MapleStory Classic World Announced for GMS!

Today, we were treated to a surprise announcement that MapleStory Classic World will be coming to GMS! MapleStory Classic will be an official old-school MapleStory server run by Nexon themselves, something that fans have been asking for since the release of MapleStory Worlds.

• MapleStory Classic World Release Date
• What to expect from Classic World?
• MapleStory Classic World Concerns

During the MapleStory GMS 20th Anniversary Update, lead GMS developer Inkwell announced that we will be getting OSMS in the form of MapleStory Classic World. 

It aims to be a faithful recreation of the classic MapleStory experience before the big bang update, with some quality of life features being added by the new GMS team.

MapleStory Classic World will be just for GMS players, which currently includes North America and Europe players. Whether they'll be separate servers for each region, we don't know.

The game will not be built upon the MapleStory Worlds platform, but instead be a "full-part" of the MapleStory GMS game.

MapleStory Classic World will also be led by game designer Nemi, also known as Miyoung Oh, who was part of the original Wizet Team that developed MapleStory Korea in 2001. It took almost 4 years for MapleStory to reach the west, with MapleStory Global launching in 2005!

Nemi had this to say on the announcement:

I was lucky to be one of the very first designers to join the original team when Wizet started in 2001. I helped shape the early days of MapleStory.

When the game first launched in Korea, I was in charge of designing almost all of its early content.

It was so much fun working with the original MapleStory Team to create it.

Now, based on those experiences and memories, we are bringing back the nostalgic feel of early MapleStory in a new way.

Let me show you a sneak peak of what we are working on.

As someone who's played for a long time, I'm excited to bring back the original MapleStory experience.

I know what the game was like when it first launched, and have many ideas for how to bring it back carefully.

On what Classic World is:

Classic world is a faithful recreation of the early map experience made by a team that knows what made maple special from the beginning.

We've been planning this for a long time and we want to create a meaningful connection between the past and present.

Classic world will be a special milestone for 20th anniversary. Just like the heroic and interactive worlds in global Maple Story, classic world will be
a full part of GMS.

Players will be able to create brand new characters and experience a faithful recreation of early Maple Story while also enjoying quality of life additions from GMS to even further enhance player experience

We hope to recreate all the features and qualities that made early maple special while also looking toward the future and

collaborating with fellow maplers to create the best classic world together

MapleStory Classic World Release Date

Unfortunately, we don't have an official release date for MapleStory Classic World just yet.

However, we did get news that more details will be shared in the second half of 2025 (so perhaps August timeline).

And there will also be an official announcement for MapleStory Classic World at the new MapleStory Con (previously known as MapleFest) coming in late October 2025.

Based on this information, it's likely a release date for MapleStory Classic World is still many months away, potentially being released in Q4 of 2025 or early 2026.

What to expect from Classic World?

The announcement that MapleStory will have it's own official classic server has come as a surprise to many, especially with the release of the MapleStory Worlds platform.

The MapleStory Worlds platform has allowed developers to create their own recreation of MapleStory, with worlds such as MapleLand and Artale being extremely popular with players. MapleLand in particular is a very close 1-to-1 recreation of old school MapleStory. Unfortunately, MapleLand is not available in GMS.

It seems that the GMS team didn't want to hang around for someone else to make a GMS OSMS version, and have now decided to make their own.

MapleStory Worlds Limitations

For anyone who has played recreations in MapleStory Worlds, know about the limitations of the platform. One of the most talked-about limitations is that Channels are restricted to less than 100 players each, creating a very fractured social experience.

That's not to say it is a major problem; MapleLand has this issue and it's still played by tens of thousands of players every day.

The MapleStory World platforms are also limited in terms of developer experience. Many of the recreations have altered gameplay physics, features and have added their own twist on the experience of MapleStory. Whilst this isn't an issue for many Maplers looking for a fun old-school experience, those wanting an official 1-to-1 remake have been left disappointed until now.

The fact that MapleStory Worlds Classic has it's own development team being led by an original MapleStory designer bodes well for a classic experience and quality updates.

But that brings us to...

GMS Quality Of Life

Whilst we don't have much information of what is going to be included in MapleStory Classic World, we were given some vital information.

The quote from the Classic World announcement video:

Players will be able to create brand new characters and experience a faithful recreation of early Maple Story while also enjoying quality of life additions from GMS to even further enhance player experience

Which means that the GMS team are planning to make changes to the classic experience. What these changes are, we can only guess.

One of those changes seems to be that the MapleStory UI will be overhauled to support wide-screen resolutions. Many of the sneak-peaks given to us show that classic MapleStory UI boxed in, allowing players to see more of the MapleStory map they're on. The UI is also slightly altered, with the Level font and HP bars being different from the original.

From the footage shown in the video, we can also see that characters have the Beginner Skills, which were not there in the beginning of MapleStory when it first launched in 2005.

MapleStory Classic World Alpha Footage

We got a lot of footage of what looks like an internal-alpha test of the MapleStory Classic World game being tested from the 20th Anniversary Announcement video.

We don't know how close this footage will be to the real version that will be released but we can see:

• Beginner Skills
• Jump-Down present (was not possible in early versions)
• No 2nd Job Skills shown
• EXP at Level 26 to level up is around 54,900, which suggests old-school EXP Leveling curve.
• Very early versions of the World Map (Maple Island + Victoria Island)
• No Sign of Pirates (or Cygnus Knights) but they didn't come until around V62.

MapleStory Classic World Concerns

Finally, we'll end on Maplers concerns for a classic-world recreation. There are plenty of things to love about the old-school MapleStory experience, but there were also a lot of issues that players had during it's time to modern Maple.

Pay2Win

One of the biggest issues will be the Pay-2-Win aspect. With Nexon being a company designed to make money from video games, it's going to be interesting to see if they follow the original approach that classic MapleStory had in terms of monetization.

When the game first released, the game was very friendly towards free-to-play players. All you could purchase were 90-day expiring Cash Shop outfits and Pets.

However, as the game released more content, the monetization policy also ramped up. We're talking about things like Gachapon, which released best-in-slot equipment in a gambling-style mechanic.

Many players would like to hope they won't see a return to these mechanics, but as we've also seen in worlds like MapleStory Reboot getting pay-2-win monetisation like Vac Pets.

Content Changes

There were some poorly introduced mechanics and skills in old-school MapleStory.

Game mechanics like HP Washing, Bishop's full-map no-cooldown Genesis skill and a host of other issues.

The MapleStory Classic Dev Team stated they wanted to create faithful version of the game- does that mean these issues will be present in the final version?

What about Server Rates? Will it be the classic 1X rates or will they up them to make the grind less intense?

Content Release Schedule

Many players did not get to experience MapleStory from the very beginning. Every player has a different nostalgic feeling on when MapleStory began for them and the version of which MapleStory Classic World starts at will be interesting.

MapleLand (the most popular MapleStory Worlds recreation of OSMS) started with just second job and Victoria Island, slowly releasing content following the same schedule that the original MapleStory released. MapleLand now has 4th job and Horntail released!

We didn't see any 2nd or 3rd job skills in the footage shown in today's announcement, so perhaps players may begin in with just 2nd job available too.

And where does the Classic experience end? Will it end after the release of Pirates? Before The Big Bang? What about custom content and events?

Either way it's looking like an exciting time for MapleStory fans who have been looking forward to playing an official old-school server.

Check out the full video below: