Wizet is the South Korean game development studio that created MapleStory. Founded in 2001 and acquired by Nexon in 2004, it became a Nexon subsidiary, and its name is still credited within the game.
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History
Wizet was established in Seoul, South Korea, in April 2001. It was initially led by Seung-chan Lee, previously a lead developer on Nexon's title QuizQuiz. Backed financially by Nexon, the small studio developed MapleStory and released it in South Korea in April 2003. The game was an immediate success, reportedly reaching 100,000 concurrent users and two million registered accounts soon after launch, and a Japanese release followed the same year.
In 2004 Nexon acquired Wizet outright. From that point Nexon took over active development and publishing of MapleStory, with Wizet credited as the developer for the game's earliest period and Nexon thereafter. The Wizet logo continues to appear in MapleStory in recognition of its authorship of the game's foundations.
Legacy
Wizet's design of the original Maple World, its Explorer classes, and its 2D side-scrolling style set the template for everything that followed in the franchise. That early design is the basis MapleStory Classic World returns to. Nemi, one of Wizet's original designers, serves as the lead designer on Classic World, a point Nexon has emphasised as a marker of the project's authenticity.
Logo sound
The Wizet logo is announced by a short fanfare when the client starts, straight after the Nexon sting and before the login screen. MapleStory Classic World still carries it, the same way the logo itself still appears.