After years of speculation and rumors, Nexon has finally announced Maplestory 2 . We haven’t played Maplestory in years, but as former MMORPG junkies, we are always interested to see how new ones will play/manage to hold people’s attention for more than two months.

According to a Q&A we found on Orange Mushroom, Maplestory 2 will play isometrically a la Diablo or Ragnarok - as opposed to its 2D predecessor. We have an enormous soft spot for the original’s art direction, so this is bad news; but we won’t pass any judgment until we actually see the game.

Nexon is planning to have this be an entirely separate entity from Maplestory, which is to say that people will probably be able to play the first one for a long time. So fret not, those of you who have sunk thousands of hours into it: it’s not going anywhere, and updates will not stop happening.

Maplestory 2 is scheduled to launch sometime in 2014.