Orange Mushroom's Blog

Hey guys, this post will be a little different from my usual stuff. Since it’s KMS’ 18th anniversary, GMS’ 16th anniversary, and also (almost) the 10th anniversary of this blog, I thought it would be nice to take a trip down memory lane! I’ve been playing MapleStory for more than half my life and obviously, it’s been a huge part of it haha.

I started playing MapleStory in middle school, around 2006-2007 I think (please excuse my extremely cringey name). I spent all my free time doing random stuff like exploring Leafre at level 19 with my friends…

Hunting at Pig Beach…

Meeting GMs… dying to Mushmom in Kerning City…

Having to sit on The Relaxer to heal HP/MP while doing basically anything because potions were too expensive…

Finally spending money to change my name. Remember when you had to wait until the next server check for it to work?

I really wish I had more screenshots from back then but I must have either not taken many or just lost them. I actually only found these by looking at my old Photobucket account lol. I think I had more on Tinypic but it looks like that site got taken down.

The Cygnus Knights were released in KMS in December 2008 and I remember seeing videos and screenshots of people playing them which made me want to try them, so I decided to make an account. I think it was around the summer of 2009 specifically since I started right before Aran came out, which was July 2009.

Again I think I lost some of my early screenshots, this one’s from December 2010 so it’s a while after I joined. I was in the EllinForest guild with a lot of other foreigners, and I’m actually friends with some of them to this day!

Here’s a bunch of nostalgia filled screenshots. Summoning Rombots in Monster Carnival, PvP, fighting Zakum in a big party, my 4th job advancement, grinding in Lion King’s Castle with party play, the Family system, doing Monster Park in a party, and getting the 8th anniversary medal (from 2011!).

Look at how many worlds there were during the Tempest update!

Got my first 200 in March 2013!

Is that THE iSlingGunz?! (December 2013)

This character eventually got to level 239 but I lost access to it so I restarted on a Naver account (like a lot of other people).

This character got a lot further, we ended up being able to do Hard mode bosses and on our first Hard Lucid clear, we got a Dreamy Belt!

This time I got to level 250 as well 🙂 Unfortunately, the Naver channeling service ended their partnership with Nexon and so most of us lost our accounts…

But because I’m addicted, I restarted one more time LOL. Since I didn’t want to sell my Bowmaster’s gear but I wanted a change, I decided to play a Wind Breaker. I started this character in November 2020 and I hit level 250 on it last month (thanks to exp curves and the compensation level up potions).

I’ve progressed the furthest on this character, I just soloed Hard Suu for the first time and I’m trying to solo Hard Demian soon as well.

Honestly with all the power creep, random buffs, and other stuff, I’m hoping I can actually get a Genesis weapon in the future but we’ll see how that goes!

Now about the blog! My first post ever was for the party quest revamp back in May 2011, which is almost 10 years ago! I don’t think it was super popular until about a month later, when they announced the summer update, MapleStory Legend!

Two of the most popular posts of all time were the MapleStory RED and MapleStory V updates’ first patches. The total number of views of the blog until today is actually almost 45 million!

Honestly I didn’t expect the site to get as popular as it did. I actually barely knew any Korean at the beginning, other than being able to read it (which is actually quite easy since Hangul was literally designed to be easy to learn). I spent a lot of time looking at Google Translate, trying to read things myself to fix obvious mistakes, and testing/double checking myself in-game to make sure.

Of course, over the years, my Korean has improved an immense amount, and I even took classes at university. I wouldn’t say I’m fluent at all but in terms of MapleStory related information, I don’t have many issues haha. I remember Eunwol was particularly difficult though since its skills all used Hanja which I had no idea how to translate.

Fun fact: my most viewed video on my YouTube channel is actually a random training video on Mikhail when it first came out in KMST in March 2012. Why? No idea.

So basically, MapleStory has been and will always be a huge part of my life. I’ve made so many friends and great memories thanks to it and it even motivated me to learn a new language! I started in middle school and since then, I’ve graduated high school, university, and now I’m working full time. Not sure how long I’ll continue to write this blog or even play the game, but I’m still having fun (most of the time).

I know a lot of people have been reading my posts for a long time, so thanks for your support over the years. I’m sure you guys also have a lot of memories from playing the game. With all the controversy the past few months, I thought it would be nice to think back on why I continue to enjoy MapleStory.

It’s definitely been a tough year but I hope everyone has been trying to make the best of it! Anyways, we now return to your regularly scheduled content of patch notes and apologies from Won-ki.