[Flowsion]

I spent years playing an MMORPG called "Maplestory" where me and my online friends would just sit on virtual chairs and talk to each other.

There was something called the "Free Market" where there were no monsters to kill (so you couldn't die.) Guilds claimed different Free Market rooms as their "guild rooms" and people would just go AFK there. You'd always be able to find friends hanging out and talking in these rooms.

You could spend real-life money on their cash shop, which had cosmetics and small things like virtual chairs or couches to sit on.

You could even buy "friendship rings" that would display animations if the two of you were in close together.

[gavinray]

I've been waiting for a single-player version of Maplestory to come out my entire life.

The overall art/gameplay style is lovely, there's not really a single-player offlin equivalent to the platformer-JRPG thing that I'm aware of.

I recently went back and tried to play it again almost a decade later with my partner (who had never played it) and it was not quite what I remembered.

Fantastic game back then though, as well as "Conquer Online" around the 2007-2009 era.

[Aeronwen]

Conquer Online... ugh. I quit when some bug sent my market character to bot jail for no reason. Wish I'd have actually botted instead of wasting years on that game. My friend made a few bucks selling the rest of my characters, at least.

[jbnorth]

RIP the free market. Not the same anymore unfortunately.