Angelic Buster's remaster came out in October 2023 in KMS, but shortly after that there was an existential threat to the entirety of the GMS server. That threat, released in December 2023, was MapleStory DREAMER.
At the time when news about DREAMER was announced, Nexon Korea was in trouble: the Korean equivalent of the FTC had just fined Nexon approx. $9 million dollars. That wasn't why they were in trouble, however. They were in trouble because of the reason. Nexon secretly manipulated the probabilities of paid items and earned about $420 million over 14 years from these items. The specifics here largely don't matter to us in GMS, but for now just know the following:
-Progression in MapleStory's normal server's late game is effectively four casinos at once.
-Less than three years after a scandal involving the rates of one of those casinos being rigged, a second scandal dropped where a second casino was rigged.
On top of this, a second flashpoint had occurred a little over six months before: a popular streamer had joined KMS Reboota free to play server that was supposed to be more grindy than reg server in exchange for not requiring microtransactions to progressand had successfully gotten to a near-endgame level account in only a few months due to the help of a lot of fans and some very good luck. This enraged the reg server players, who stated that Reboot needed to be worse to justify their investments in their gear.
This had already led to a number of nerfs to Reboot that don't really matter right now, but with DREAMER MapleStory put forward a glut of changes that were effectively a stake to the heart of the still-not-dead Reboot server. In no particular order:
-All forms of meso (the money unit in MapleStory) gains were cut to 20% of what they were on Reboot server, no change to Reg.
-Meso gains for all servers are limited per day, to a maximum of 150m mesos + (10m every 5 levels after 260).
-Cubes (the aforementioned casino they had rigged) have been removed, potentials on both servers are now done with meso. Great news for reg server, the cube cost is ~doubled for Reboot, which was already paying with meso before this.
-The complete removal of a boss designed to help early game players get meso to upgrade gear.
-Boss Crystals in Reboot are adjusted to be worth the same number of mesos as in Reg server, another cut to ~20% of what meso gains used to be for them.
This had the intended effect of completely murdering Reboot in KMS, while mostly molifying their main customer base on the regular servers. However, this created a second problem: For the past several years, the Global server had simply been copying and pasting the patches received without any further tweaks or fixes and GMS's playerbase was ~80% concentrated onto the Reboot server. Porting over these changes and murdering the server would lead to a mass exodus from GMS, something that management was probably gunshy about given they'd just added a new Reboot server.
The fanbase was loud as the date of the update's GMS release came closer, until Nexon decided to showcase the localization philosophy change in the most Nexon manner possible:
GO WEST Introductory video (You should probably watch this)
GO WEST is announced, with a 97 second video whose opening 35 seconds are focused entirely on all the things they aren't doing. Ah, Nexon. 
The fanbase takes it all as a win, patch notes are released, and everything seems to be on the up and up. Reboot is saved! Also it's been renamed, they're called 'Heroic servers' now and I'm now on Kronos (As opposed to Hyperion, GMS's second Reboot server).
Reboot is dead. Long live Reboot.
As for my part in all of this, I was pretty ambivalent. You see, I play this game as a joke. MapleStory is a mean and nasty thing once you start getting anywhere near lategame, and the main reason I'm here is for a simple call and response bit:
"Why would you play a game like that?"
"Because I can push a button and a magical girl theme plays. This works anywhere in the game."
If the game got worse, the joke would get funnier. If it got better, the game would be less poo poo. At the time, I thought there were no losing outcomes for me.
This brings us to June 12th 2023, the v251 patch day. After an hour of downloading I'm finally booting up the game.
There's a new login screen, like there usually is with events or big updates. The entire GO WEST aesthetic is based on the Pet Shop Boys's Go West music video, and the two characters there are Inkwell and Dr. Lim, NPCs based on two of the actual developers. Notably, Inkwell has recently been made the head of GMS's development direction.
Anyways, I log in and create a new characterwe're actually already about to be hit with the Remaster's first neat trick.
To help hype up her new mini-album, Shining Heart, Angelic Buster's character creation screen is updated to have a sample of her unique music. The song in question, Shining Heart, is a poppy little number that
Wait wait, go back. What did that say?
It seems the character select music is
not implemented in v251.Maybe it's just an oversight..? It's supposed to be going so well, after all
