We reported back in August that Nexon America had begun the third Quarter of 2009 with a very solid July; their revenue for the month grew 35% over the numbers for July 2008. Now that Q3 is over, they are happily touting some additional (and still impressive) figures. August 2009 beat out last year's August revenues by 32%, and September hit a lofty 44% growth in revenues compared to the same time in 2008. Overall, Nexon America's third quarter revenue grew 36% compared to Q3 2008.

Nexon America's CEO David Kim pointed out that this success comes without the bump that releasing a new game often brings: "Increasing our revenues without having added any new games to the company's portfolio for more than a year tells me that we are on the right track. Dungeon Fighter Online is just ramping up, so no revenues generated by that game are reflected in the outstanding third quarter we've had.

Dungeon Fighter Online is still in open beta, but an item mall has just been launched for the game. We can only imagine that Nexon's growth will continue when these revenues begin to show up on future financial reports.

North Americans, we've been had. MapleStory Europe is getting a crazy drunken Oktoberfest with monsters, parties, and beer.... wait a minute, non-alcoholic beer?! Oh, right, it's MapleStory...

In any case, European MapleStory players can look forward to a giant beer tent filled with "drunk" monsters (unless non-alcoholic beer sends them into a woozy state -- they are monsters after all, so who knows) and a brand new map featuring a new PvP play mode. The Ariant map, home of the Ariant Coliseum challenge, pits players against one another in capturing monsters "alive" before the other player does the same.

Lastly, one final event will have monsters dropping special boxes filled with rare items for the duration of its run in October. These boxes, however, can only be opened with keys bought from the item shop, which means you're going to have to spend a little coin to enjoy this final event.

The MapleStory European only Oktoberfest (curse you Europe, we like Oktoberfest too) will be running from now until October 7th. (*Hears the sound of the Europe crowd rejoicing at NA's lack of Oktoberfest.*)

One of the most successful companies operating in the free-to-play games arena is Nexon, which reported their July revenues are up 35 percent year-on-year, according to Worlds In Motion. Much of this good fortune can be attributed to MapleStory, which set a new max concurrent user record of over 70,000 users last month. While the number of registered users in a free-to-play MMO doesn't tell the whole story, Nexon recently announced MapleStory has 92 million registered users worldwide, six million of which are in North America.

Nexon America VP of Marketing Min Kim was quoted by Worlds in Motion about the company's plans for North America. Kim said, "We're heavily investing on all fronts -- in our games, our publishing platform, aggressive marketing efforts as well as customer service. The best news for Nexon America is that our success isn't just reflected in registered users, but in actual, dramatic revenue growth."

One of the downsides of an ever-expanding game is the time it takes a new player to "catch up" to the majority of the player-base. Most people are kicking it in some groovy expansion while others might be stuck on old long-abandoned content. Nexon has identified the need to speed their players through certain areas of MapleStory and has taken one of the more common routes to do so: they have announced that the game's experience curve has been boosted. Players from level 11-30 will get experience 50% faster than before. From 31-200 the bonus is decreased slightly, down to a still-significant 25%.

The temporary experience boosts that were granted for recent events were apparently received very well by MapleStory players, and this approval is what led to the permanent increase. Nexon America's VP of Marketing Min Kim helped to make the announcement: "The world of MapleStory is considerably larger than when it was first released. Accelerating the EXP rates empowers old and new users alike to better explore the MapleWorld." The new exp curve is already in effect, so what are you waiting for? Go level a Cygnus Knight!

MapleStory will receive an update by the end of this month which will introduce a brand new set of character classes called Cygnus Knights. These knights have already been available in MapleStory Korea and MapleSEA (the South East Asian version) for a while but players of the global version of the game will soon get their turn to try them. A Cygnus Knight starts without a specialization, and after ten levels a new sub-class must be chosen; either the Dawn Warrior, Wind Archer, Blaze Wizard, Night Walker or the Thunder Breaker. Here's a fun fact: the Wind Archer was called "Wind Breaker" in the MapleSEA version. Well played, localization team.

To prepare for the launch of the patch, Nexon has put out a guide to creating Cygnus Knights, as it seems to involve just a few more steps than simply pressing the create button. We've put the guide into a gallery which can be viewed below. There's also a trailer introducing the Cygnus Knights and the various sub-classes; head past the break to check it out.

Normally we'd be somewhat cynical when talking about an MMO going to a phone. World of Warcraft on an iPhone just seems complicated, while Second Life on a phone just seems unusual. But for MapleStory going to a phone, well, we just can't see much wrong with that. It just seems to make sense, with the 2-D side scrolling action being perfectly at home on a mobile device.

However, don't jump for joy just yet, it's only a version of that's making it to the MapleStoryAT&T media mall. MapleStory: Warrior is the same MapleStory gameplay, just condensed down for your phone. It's sadly not online, but it does connect to your MapleStory account to give you a brand new in-game item. So if you ever need that MapleStory fix and you're just not anywhere near a PC or internet connection, now you have options. Downside, those options are all warrior-based options.

Twitter needs to be classified as an addictive drug, we think. We seem to be using it, and we just can't stop ourselves anymore. We keep telling ourselves that it's just a simple RSS feed where we're limited in what we can type out to others, yet we keep going back to that internet street corner, begging for just one more tweet...

But hey, we've gotten company recently! MapleStory has created their own Twitter page as well, joining the rest of the world in answering the question "what are you doing right now?" If you're interested in the 2D MMO, just drop by their page and sign up for their tweets to stay atop of in-game news. Right now, they seem to be flaunting their recent gold farmer bannings (remind us to never get on MapleStory's badside), as well as talking to some of their fans regarding their MapleStory achievements.

Now, if you could excuse us, we feel we need to tweet again.

We often marvel at the sheer numbers of subscribers and users some MMOs and virtual worlds are able to reach. You can look at a title like World of Warcraft, with over 11 million subscribers and just picture a massive green tidal wave made of dollar bills sweeping over Blizzard HQ. Every month. But WoW's millions of customers, while impressive, pales in comparison with what Nexon announced this week with MapleStory: 92 million users worldwide, with 6 million users in North America alone.

Sure, comparing success stories of a subscription title with a free-to-play game is a bit like comparing apples and oranges. Each of those 92 million "Maplers" probably isn't dropping $15 each month to play, but the fact remains that many of those users are paying real money for their virtual goods. The numbers we ran for MapleStory's virtual items sales in the US, roughly one year ago, had 5.9 million US users spending USD 29.3 million on these goods.

Tomorrow is going to be a big day for players of Nexon's MapleStory. For one day only, all items in the cape, overall, hat or shoe category will be completely free. You just simply visit the in-game "cash shop" to customize your avatar and try on whatever new looks you want -- and all without dropping a single penny.

Now we can finally get that toy we always pined for as children, if even for only one day!

This is actually a pretty cool gesture from Nexon, and we think it'll probably make for one of the busiest days in MapleStory quite some time. Now, if you'll excuse us we have to go try out that "Spaceballs! The Flame Thrower!" on a few zombies...

Love is in the air in MapleStory, as they're joining other massively multiplayer online games in celebrating Valentine's Day. The festivities will run through February 24th, and will include a mix of unique in-game items and quests for the lovey-dovey crowd. On that note, players who want to tie the knot in-game also receive 15% off on their wedding tickets.

Nexon provided the run-down of what's in store for MapleStory players with this extended Valentine's Day event. You can check out the details after the jump:

Ever wanted to take on monsters and swagger around, with nary a care for lesser landlubbers? Well Nexon's got just the thing for you in their newly created MapleStory player class - Pirates! Launching this month, the addition of the Pirate class adds a new facet on this already popular game. Players start with the Pirate, but can choose one of two job paths as their levels increase. At level 30, players can specialize in the fast melee attacks of the Brawler, or go for the ranged-attack prowess of the Gunslinger. Both job trees continue up to Buccaneer or Corsair at level 120, respectively. Additionally, pirates gain several fun new abilities like sneaking past monsters in barrels, the ability to summon sea creatures to help, and even transformative battle powers.

As if that weren't timber-shivering enough to give players an incentive for rolling a Pirate, MapleStory is also adding in a series of new maps and areas to experience aboard the Pirate ship Nautilus, just full of new adventures. They're also planning a series of contests based around the new class, including a costume contest, a user-generated content contest and even a competition for pirate-themed guilds. To top it all off, MapleStory is introducing a new server for people to play on - Demethos - which should give new players a chance to be on a more even footing as everyone levels up. Sounds like some serious sea fun to us. Yarr!

We hope you enjoyed yesterday's NCsoft giveaways. Today we're doing a potpourri of giveaways from some Titans of the MMO game industry. Titan Tuesday kicks off with an import from the nation of South Korea that's become a huge winner in the North American market: Nexon. This innovative company has been kind enough to send us 10 currency cards to customize your MapleStory avatar, tweak your Audition singing experience, or up your Combat Arms ante. Nexon currency cards are good with any of the company's games. The games themselves are free to play, you see, something you might already know from our lengthy look at MapleStory earlier this year. We've been sent 5 $10 cards and 5 $25 cards, for a total retail value of $175. If you win, you'll randomly be assigned one of the cards.

All you have to do to enter is leave a comment on this post. MapleStory is very well known for its holiday events, so we want to know what your favorite holiday is! Let us know and you might just win a currency card. You'll need to comment before 7:00 AM EST Thursday, November 6th. You can only enter once per person, and after the contest closes we'll ship out these fantastic prizes to 10 randomly-selected winners. Give us at least a week to ship out this massive pile of swag, though. To win you must be age 18 or up and a resident of the US or Canada (excluding Quebec). For full eligibility details, we suggest you read our official rules. Good luck!

The AP reports that a Japanese woman who had an online-only marriage with a Japanese man has been arrested for taking unlawful action against his avatar. We were talking about this sort of thing only this-morning, actually. You might want to refer back to that.

When her online hubbie broke off the relationship, she retaliated by using her ex's password to get into his Maplestory account and deleted his avatar/character there. AP doesn't say what the charges are likely to be, but we can take a good guess. It passes the dishonesty and deprivation tests (Dishonest appropriation of property with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it), so that's criminal theft right there. Likely "destruction of property" will also be added as a rider. At the very least, we imagine that unlawful accessing of a computer and illegal data manipulation will wind up on the list.

The 43 year-old woman has been remanded into custody in Sappporo, the jurisdiction where the 33 year-old man lives. AP says that she may face a prison term of up to five years, or a fine of up to US$5,000, though without any formal charges being laid, that seems a touch premature. Though the AP also bandies about the terms 'divorce' and 'murder', both of which are clearly inapplicable to the current case.