There’s no such thing as a free lunch.
Think about those words for a few minutes. What do they mean for you and what do they have to do with MapleStory? Simply this:
There’s no such thing as Free NX, free mesos or free anything. Everything costs.
What’s that you say? How can we say that when the Nexon Website advertises Free NX? Look again. Nexon has just launched a new initiative called “Earn Free NX.” The emphasis here is on the “earn” part. In order to get NX without parting with any money you’re going to have to work for it. You may have to take part in a survey, give over an email address or take advantage of a special deal. You get your NX. One of Nexon’s marketing partners gets the chance to tell you about a product or service that you may be interested in and Nexon makes both sides happy by facilitating an exchange of value. It’s all honest and aboveboard but none of it is “free.” You earn your NX by selling your time and attention.
That’s why it’s so important to be tremendously careful whenever you see an offer that seems too good to be true. You’ll sometimes see advertisements that advertise free NX or free mesos for no work at all. All you have to do is type in your Nexon ID, Password, Pin/PIC, and you will receive whatever amount you want. Sounds simple enough right? Wrong. Scams like this that are designed to steal your information and rob you of your account and hard work only end up hurting everybody. You lose your account and in-game items and legitimate companies trying to make an honest living get wrongly associated with criminals and scammers.
The ultimate example of this is the classic problem that plagues many MMOs—players purchasing in-game gold for real life money. On the surface it seems like the ultimate “something for nothing” scenario. Why should I work so hard and kill so many monsters when I can get myself some quick mesos without working for it? After all, Nexon itself occasionally offer bags of mesos for sale. The answer is simple, when Nexon puts something up for sale in the Cash Shop, it carefully evaluates the effect such an item will have on the game. The scammers and con artists out there don’t and you may ultimately pay for your “free mesos” by destroying the game you love.
Have you ever wondered just why MMO companies come down so hard on gold farmers? It’s not just because such services violate the Terms of Use (though that, of course, is reason enough). It is also because gold farmers and sellers can destroy a game for legitimate players. Here’s how:
• Inflation: When people can buy mesos easily, the amount of in-game money increases exponentially. This means that individual mesos are worth less and prices rise. Players who earn their mesos honestly get outbid for items by players who purchase large sums of mesos with real money outside of the game. Since sellers only take the highest offer, honest players simply can’t keep up.
• Devaluation of Items: As more meso buyers purchase extremely high-priced rare items, low-to-mid level items become worthless. Even high-end items drop in value because they lose their “specialness” as the number of them in the game increases.
• Destruction of Market Liquidity: You may have found a special item that you’re able to sell for three million mesos today, but because meso buyers continue to increase the supply of gold, the same item could go for 10 million tomorrow. Prices moving up and down in wildly unpredictable ways results in people holding back on certain goods because they expect meso buyers to increase their offers. That causes shortages of certain goods in the marketplace.
• Encourages Thieves: Wherever gold selling occurs, thieves naturally follow. Although there are some gold sellers who operate more or less the way they advertise, many many more are just fronts for people who will try to scam your identity or credit card information out of you in order to raid your account or worse, your real-life bank account!
So what can you do?
Simple: don't buy mesos, NX or game “services” from anyone other than Nexon or a Nexon-authorized marketing partner. Seems pretty simple but it’s the most effective thing you can do. If there’s no market for it, the business will just dry up. You might ask yourself “Hey, I’m just one player. What difference does it make when so many other people do it?” By yourself, not much, but if everyone who felt that way took action to stop gold buyers, the problem would solve itself. Big change doesn’t come from one person. It comes when a lot of people do a little something each. Keep your gamer pride and don’t buy mesos.
There are no easy solutions, but together we can keep honest players from losing and keep MapleStory healthy and fun. Remember, there’s no such thing as a free lunch!