WoW vs Maple Story

I played WoW from Patch 1.3 to 2.2, I got tired of what they did. Classes kept on getting changed over and over. One month your class was buffed, the next, nerfed.
Well, a lack of patches to change classes, in the case of MapleStory, isn't much better either. Isn't that also why the Bishop/NL craze originated?

And second, if you think the learning curve is steeper, I don't know where you get that idea. WoW was engineered majorly for casuals. There is really not much that separates your character from another besides Talents. It's pretty damn easy to understand. You have no control over your stat build, it's all done for you. And the gear isn't really customizable as Maplestory is. Scrolling is basically multiple enchanting, some riskier then the others, with a certain cost.
Well, the whole thing about the risk in MS scrolling maybe a thrill for some, but I don't think people would generally accept scrolling if they knew about Dark Scrolls being able to destroy your hard-earned items, which can mean throwing away as much as billions of mesos.

Of course, one of the features I loved in WoW, was PvP. That was always fun. But when reaching the level cap, all I could find myself doing was farming and raiding, with some PVP. Raiding gets pretty grind-tastic too, repeat the same raid instance over and over, for DKP to buy your gear from the group effort.
The same can be said for MapleStory, since there aren't PQs for every level range, which leaves grinding and leeching if you're out of the level range. The same can be said for end-bossing in MS, which is quite limited as well.

Also, the hacker problem in Maplestory, well, WoW has the same thing too. It may not be necessarily in-game hackers, but it's account hackers. Account hackers is done alot more in WoW. You may not hear it exactly like Maplestory, because the population is bigger. But it's pretty easy to avoid it, for you and your guildie who got hacked on Maplestory. Simple thing: Don't get keylogged, it's pretty easy to avoid. But describing the few facts of not to get keylogged should be saved for another topic.
The thing is, Blizzard actually will try to help get your items back if you get hacked. I haven't heard of such support being wide in MS though, and the introduction of the Item Lock, which can be exploited as well, doesn't help. It's like buying insurance for your game, and you have to pay for EACH ITEM. Blizzard is also guilty of this with the Authenticator, but it works for all of your characters on that one account. And I don't remember any incident about hackers exploiting the Blizzard servers to steal account information, compared to what happened in MapleSEA where their servers were hacked twice.

But from my personal experience... I will say, the problems of Maplestory and World of Warcraft are basically the same. There are in-game glitches that are pretty bad. The companies would both make mistakes causing server maintenance to delay or glitches in game. Also, for those who say "Blizzard is better", don't want to hear it. People who play WoW peach as much about Blizzard as people who play Maplestory peach about Nexon.
Well, Blizzard does provide reimbursement with extra game time for extended maintenances that go on for too long. MS does provide the occasional 2x Event, but for the 2x EXP cards themselves, there's no reimbursment for that if say, Emergency Server Maintenance pops up.

They also have their up sides. Maplestory has alot more casual based bossing, I remember in WoW, we would do Blackwing Lair for 4~6 hours. As for WoW, they have PvP, Maplestory has none.
Most bosses in WoW don't last too long themselves, it's the whole instance itself which takes time. And I don't really here about rag-tag teams being able to take down Zak or HT, given how servers seemingly love to "schedule" their runs in a calendar order. And if a certain guild wants to hog a boss for whatever reason, you're out of luck.

For the companies, they don't seem to compete directly. F2P and P2P business models are quite different. The reason I like Maplestory, is because of the amount of character building their is. They both have their ups and downs.
The thing is, you can't really change your character builds without resorting to making a new character or spending NX on AP/SP resets. In my example, I would either have to spend quite a bit just to be able to use the new overpowered Swords (Lunchbox, Red Katana, Stonetooth) that were released on my WK, or make a new WK. (I'm a BW user.)

EDIT:

Oh yes, I did have an end-game character.

GameMX - Night Elf Rogue - Level 60 :: Equips - Tier 2 (Bloodfang), going onto Ahn'Qiraj and Naxxramas.
GameMX - Human Rogue - Level 70 :: Equips - Blues

Yep, WoW has came a long way from vanilla and even BC. I haven't experienced vanilla or BC raiding, but all the horror stories about it make me glad that I didn't, moreso for vanilla.