3 Life Lessons I Learned From Playing MapleStory
Confessions of a hardcore MapleStory addict
I was a hardcore Maplestory addict.
And when I say hardcore, I mean from the age of 11 to 14, all I did was join PQ’s, farm Mesos, kill bosses, and grind, grind, grind.
The cute sprites and animations hide a game with a surprising amount of depth. MapleStory’s character and equipment builds were complex, a stark contrast to gameplay mechanics so simple a 7-year-old could play. The game itself was massive, featuring hundreds of monsters and sprawling maps, with terrain as diverse as simple Henesys grasslands to sacred Temples of Time.
Each area was accompanied by background music unique. Till this day, listening to MapleStory’s unmistakeable BGM infuses in me a deep sense of nostalgia.
I adored the game, and I’ve always been ultra-competitive towards what I loved. My goal then was to be the best Dark Knight MapleStory had ever seen, a veritable gaming legend.
So in addition to playing for hours every day, a large chunk of my time was spent on either:
- Trawling through forums reading gameplay guides, or
- Spending real-life money buying “Maple Cards” to redeem in-game currency
I must’ve spent thousands of dollars on the Cash Shop — but that pales in comparison to the amount of time I spent playing the game.
Needless to say, my grades suffered.
I couldn’t tell you a single thing I learned in Math class, but I could give you a detailed 2-hour analysis on how to arbitrage Cursed Scrolls in Maplestory’s Free Market to make a fortune.
I failed Math class, and consequently, much of secondary school. But, believe it or not, I have zero regrets. The skills I learned playing Maplestory were more useful in my life than all the classes I took in secondary school combined.
Isn’t that funny?
Not once did somebody stop me on the street to urgently ask for the value of x, or held a gun to my head to see if I could accurately recite the elements of the Periodic Table.
On the other hand, my MapleStory skills came in handy on numerous occasions — most recently when I became an entrepreneur, starting my first company with just $1000.
Life is nothing but an elaborate game — a gigantic MMORPG where you play for keeps.
Viewed in these lenses, I was able to apply the skills I picked up from gaming in real life.
Here are three lessons on success I picked up exploring Maple World.
1. Embrace the Grind
Entrepreneurs are notorious for bragging about how “hard they grind.”
Think Elon Musk working 16-hour days or Gary V. selling the lifestyle of hustle, rest, repeat.
And dedicated gamers are the same!
I used to spend 6–8 hours minimum in the game just grinding — mindlessly killing the same low-level mob over and over again in order to level my character up.
Maps like Mysterious Path 3 were my favourite haunt since it had a high density of monsters that provide high Experience Points (EXP) when killed.
Whenever I leveled up, my guildmates would remark:
“Whoa Alvin, you’re levelling up fast, so chiong! (hardworking)
“How did you level up 20 times in 2 days! That’s insane!”
And my favourite, “Are you hacking?” said half-jokingly. I think.
I wasn’t using hacks or cheat codes though. Unless you consider hard work hacking, then yes, I was hacking the living shit out of the game.
The strange thing was I actually enjoyed those countless hours of grinding, doing the same thing over and over again.
Because I knew every monster I killed was taking me one step closer to my goal — becoming the best Dark Knight Maplestory had ever seen.
This was Arnold Swcharzeneggar’s mentality when he was bodybuilding:
“When people saw me working out five hours a day, smiling, having a great time they all thought this guy must be crazy…
…but I couldn’t wait to lift another 500 pounds, I couldn’t wait to do 100 chin-ups, I couldn’t wait to do another 1,000 sit-ups because every day, every step of the way, every weight I lifted was taking me one step closer to turning this vision into a reality.”
No wonder he won the Mr. Olympia title seven times.
The key is to have a crystal clear vision of your desired goal.
Ask yourself honestly, who do you want to be?
See that person your mind’s eye. Meditate on your desired self until you can see him or her clear as bright trout in a clean river. Then — and this is the most important step, put in the hard work to make your dreams a reality.
Everybody wants to succeed, but most stop at mere visualisation. Only a small minority put in the required hard, consistent work — that’s why a small percentage of people live the lives the majority can only dream of.
Keep in mind that every mob you kill, every rep you lift, every dollar you make, is taking you one tiny step towards your desired self, your desired life.
That’s how you become driven.
And when you embark on the hero’s journey, know that life isn’t going to hand you your dreams on a silver platter.
In fact, the opposite is going to happen. Life will test your mettle. It’ll throw hail and fire and fury at you — everything short of the kitchen sink. The important thing is to stay the course. Like Mike Tyson said, “Unfortunately, sometimes you can’t have fun achieving your goals.”
When my company was new and manpower was short, I once worked 18 hours straight to set up the arena the night before a big event. 18 hours of hard, menial labour. I almost threw up from exhaustion.
Then I went home, slept for a handful of hours, and woke up early to oversee the actual event!
I wrote on my Instagram detailing the experience:
Being intelligent is important, but sometimes when shit hits the fan you have to outhustle and outcrazy the situation.
Get a group of hardcore gamers and seasoned entrepreneurs in one room, and I can guarantee they’ll agree on one thing.
If you don’t work hard, you can’t succeed.
Period.
2. You Can’t Succeed Alone
To this day, I often wonder what became of the friends I made in MapleStory.
You see, a large part of what made Maplestory so enthralling was the tight-knit community.
Like it or not an MMORPG, like life, cannot be played individually. It’s a team sport.
Even the most modest of challenges required teamwork of some sort.
For example, every ex-MapleStory player will remember the famed PQ’s, Party Quests that needed 6 players to enter.
These PQ’s were a stroke of genius by MapleStory’s developers.
They were very popular, in part due to the great loot and EXP they conferred. Even I, a natural loner who preferred the seclusion of the grind, felt compelled to join parties and interact with fellow players.
And that was the point.
These interactions fostered camaraderie, forged friendships, and stoked the fires of friendly competition.
And life works much the same way.
The best friendships are made during the pursuit of a common goal.
In my youth, MapleStory used to be my everything. That was until I found martial arts, and a few years later, entrepreneurship.
Throughout these various phases though, one thing remained consistent. My closest friends were those who were working together with me towards a common goal.
How I brainstorm ideas with my business partners is eerily reminiscent of the times I used to plan boss fights with my guild leader. The way my training partners and I spar to sharpen our skills reminds me of the way I used to form parties with my MapleStory buddies and slay cute sprites for hours, sharing EXP to level each other up.
At 14, I became one of the most powerful hybrid Dark Knights in MapleStory.
And that’s in a large part due to the friends I made in-game.
Yet another similarity gaming has with real-life is the truism that good friends are extremely vital to success.
I’ve written numerous articles on the topic, here are two of my favourites:
Real friends don’t tear each other down.
They elevate one another. They spur each other on. True friends are team players, they like nothing more than to help the collective reach their dreams, fulfill their goals, and achieve their potential in life.
Take a good, hard look at the people around you. Evaluate them. Are they conducive to your desired life?
Are they supportive? Understanding? Are they a buttress, strong roots, and tall branches helping you grow strong, fair, and tall? Or are they a quagmire, a bucket of grasping crabs sabotaging your chances of success?
If your answers to those questions are mostly negative, you might want to rebuild your friend list.
You might even want to join a new guild.
3. There Is No “Point” to the Game
“Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the Gods made for fun.”
— Alan Watts
This is the last point, and also the most important. If you take away only one thing from reading this article, I’d like it to be this.
Life is a process.
There is no end. Well, actually, there is. The same end awaits everyone — death. But what’s the point of rushing towards that?
Buddhist philosopher Alan Watts said:
“The existence, the physical universe is basically playful.”
(Life)…is best understood by the analogy with music. Because music, as an art form is essentially playful. We say, “You play the piano” You don’t “work the piano”.
Why? Music differs from say, travel. When you travel you are trying to get somewhere. In music, though, one doesn’t make the end of a composition.
If that were so, the best conductors would be those who played fastest. And there would be composers who only wrote finales. People would go to a concert just to hear one crackling chord… Because that’s the end!
Same way with dancing. You don’t aim at a particular spot in the room because that’s where you will arrive. The whole point of the dancing is the dance.”
We mistakenly think of life as a journey, a pilgrimage of sorts, with a set destination at the end — success perhaps.
The tricky thing about success, however, is it has no set definition.
Success is a deeply personal idea that differs from individual to individual. Ask 10 different people what their definition of success is and you’ll get 10 different answers.
My definition of success when I was playing MapleStory was to be the hardest-hitting Dark Knight in the game.
To some of my friends, it was reaching the max level of 200. To others, it was about wealth, having as many Mesos (MapleStory’s in-game currency) as possible.
However, I realized that even after you achieve your definition of success — the max level, being the richest, most famous player in the game, nothing fundamentally changes. The game goes on.
The game just goes on!
What then is the point of the game, you might ask? The answer is simple.
The point of the game….is to play the game.
Enjoy it. Play! That’s why it’s called a game, for chrissake.
Goals are needful, noble things. They induce a sense of purpose. They inspire individuals to be better. Goals instill a desire to achieve, and this desire propels the collective human race forward and upwards, to higher heights.
But it is also possible to get lost in the search for meaning.
When I was playing MapleStory, I was happy in my own way, but I remember being rarely content.
Naval Ravikant hit the nail on the head when he said:
“Desire is a contract that you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want.”
I was always in search of more.
Spending hours grinding until my character was level 70 so I can get my 3rd job advancement. What’s in it for me, you ask? Well, even more hours grinding so I can pass the 4th job advancement at level 120.
Farm for Mesos so I can buy better gear. What’s the point of better gear? To dish out more damage so I can kill mobs faster. What, then? So I can level faster, add to my stats and….deal more damage?
It’s an endless cycle of achievement and suffering.
The best way I can describe how the process feels is this:
Imagine spending many painful months scaling a tall mountain, only to look up and see another glittering mountain that is higher, way out of reach, more daunting, and thus more beautiful than the one you’ve just summited. Endlessly feeling your heart fill with want and desire — endlessly longing for more.
Honestly, it’s a terrible way to live.
I’ve only recently managed to slow down and look at the big picture.
“I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is.” — Alan Watts
Lots of rest and contemplation while quarantined certainly helped with that.
I have come to realize that life is a process, not a destination.
It doesn’t matter how much zeroes you have squirrelled away in your bank account, or how many accolades you get to hang up on your wall of fame if you’re miserable the entire way.
Remember, just like MapleStory, there is no endgame in life. The only certain end is death — and even that might not be as certain an ending as we think!
Take the time to stop and smell the roses. Hit pause once in a while. And realize the game of life is just that, a game. Enjoy it.
I’ll end off this article with one last Alan Watts quote:
“The secret of life is to be completely engaged with the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.”
In Summary
“If you know the way broadly you will see it in all things” — Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings
So, you’re the main character in this game called life, and you want to succeed — whatever your definition of a successful person is, you want to be that.
The first thing to keep in mind is hard work preludes success. Just like 1 comes before 2 and day comes before night. Hard work is inescapable if you want to succeed at anything, period.
The second thing to know is true friends are absolutely vital.
These are the faithful companions that will have your back through the toughest bosses and deepest dungeons. When the foul wind blows and your candle gutters, when hope seems lost and happiness far away, your friends are all that stand between you and the abyss. Choose them wisely.
But the third, and most important lesson of all, is to remember that life is a game meant to be enjoyed.
Remember to laugh happily, dance gracefully, and sing lustily. Thoroughly enjoy the ride! No matter how happy or how sad your journey is, be it a Shakespearan tragedy or a Greek comedy, keep in mind that life is but a game — a beautiful game.
Now go play.
Thanks for reading my story.
