A new notice has been posted, announcing the end of the user advisory group. There was a bunch of drama surrounding them, including the things mentioned in the last apology notice and other stuff like certain members being under-qualified or doing bad things without being punished accordingly. At the same time as this notice, Nexon updated the post of the user advisory group’s opinions from the 1st discussion topics, since the user advisory group felt their thoughts were not adequately explained. I won’t translate the additions but basically it’s just things like who suggested/agreed/disagreed with what and some more elaboration on why they did so. Other than that, there should be a KMST patch tonight, including a new boss as well as some of the changes that the development team mentioned in their last notice. Hello. This is MapleStory. We sadly regret to you inform you that we have decided to end the user advisory group’s activities earlier than we originally planned. Our development team decided that it was important to consider the users’ point of view when determining the direction MapleStory should take in the future, so we wanted to hear the voices of many players through the discussion board while at the same time organizing a small user advisory group to hear more in-depth stories from a closer look. The user advisory group, who started activities in this way, gave a variety of opinions based on their concerns for the future of MapleStory, and we shared them through the ‘1st Discussion Topics’ notices. Their opinions were very helpful in guiding our development direction. However, as said in the [Apology for Inadequate User Advisory Group Operation], the user advisory group could not operate smoothly because of the development team’s negligence, and this disappointed a lot of players. In a situation where we, the development team, did not give enough trust to our players, we felt a heavy responsibility for putting this burden on the user advisory group who spent a lot of time and effort in their activities. We think that it would be unreasonable to maintain the user advisory group any longer. Therefore, due to the development team’s inadequate preparations and insufficient operation, it has been decided that from today, August 4, the user advisory group’s activities will be terminated early. Before the termination, we have conducted a detailed investigation into the user advisory group’s members’ activities, and have taken action in accordance with our operation policy for any problematic areas. At this time, there are no plans for a 2nd user advisory group, and we are planning to lead the future development direction based on the various opinions given by users through the discussion board and the thoughts of the development team. The user advisory group will return to being regular users. The penalties for violating our operation policy are applied equally to all MapleStory users. However, if there were any other shortcomings during the user advisory group’s activities, before it was the fault of the individual members, it was the fault of the development team for not operating the user advisory group more meticulously. We hope that the excessive criticism of individuals will not leave any scars between users. We apologize once again for our inadequate operation of the user advisory group. We will be a MapleStory that continues to listen to our players’ opinions. Thank you. Source: Orange Mushroom's Blog