can someone explain to me the rise in playerbase of Mapleroyals?

I've only started about a month and a half ago on here and I must say I really love the quality of life changes this server has. I use to be a Maplelegends player a year back and remember when Legends has peaked 1k players and Royals having around 300-400 players. I'm just shocked how a year later we are here with Royals having the big numbers while Legends had declined.

 

Yeah, this server's growing in numbers of players.
I played on Legends about 2 years ago. Back then it had a lot more players than it has now.
The best explanation to this would probably be players moving from there to play on Royals. Also the fact Royals is on the 1st spot, increases the advertisement.

 

yup i played on maplel***nds before and i did not like the low meso rate so i came here

 

I think the management of the server plays a massive part in it. When the GM’s pay as much attention as these do to the playerbase to make sure the community stays healthy, its inevitable. That, and were all getting old and have fond memories of this game.


Its the perfect storm - nostalgia + people willing to make it happen.

 

Am I high? Royals has been the biggest server since I joined and from what I heard was the biggest prebb for a while before that outside of when new source just hit and everything was broken

 

Here are a few more reasons I thought of actually.
- Players quit other private servers which are dying, or quit the official GMS or give it a shot and realize it's dead and boring. Then, they come to Royals.
- Players take a look at the list of private servers and notice Royals has the most online players. Most players would want to play on the most populated server, not the least populated.
- Rates are low, which gives the game a challenging feeling and accomplishment.
- Players notice Royals is at the top spot. Just being at the top spot attracts more players, even though that might sound stupid.
- Stability. A lot of private servers tend to shut down without a warning, or have connection and lag issues. While Royals always remain stable and online 24/7.

 

People starting coming back to the server around a year after the new source was implemented, because the first year after new source was near impossible to play.

 

I can definitely relate to that, making a new account you couldn't merch successfully til u had a lvl 50+ character. If I remember correctly voting for nx also gave you much less, pretty much causing gacha runs to take forever. Also nx costumes were not perm

 

A brief history of MapleRoyals!

• Royals started on May 7 May 17, 2013. It was 10x exp, 5x meso, and 3x drop. But that was deemed too high of a rate so it was wiped.
• Royals was wiped October-ish 2013. Clean slate. 4x exp, 4x meso, 2x drop.
• Naturally, the community was tiny then. Even two years later in 2015, I think @Nessi said there were 300 players online?
• The server was highly unstable from 2013-2015 though. Server freezes, channel crashes, and rollbacks persisted up until mid 2016 but they were much more common before I joined the server. Not all the content worked then too. Horntail was an ongoing project to get functional, and that was achieved as a playable boss in 2015 I think.
• January 2, 2016, Extalia, the former #1 gtop private server, closed. Royals now had great visibility on the gtop site, bringing many new players in.
• I joined January 23, 2016, so you can gauge how much of my retelling is hearsay from others.
• Also for your reference I was the 113th level 200, achieving that on April 23, 2016. So that gives you an idea of how large the active community was when in three years of post wipe, there were only 113 level 200 characters and some players had multiple 200s then already.
• Early 2016, I think 1k players online was commonplace. December 2016, I witnessed 2k players online.
• January 1, 2017, Royals updated to new source which pretty much broke the game and made it unplayable for 6 months. The current 3.2x exp rate is equivalent to the old 4x exp rate because new source uses a version where the exp to next level chart was reduced.
  
• August 2017, Royals was reasonably playable with some ongoing fixes to Horntail seduce, Chief Bandit Meso Explosion, etc.
  
• So it's been a year and a half since Royals has been playable on new source.
• New content such as Mu Lung Dojo and new class rebalances such as buccaner and paladin elemental buffs have breathed new life into playing classes and new goals to gear them.

And really, a lot of Royals' draw is how active the community is. We have so many resources made by the community that I guarantee people from other servers lurk our guides forum, use our calculators, and library to source information that may apply to their own server. We have a generally active and helpful forum shoutbox to welcome new players and point them to information if they're lost or need help. We have a lot of staff to help tackle the volume of character issues, reports, and bans. We have regular events which attract even long established players with the meso making opportunities and event only available (but of course permanent) best in slot gear. And the thing is, Royals has so many players that there's a reliable and easily accessible route to fund oneself by selling leech or farming and selling things like Heartstoppers. The market is alive to make money, especially if one opts to sell AP Resets with their daily 8k vote NX. So no one is ever really stuck in poverty.

Royals is also long lived. It's gone through two reckonings of the wipe and new source, but still has bounced back. It's been here for very nearly 6 years. It's lived through financially rough times when no donations were coming in. It's skirted around various legal letters from MapleStory publishers. It's here to stay for quite a while longer so people tend to invest their time and effort here. If they quit, well, it's still there a few years down the line. You may be surprised to hear of just how many individual people have played this server so far. It's far greater than the player count online.

Edit for corrections and a few minor additional details~

 

Thanks for that excellent post Shi.

As a new player finally getting into the servers intricacies and community, its nice to see the progression and amount of effort that went into this.

 

It's also spring and finals is ending in the next couple weeks and then the summer crowd comes back.

 

Actually, I asked about this just a few days ago out of curiosity. To my hearsay knowledge, there's been four letters. Not all from Nexon since there's different MapleStory publishers in different regions. For instance, one publisher in some country in Asia is the one that keeps messaging Facebook to take down the Royals' Facebook page. One letter I recall was received a year ago I remember. No idea on the dates of the other three though, like if another was more recent than that. So Nexon and friends are probably still trying to catch Royals, but from the sound of things, I think that won't happen for a good while.

 

If it's alright to ask, how to do you guys handle DMCA issues? Aren't they completely in the right by asking to take it down?

 

Thank you for the corrections! And early congratulations on six years of Royals.

 

I think you’re a cool dude. It must have been tough, for you and the GMs on this server to keep it alive and running, which is why I want to thank you guys. Although I don’t play much, MapleRoyals has constantly been a safe haven to revisit my favourite childhood memories. No matter which year I’m in (started playing in oct 2014, quit many times because of time commitment), I can always count on Royals to be here for me when I’m feeling nostalgic or when I want to go back in time. I’m sure that’s huge for others as well, even long time veterans who quit can come back to the forums to rekindle friendships. Sorry for the Long post, never really gave my thanks to you guys before for keeping this dream alive, I love you guys and would give you all a hug if I could. Peace.