.  I won’t be doing any posts related to my series on a weekend because, as you might know, I’m just too busy.  (And believe me, my weekends are going to be BUSY this month.)

This series will start tomorrow with an announcement regarding two communities that I am heavily involved with, as per the schedule I will outline below:

Monday Oct. 29th: Maplenoobs and MapleTowers merges into one.
Tuesday Oct. 30th: Nexon – The Official Community and the Mob
Wednesday Oct. 31st: Sleepywood.net – Online since the beta days
Thursday Nov. 1st: Basilmarket – The center of trade and controversy?
Friday Nov. 2nd: MapleTowers and Maplenoobs – Two communities under one roof.
Tuesday Nov. 6th: MapleTip – Home of gMS’ most detailed Wiki.
Thursday Nov. 8th: Hidden-Street – Known for its reference more than its users.
Friday Nov. 9th: MapleStory on the blog-o-sphere.
Tuesday Nov. 13th: The realm of smaller communities
Thursday Nov. 14th: When hosting costs too much – Ads from MapleStory’s dark side.
Wednesday Nov. 15th: Conclusion – The Out-Of-Game community put together.