Massively^™

I've noticed that people will tend to grind *anyway*. Rather than moving up to riskier and more rewarding challenges (especially when mission/quest systems auto-adjust difficulty), they'll go out to a zone they're familiar with that has a comfortable, and lower-risk challenge level and just grind for a while, to get them closer to that next trait-slot, power, level, whatever.

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I really cannot imagine an MMO without -some- grinding. Thats like a shooter with no guns, or an rpg where you don't level up, grinding just comes with the territory.

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There was one thing that made a huge improvement in my enjoyment of MMO's: I stopped grinding.

Rather than kill a gazillion of the same mob, or craft until I was ready to gouge my eyes out, or run the same quest over and over, I would do one for a little bit, then the other, then the third, etc. The main point I'm making is that I was only doing one thing for as long as I found it fun. After that I moved on to something else that would be fun for a little while, and so on.

Eventually I found that I had killed all those mobs, completed all that crafting, and had run the quest umpteen times - but I had fun the entire time.

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The problem is theres no company offering a solution to grinding. Everyone in an MMO community needs money/experience or levels and the means to reaching it always involves some sort of grind.

I don't think it needs to be there but as an alternative to the grind, companies would have to offer a time sink. Even in Eve (which we so often reference in these sort of discussions) you find yourself farming rats to use up some time. I don't think you need "grinding" but the alternative is that you need a time sink that will be in danger of becoming a "grind".

I think Oblivion had a great means to leveling and earning gold that could easily be applied to an MMO (and perhaps might with the current rumors). While we certainly could sit in our house, conjuring mobs, working on our skills. All of that could be done real world, in a dungeon or exploring the country side without ever really feeling like you were working on your skills. The grind would be there for those you like the mindless drudgery but not necessary for the rest of us.

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I'm currently doing a grind in Warcraft (trying to raise 5000 gold for an epic flying mount). While Blizzard has gotten better with their rep grind mechanics (reputation grinds pre Burning Crusade were horrible time sinks). I understand grinds are suppose to reward dedication and time investment - but there has to be more than: kill a couple of thousand mobs, collect a drop from 5% of them, hit a certain rep level, oh and do it again for longer. This comes off to me as poor design. I think Blizzard is going in the right direction with their new daily quests and that over all MMO designers should invest in a little more in hiring quest designers not just loot and level designers.

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Grinding on a limited basis can be fun. It demonstrates that the player has mastery of a certain environment; it allows the player to become adept with new character abilities or play around with new combat tactics; it allows the character to test his strength in a "safe" way without risking getting in over his head.

But grinding is how you realize that you're too strong for a certain environment. It isn't meant to be a major element of gameplay, but a gentle anticlimax that gives you a breather between more significant plot moments and gameplay tension.

The problem with most MMO's is too much anticlimax, not enough climax. In order for a story to feel complete, there must be a beginning, then rising action, then climax, then anticlimax. But modern MMO's have only long periods of anticlimax punctuated by meaningless boss battles where you endlessly fight the same monsters over and over again.

This is obviously a broken mechanic and needs improving.

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