Picking a Server and World in MapleStory Classic

Nexon has not announced the MapleStory Classic world list. As of 14 September, the founders FAQ says the server launch time will be announced later and says nothing about world names, how many there are, or channels, so we cannot tell you to roll on Scania or Bera or whatever the Classic equivalents turn out to be. What we can tell you is how to choose once the list appears, and the answer is simpler than people make it: pick the world your friends pick, and if you have no friends going in, pick the biggest one. The rest of this post explains why, with a detour through what a dying world felt like in old GMS, and some practical notes for anyone playing from Sweden.

Worlds are the one decision in Maple you cannot easily undo. Choose carefully, choose once.

What worlds will exist

Our expectation is that Classic launches with a small number of worlds, probably fewer than the original game had at its peak. Modern launches tend to open with two or three and add more only if queues become unbearable, because a world that opens crowded and stays crowded is far healthier than five worlds that each end up half-empty.

Nexon has published nothing on whether the names are new or reuse old GMS names like Scania and Bera for nostalgia. We would bet on at least one nod to the old names. Nothing has been said about channels either, and the old structure of twenty channels per world with a Free Market in each would surprise nobody. The list will most likely appear with the launch time announcement, and we will update this post the day it does.

Choosing with friends

Get everyone into one Discord call before launch, decide on a world, and write it down. This sounds obvious. It is also the thing that goes wrong most often, because on launch night one person cannot get into the world everyone chose, panics, and makes a character somewhere else "just to play for now", and that character becomes their main.

Founders access opens on 6 October and the free launch follows on 21 October, so the founders in your group should make characters on the agreed world and hold it for the two weeks until the rest arrive. Do not let the people who get in first drift. We have seen a guild split across two worlds on day one and never fully recover.

If a world is full at the moment you try, wait. Queues at launch are normal. A world that is full on the first night is the world you want to be on.

Why the biggest world has the best economy

In old Maple, population was everything. The Free Market on a big world had every item you could think of, at prices that moved every hour, because there were enough buyers and sellers for a real market to form. On a small world, you could stand in the FM entrance for an hour and not find a single Ilbi for sale, and when you did, the seller could name any price because there was no competition.

The same goes for party quests. Kerning PQ on a busy world had a party formed in the time it took to type "J>KPQ". Ludibrium PQ at level 35 was a matter of walking into the lobby. On a small world, you could spend forty minutes recruiting and then lose the run because someone left. We wrote about the party quest side of this in our party quest overview.

Bosses, too. A Zakum squad could take up to thirty people, and while practised groups ran it with far fewer, even a lean run needed a dozen with the prerequisites done, and on a thin world those people were simply not online at the same time. A big world always had a run forming.

There is a cost to being on the biggest world, and it is training spots. Every good map is taken. You will be asked to CC constantly. But that annoyance is small next to the alternative.

What a dead world felt like

One of us mained on a small GMS world for two years, and the memory is vivid. Henesys was quiet. The Hunting Ground had one other person in it, at most. Whisper someone for a KPQ and they were AFK. The Free Market had three stalls and one of them was selling Blue Bandanas for absurd prices because there was nobody to undercut. Meso prices, both in the game and among the people trading them, were strange, because a market with ten participants is not really a market.

The worst part was the slow feeling of everyone leaving. Not a dramatic exodus, just a guild list where the "last online" dates crept from days to weeks to months. Around level 70 there was nobody left to do anything with, and the character simply stopped.

Do not do that to yourself at launch. Nexon may consolidate worlds later, and old GMS did merge worlds several times, but you cannot count on it.

For Swedish and EU players, the latency question

Old GMS was hosted in North America, and from Sweden that meant a ping somewhere around 120 to 180 milliseconds on a good day. It was playable. Maple is not a game where 150 ms ends you, except in a handful of situations: precise Zakum arm dodging, timed jumps in Orbis Tower, and the rope-and-ladder puzzle stages in Ludibrium PQ where a delayed input sends you back down.

Classic World is in the same place. Nexon has not named a data centre, but the August test page warned that "gameplay performance may be impacted when accessing from outside North America", which is as clear as it gets. Expect the same experience as old GMS: fine, slightly floaty, occasionally infuriating. A separate European world would change that, and we would love one, but nothing Nexon has published suggests one is planned.

Our practical advice. Do not pick a world for latency unless Nexon explicitly labels one as European. A slightly higher ping on a world where your friends are beats a lower ping alone. And use a wired connection. Half the "lag" we heard about in the old guild was someone's wifi.

For a rundown of what the early hours will look like once you have chosen, our launch-day checklist covers the order of things. Pick the world, hold the name you want, and get everyone to Henesys before anyone starts arguing about training spots.