The MapleStory Private Server Scene
Despite the fact I’ve had several people asking me to setup another MapleStory private server, I’ve declined… I really don’t want to get into wasting time on that crap again, and especially not when it could put my financial well-being at stake.
Rather than port over all the meaningless posts about OdinMS and
MapleStory when I changed blogs, I figured I’d just make one post to
describe how I felt and leave it at that.
OdinMS was both a server and software, written in Java, that allowed
one to run a bootleg MapleStory server. I enjoyed messing with it
because it was a great exercize in both reverse engineering and
programming in Java. I released quite a few things, not because I wanted
fame but because I wanted my code reviewed by people smarter than me.
Unlike the majority of pserver pricks out there, I understand that by
having people smarter than you go over your stuff, you become a better
programmer.
What’d I release? Well, if you play on any MapleStory private server that has Hurricane or Pierce working, I did that. If they have working AP/SP resets, I did that as well. I also added support for saving maps into the VIP teleport rocks, support for servers behind NAT routers and a bunch of other small contributions that were mostly ugly hacks.
I personally felt that Nexon could capitalize on the creativity of the private server scene, stealing all the good ideas for inclusion in the official servers. I had no problem with them suing the dumbasses making financial gain from a bootleg server, because that’s wrong. A bunch of kids programming, learning and having fun wasn’t really costing them anything – but apparently they felt different.
After OdinMS project went under I tried contributing to the dev-odinms project, a forum started to continue the development of the original codebase. I quickly found that practically everyone better than I was rapidly disappearing, and the forum (along with ragezone) descended into a mess of “you’re a leecher”/”no you’re a leecher” flamewars. Nothing cool was being released (particularly patches for the new client version) and more importantly, I didn’t have any competent eyes for anything I wrote. In fact, the few times I released things after this time I was scolded for allowing the “leechers” access to it.
It seemed that all the Java talent was being sucked from the areas I frequented, but apparently I wasn’t worth trying to coax over. So on July 15th, 2008 I deleted everything to do with MSPS and Odin. I wrote on that day that “It just [didn’t] make sense to keep stoking the fire of a train that’s going to run out of track sooner or later.”
The only thing I kept was my packet editor, which worked on GMS up to v55 and could probably be trivially updated to work on newer versions. Since I don’t play MapleStory any more I don’t particularly give a fuck about my reputation with the ass-kissing “legit” community so I’ll just come right out and admit it. Both my high level characters are 100% legitimate, I had the ability to packet edit and didn’t use it for anything. I could probably still packet edit if I wanted to, and no I won’t give it to you (if nothing else, mine is a hundred times more complicated than other peoples’ and I don’t feel like explaining how to use it to you).
The only thing I used my packet editor for was analysing packets for private server development. Being able to randomly inject modified packets willy-nilly instead of passively observing the flows helped immensely, and that was the only thing I ever used it for on GMS.
Anyway, this is all somewhat moot, since charmander (the machine the packet editor lives on) died earlier this month. I can probably rescussitate the hard disk to get it back, but what’s the point? I literally haven’t started a MS client since Christmas.
So yeah, that’s basically what happened. A bunch of jerks in every direction ruining what was a lot of fun. OdinMS was once a vibrant, enthusiastic community where I learned a lot in a very short time, and people sucked the fun out of it for their own selfish gain. I don’t blame Nexon, they are, after all a corporation. I blame the selfish assholes who wouldn’t release their stuff out of a phobia of “leechers”.
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