Fame in Old Maple, Why It Mattered and How to Get It

Fame was the strangest number on an old Maple character sheet. It did nothing to your damage, nothing to your HP, and nothing to your exp, and people still stood in Henesys for hours asking strangers for it. In MapleStory Classic the system is coming back with the rest of the old character sheet, and a fresh server means a fresh fame economy, so here is what the number was, why it mattered, and the small industry that grew up around it.

What fame actually was

Every character had a fame score, visible to anyone who clicked on them. Any player could raise or lower another player's fame by one point, once per day, and could not fame the same character again for a month. That was the whole system. No quest gave fame in any quantity that mattered, no monster dropped it, and there was no cap that anyone reached.

So fame was, in practice, a count of how many strangers had clicked a button on you. A level 70 with 200 fame had been around a long time and had been decent to people. A level 70 with 3 fame had either played alone or annoyed a lot of Clerics.

Why anyone cared

Two reasons, one practical and one vain.

The practical one was gear. A handful of items carried a fame requirement alongside the usual level and stat ones. The Sauna Robe was the famous case, an overall with no job restriction that a lot of low-level players wanted, and it wanted a fame score most level 20s did not have. A few other robes and overalls did the same. If you wanted the item, you needed the number, and the number could not be farmed.

The vain one was the rankings and the click. In a game with no achievement system, fame was the closest thing to a reputation stat, and on a small world everyone knew who the high-fame characters were. Guild leaders wanted it. Merchants wanted it, because a high-fame shop owner looked trustworthy. Clerics accumulated it without trying, because you fame the person who healed you through KPQ.

The Henesys fame market

Because fame could not be farmed, it could be bought. Within a week of any new world opening, the Henesys market had people typing "F> fame 10k" and "B> fame", and the going rate settled somewhere that a level 30 could afford one a day. You paid, they clicked, everyone moved on. Some players ran fame mules, characters kept at low level purely to sell their daily fame from, and a few of them made a genuine living at it.

We did this ourselves in 2006 for exactly one item. One of us needed a Sauna Robe for a Cleric, spent an evening buying fame in Henesys five thousand mesos at a time, put the robe on, and then found a better overall two levels later. We do not recommend it. We would also do it again.

Defaming, and the fame wars

The same button could take a point away, and people used it. Defaming was the pettiest form of conflict old Maple had: a lowballer you refused, a player who kill-stole your map, a guild rival, and the next morning your fame was one lower. It could not be traced. It could not be undone except by someone else faming you.

Guilds occasionally went to war this way, a dozen members each logging in daily to defame a rival leader, and the rival leader's guild doing the same back. It achieved nothing and it went on for weeks. If your fame drops by one for no reason in Classic, that is what happened, and the right response is to ignore it, because a defame only works on someone who checks.

Fame in Classic

Nexon's description of Classic World is the game "as it was when it first launched, but with gameplay improvements, balance adjustments, and quality of life changes" (founders page), and nothing published so far mentions fame at all, which we read as it being there unchanged. It was on the character window in the closed tests as far as anyone has reported. The one thing we will be watching is whether the fame requirements on gear survived the "redesigned quest requirements" that the announcement coverage mentioned, and we will update this line once someone hits the Sauna Robe level.

Practically, on a fresh server:

• Fame your KPQ party after a good run. It costs nothing, it is once a day, and it is how the number was supposed to work.
• Do not buy fame in the first month. The mesos are worth far more than the point, and our first-week money guide explains how tight the early economy is.
• Do not sell fame either, unless you enjoy standing in Henesys. It was never a good hourly rate.
• If a merchant has high fame, treat it as a mild signal and nothing more. A fame score can be bought, and our scam post is a better guide to who to trust than any number on a character sheet.

The part we actually miss

The fame system was silly, and it was also one of the few ways old Maple let strangers be kind to each other at zero cost. Someone gave you a potion at Pigs and you famed them. A Cleric kept you alive at King Slime and four people famed her at the exit. It added up, slowly, into a number that meant "people liked playing with this person", and there was no way to fake it except with mesos, which everyone could tell.

So use it that way. Fame the good party members, ignore the defames, and put on the Sauna Robe when you have earned it. The party quest guide is where most of your fame will come from, and most of your friends.