MapleStory Advisory Council

Welcome, and I would like to introduce the MapleStory Advisory Council, a program that strives to improve your gaming experience as well as work collaboratively with the community to tackle in-game concerns.

With the Maple Advisory Council, there will be many factors that are considered when deciding the program's members.

While collaboration between players and the MapleStory team's staff is important, this new program would have to be strictly enforced and not open for public invitation. All players invited into the program would be selected personally by Nexon America's team.

Because of the information that would be discussed within this program, only those who are trusted would be selected and only one to three players for each of the current servers. These individuals would be in charge of the server they play on, almost babysitting it. While they would not have the same abilities as a GM, their interaction with their world's community would be vital.

MapleStory Advisory Council members would be given a special account, protected by Nexon that is separate from their main account. They would be given the ability to create a single character that is marked as a part of the Council.

Fully Committed: Only those who are meant to fulfill this position will be chosen for the Maple Advisory Council.

This project strives to provide additional assistance and moderation in-game alongside GMs using as little resources as possible.

These players would be able to monitor issues such as hacking, duplicating, and players involved in malicious acts. This information would then be passed along to an assigned staff member to be addressed. All individuals selected would be given identical abilities as normal GMs, with all administrative 'actions' removed such as banning, kicking, and anything that handicaps other players at all.

As brought up many times, players are commonly aware of issues in-game before Nexon's staff because they interact with the game much more. This is why collaboration between players is so important in an MMORPG environment. I've heard numerous players say they could ban a hundred hackers in a day which is usually true because they encounter these players on a daily basis. Wouldn't it be useful if these players had someone to pass along information to and not be limited by the report system? This is the beauty of the Council.

Maple Advisory Council members will observe and report the following:

Hacking or botting
Ad spammers, or advertising
Exploits or glitching
Selling in-game or real life items for money or outside sales
Smegas by companies that sell mesos or NX
Anything else that breaks the Terms of Service or Terms of Use

In-Game Report UI (for Council): An alternative option given to Council members on their character: Using a unique code, members are given an unrestricted number of reports, instead of a single daily report.

The core of the Maple Advisory Council is built upon the original concepts of the Maple Watch Leaf Brigade. However, every single aspect has been redone to make it not only innovative, but inspiring!

Members of the Council would be known and would be available for other players to let them know of any hack sightings in-game through whispering, chatting, or online through Twitter.

Council members would also have a Twitter account to communicate with other players and share hacker names with the entire Council.

Less resource dependent: In this program, members are similar to normal players and can roam the Maple World freely. While exploring, they are able to use their tools (discussed below) to handle any issues that appear. Additionally, because the community can work together with the Council to resolve issues, there would have to be less involvement from the MapleStory team.

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Improved Report System: Improvements will be made to the report system with additional options.

The MapleStory Advisory Council gives its members lots of privileges and additions that normal players don't possess. The following are all of the planned amazing features that will be a part of the program!

General features of the MapleStory Advisory Council, and information regarding it

Able to report problematic players, hackers, and issues they've witnessed in-game to be handled
Can gather feedback from other players as well as from the community about issues and work to resolve them
When a Council member speaks in normal chat, their chat is different from normal (like GM's chat).
We feel it's important to allow players to visually see that the Council is difference from normal players.
New: Will have access to a dedicated section of the MapleStory Forum for general discussion among Maple Advisory Council members. Anyone without permission will not be able to access this section.

Special privileges and abilities given to all members

Given the ability to monitor player activity while hidden
Given the ability to teleport to players by name, automatically making him or her hidden
Important: Able to teleport directly to any player regardless of the map or room
Note: This will automatically hide the player.

An important aspect of the MapleStory Advisory Council is communication between members & Nexon America

Direct communication with an appointed handler
Able to communicate with other Council members directly as well as a Nexon America handler through instant messaging (when avalible)

All council members will be required to create a Twitter account to allow players to send information to each member and communicate with them. This will allow for instant awareness of in-game issues and allow the Council to tackle it effortlessly.

We ♥ our Council! (so they should have incentives)

Given a medal titled 'Maple Adviser' on their Council character, which signifies their involvement with the Maple Advisory Council program
Are given an allotment of Maple Points to purchase decoration items for their character
Every month, all active Council members will be rewarded a decided amount of Maple Points on their main account for their contributions to the game
In addition to Maple Points, after being a part of the council for a period of time, Council members may recieve personal letters or gifts from the Maple Team for their commitment.
Given a permanant Hyper Teleport Rock (in addition to teleporting command)

Various additions to the project / game

Given the title of 'Advisor' on the Nexon Forums

Account Security – All Council members will have a second line of defense for security when logging into their Nexon accounts. If the connection does not match an allowed area, it will not allow the account to be accessed or altered.

The following will be disabled on Council characters:

The ability to trade, drop, or pickup items from players or mobs
The ability to accept party, expedition, or guild requests
The ability be added as buddies or add players
The ability to be married
The ability to purchase non-decoration items with allocated Maple Points. Any items that announce the member's name are prohibited; the use of Super Megaphones is allowed, however, when given permission from Nexon America.

A reminder, Council members will not have the ability to ban or kick players from the game. They can merely report players or send them back to town once reported.

Maple Advisory Medal: An example of the medal given to all Council characters
The medal has no stats and is not a Cash cover.

Fallen Leaves Effect

An effect will be designed for all Council members to signify their position and prevent others from impersonating them.
This effect would be shown by wearing a ring, allowing players to still design their characters as they wish!
The effect will display text related to the M.A.C, with Maple leaves falling from the sides downward towards the character similar to the previous MWLB design.

Here is concept art, designed by SpiritOfMir:

You can view the original thread on the Nexon Forums here!