Pets win prizes in MapleStory Europe

Thursday 16th August/... NEXON Europe, the European branch of the world-leading South Korean developer and publisher of online games, NEXON, is pleased to announce a major new feature for its exciting and hugely popular free to play online RPG, MapleStory Europe. From August 23rd, 2007, players will be able to buy their own in-game pets; super-cute followers that accompany and help players throughout their adventures in return for food, care and attention.

The first two pets to be introduced to MapleStory Europe are the Brown Puppy and the Brown Kitty. As well as being adorably cute followers that stay faithfully by your character's side, pets have an important role within the game itself, adding a whole new element of fun to the MapleStory experience. As players feed and interact with their pets, they'll increase in 'Closeness', which in turn allows players to give their pet increasingly complex commands, from simple sit, stand and roll over orders to making your pet actually speak.

Owning a pet also gives players access to special, pet-related quests that can be completed for additional experience and rewards, while future updates to MapleStory Europe will offer accessories that can be used to customise your pet, or allow them to collect items dropped by slain monsters.

"We're very excited to be introducing pets to MapleStory Europe as part of our continuing plan to expand and update the game on a weekly basis," commented Calvin Yoo, Director of International Business Development at NEXON Europe. "Owning and caring for your own pet brings an exciting new dimension of play to MapleStory Europe. It's something that I'm certain new and old MapleStory players alike will be delighted by, especially as we continue to develop the feature with new pets and pet accessories in the future."

As with other player accessories, pets can be purchased from the Cash shop using NEXON cash, MapleStory's unique version of real money that can be pre-purchased from the MapleStory Europe website, www.mapleeurope.com. Also available to buy from the Cash shop at the same time is the Pet Naming Badge, which lets you personalise your pet with its own unique, onscreen name, and the Meso Magnet, which allows pets to collect mesos - MapleStory's in-game currency - dropped by monsters.

MapleStory is one of the most successful massively multiplayer online role-playing games of all time. Originally launching in South Korea in April 2003 to huge acclaim, MapleStory now boasts over 69 million registered accounts across Asia, North America and Europe. MapleStory Europe, launched in May 2007, is the latest iteration of the MapleStory family, offering gamers in Europe the chance to play MapleStory in five different languages - English, French, German, Spanish and Dutch.