As Seoul apartment sale prices rose for a record 88th consecutive week, a post on Blind, an anonymous workplace community, drew attention in September 2025 for offering an unusual perspective on the relationship between low birth rates and the real estate market.
The anonymous author, whose profile identified them as a Bank of Korea employee, cited changes in server populations and item prices in MapleStory, an online game they enjoyed as a child. They argued that even if the overall population declines, prices in places where demand concentrates can follow a different trajectory.
“When I was young, I was really into an MMORPG called MapleStory.
MapleStory peaked and then gradually declined, losing users.
Maple losing users somehow reminds me of South Korea’s population shrinking because of low birth rates.
Back then, I played a Bishop on Scania, the server with the most users.
As more people quit Maple and fewer people played, you’d think it would be easier to find a place to hunt, right?“
Fewer users overall, but more concentrated on popular servers
“But what happened? The number of Maple players was falling, yet the hunting grounds got even more crowded.
As a kid, I thought it was strange. If so many people were quitting Maple, why were there still so many people around?
It was because I was on Scania, the most populated server.
On other servers, player numbers had plunged so far that the hunting grounds were nearly empty, but on Scania, I couldn’t tell.
As Maple lost more and more users, the remaining players gathered on Scania, where there were still plenty of people.
On servers other than Scania, finding party members and trading items became too difficult,
so people flocked to Scania, where at least some players remained.”
The author played on Scania, one of MapleStory’s most popular servers. They described how the hunting grounds they used actually grew more crowded even as more people left the game.
On less populated servers, recruiting party members or trading items becomes harder. On busier servers, those activities remain easier, potentially reinforcing the concentration of users.
This can be understood as a phenomenon similar to the network effect: the more users gather around a service or in a place, the more convenient and useful it becomes.
Concentration in the capital region is also evident in South Korea
According to resident registration statistics from the Ministry of the Interior and Safety, South Korea’s population fell by 242,898, from 51,325,329 in December 2023 to 51,082,431 in September 2026.
Over the same period, however, the population of the Seoul metropolitan area rose by 111,110, from 26,014,265 to 26,125,375, while the population outside the capital region fell by 354,008.
Seoul’s population declined, but growth in Gyeonggi and Incheon increased the capital region’s share of the national population. This shows that an overall population decline can coincide with increasing concentration in a particular region.
Clusters of jobs, educational institutions, transportation and healthcare facilities, and other everyday infrastructure make certain areas more desirable. Such differences can also affect migration and housing demand.
Server transfers and regional housing policies
“I thought this was somehow similar to people gathering in Seoul as the population shrinks.
The Maple operators didn’t like everyone crowding onto Scania either, so they let people move characters to other servers, something that normally wasn’t allowed.
They even offered some perks for moving. The operators wanted people in Scania—and Seoul—to move to other servers and regions,
but instead, users from other servers saw an opportunity and all flocked to Scania, haha.
It felt a lot like how, whether you move public enterprises to the regions or build infrastructure there, everyone still ends up flocking to Seoul.“
MapleStory has held World Leap events that allow users to move existing characters to other worlds. Depending on the event, it has also supported the transfer of mesos and Union-related assets.
The South Korean government is also seeking to stimulate demand in regional housing markets through measures including acquisition tax reductions for homes in areas with declining populations, support for buying unsold homes after construction in the regions, and special tax provisions for second homes.
Server transfers change the environment in which users play a game, while regional housing tax measures reduce the cost of buying a home. The policies therefore cannot be assumed to have the same aims or effects.
Price differences between rare items and prime real estate
“And as more people quit Maple, I thought Maple items would get cheaper too.
That was only half right. Low-level, low-value items plummeted in value so much that nobody would take them even for free.
But the prices of high-level, valuable items just kept climbing.
The top-tier, ultra-rare items in particular skyrocketed so much that they couldn’t even be traded for in-game money, haha.“
The author said a falling user base did not mean every item lost value, likening their experience of diverging demand for cheap equipment and top-tier rare gear to the real estate market.
Sales records from the Aurora world auction house published by a MapleStory user in 2023 show that the average price of a level 4 Restraint Ring rose from 16.657 billion mesos in October–December 2022 to 21.415 billion mesos in July–September 2023.
Seoul apartment sale prices have also continued to rise since 2025. After setting a record with 86 consecutive weeks of increases in September 2026, they had risen for 88 consecutive weeks as of October 12.
MapleStory’s Scania and Seoul do not have exactly the same dynamics. Still, the comparison raises the question of whether where people gather and what they prefer can matter more than a decline in the overall number of users or residents.
Do you think MapleStory’s Scania server and Seoul’s real estate market are similar?
