The Weekly Raid: Are You Excited For MapleStory 2?

After months of rumors, MapleStory 2 is coming to the West! The official website went live on April 16 which immediately started taking applications for a closed beta test scheduled to start on May 9th.

The official launch trailer, embedded below, shows prospective players what MapleStory is all about. While the game never enjoyed the astronomical success of its predecessor in Korea, MapleStory 2 could very well prove a hit in the West. The game is brightly colored and has a blocky visual style reminiscent of Minecraft. The MapleStory name is enough to get a wave of nostalgic, older gamers to give the game a go and the new 3D blocky style will probably attract this generation's gamers who grew up on games like Minecraft.

MapleStory 2 was originally released in its home market of Korea back in 2015. Western audiences have been eagerly anticipating a localized version ever since. Nearly 3 years later, its finally happening! Over the years, English speaking audiences did have the opportunity to try the gamer on Korean servers, but doing so required a local Nexon and fiddling with custom translation files which were bug prone.

Now that the an official release is around the corner, how do you feel about MapleStory 2? Are you excited, or has the prolonged delay sapped some of your enthusiasm? We had assumed that multi-year lag times between Asian and Western releases were a thing of the past, but games like MapleStory 2 and Bless Online have shown that publishing even a free to play game world wide can be more complicated than it seems.

Share your thoughts on MapleStory 2 below!