It's the end of the Black Mage story. They are going to focus on a new bad guy now in the Grandis area, which is a world separate from the Maple World.

There are plot points they can pick up, but this is definitely the end to an enormously long saga. Though not 15 years, closer to like 10 if you only count the black mage's stuff from around the first set of classes with story quests addressing the black mage, as before that there wasn't quite as set a storyline (more exploration, do whatever). Though it can be said that even before that, there was one annoying and obscure questline that gave backstory on the black mage way back.

Maplestory M Mesos is completely separate. In fact, in Korea, Maplestory has been pretty consistently in the top 10 played pc games there for the past months/years, while Maplestory 2 has fallen off the top 50 rankings before (and is now, I believe, in the lower ranges from 30-50?).

Oh shit, now MMORPGS will try to beat that record boss fight.

I'm a bot, bleep, bloop. Someone has linked to this thread from another place on reddit:When I played, it was beta and at launch and it seemed very sandboxy and pure grind. I played up until they added lubridium when Balrogs were the terror of the sky. Followed up until Zakkum and maybe pianis?

Speaking of mmorpg's stories ending, did ROSE online release all the 7 planets?

Hoping this comes to NA, that'd be epic. Doubt MS1 would ever shut down in Korea though, it's the most popular/most played MMO there, and one of the most played online games there in general. It's Nexon's biggest moneymaker, and MaplestoryM Mesos buy isn't nearly as popular over there (though it has been gaining a bit more traction again, probably due to the BR mode.)

I honestly didn't know Maplestory had lore deep enough to facilitate this. I've always enjoyed the game as a solo platformer with some neat environments, maybe I should go through and level a character and pay attention this time.

How did it work that all damage was going to the mage? Ex say I was in kerning - what would I be attacking?

Maple is pretty much dead everywhere outside of china and korea. I know it isn't Nexon's best title, but it seems a bit weird that would add the final boss. Maybe they hope to push people over to Maplestory 2, or maybe they hope to develop a new 2D title?