"The Grind " - The process of engaging in repetitive and/or non-entertaining gameplay in order to gain access to other features within the game.

The grind, ladies and gentleman, is what MMOs, and most other games are all about.  You may protest, but you'd be wrong. 

If Tetris didn't have a grind from level 1 to level infinity, you'd complete stage one and get the "YOU WIN" screen!  If Mario games didn't grind you from 1-1 to 8-9 you'd get to the end of stage 1-1 and the Princess would fall into your arms, and Bowser would be even more pathetic than his multiple attempts at kidnapping have proven him to be.  If you could participate in whatever your end game happens to be at level 5 you're either playing Ultima Online or Dark Age of Camelot.  Two fantastic examples of how developers got "end game" right, but I won't drag you off into that thought just now.

My point?  As many developers and players have said - grind is all about mentality.  If *you* see killing 100 rats for Captain NPC-tastic and are frustrated when part 2 of the quest sends you off to kill 250, then you're playing the wrong game.  Because there are indeed games out there that present the grind in a different way.  Gamers just enjoy complaining that their particular game isn't the exact way they want it to be.  Developers have learned to ignore it, because without grind, you're playing a damn short game with no point, at a $15 a month subscription model.

Sometimes grind is presented in a really horribly painful way.  Dark Age of Camelot at launch sent you to spawn point A where you'd find a group and kill until your party left you, you wiped so often you hit your router's power button, or your alliance issued a call to action to defend your realms relics.  There was no real questing, as we've learned it in other games.  Sometimes this was great.  Other times your choice for groups was so thin (or annoying) that it would be less painful to cut your toes off with your Sword of Might than try to get in a decent group.  And since DAoC didn't then do questing, you were kind of stuck!  There were few other options.  Before we go on, let's note that this has since changed, and the end game now offers many opportunities for both types of leveling, questing, and over world mayhem!

On the other hand, Lord of the Rings Online not only forces you to quest for experience, but it goes out of its way to fill your log with quests that require a group.  There are ways around it, but the idea of group quests is so very fundamental to how quests work in this game that if you don't have a core group or guild to assist you, you're going to give up and endlessly kill a mob for .10 percent of the experience that a quest could give you, simply because you have no other choice.  Granted, you could spam the LFG channel endlessly (and many do) looking for others to help complete your needed quests.  But who wants to put two hours of your life into the hands of a pick up group that starts out with ninja-invites?

I'm not saying these games are fundamentally not fun, nor that the style is flawed, just that the style doesn't work for everyone.  Hence why we all have so many, many choices when it comes to picking which MMO we play.

Grinding always equals advancement, progression, moving forward.  One could easily call the movie trailers before your main entertainment grind, if you were THAT anxious for the main event.  The weird thing about MMOs is that not everyone is there for the same main event as you are.  Everyone finds the different events in the game fun.  Often times, I find grind enjoyable.  Killing countless mobs in an endless stream of experience?  Where do I sign up?  It's mostly mindless, I get to chat with friends, guildies, and yell at idiots in OOC.  Every now and then my group sees if I'm paying attention by drawing aggro from every living thing in the zone, and of course, I'm not, we wipe, I run back and rez everyone and we start again.

I can only take so much though, and then I'm off to craft until I get bored with that.  Then it's off to harvest goodies for sale, visit a friend’s house and see how they redecorated.  Sometimes I take a break by playing other games, eating, sleeping, and working.  Then it's back to PvP, leveling up, gear runs, epic quest and mob runs...wait?  You people call that grind?  What games are you playing?!!

The only time the game normally stops being fun is when you need to find something else to do.  If you're tired of grinding, don't grind.  If you don't want to grind play Second Life!  I hear there's no grind there.  (Note: I would never advocate the playing of SL by anyone at all, ever. … This is sarcasm!)

So how does a developer avoid putting grind in?  My suggestion would be to immediately teleport all characters that log in to the ultimate raid, decked out in full gear and give the raid mob 1 hp.  That way, everyone could take part in it, with little or no work, achievement and sense of pride.  I mean, what else is there if you take away the fundamental repetitions that get you to the ultimate battles?

More so, what good are MMO ultimate battles once you've completed them unless there's a reason (grind) to repeat or move on once they've been beaten?  In a first person game, you'd have reached the climax and see the credits.  But in a game model where you're supposed to pay to continue to play - there must be more!  So what's a developer to do?  Honestly, there are not a lot of options.

I think that games such as Warhammer Online and the upcoming Stargate Worlds take a great approach!  There are so many different options in leveling that if you get bored with or tired of one, switching to another is easy as pie; while this can be frustrating for people like me (1% of the gaming population) who want to clear out entire areas even if they're grey.  Honestly though, so few people play like me that I can't really take too much offense at the way it's being done now, and I think that overall, gamers benefit from many different options for the same leveling experience!

In the end, while you could call daily life tasks we do a grind, it's up to each player to find something in the game they love. Repetition leading to success and greatness is a fundamental human desire that cultures all across the world have come to embrace.  To continue to do something over and over again while a reward is in sight.  Otherwise, we'd never all get up in the morning and go to work.  We've got to support our MMO habit somehow, however.  So get out there, and grind!  Grind crafting, leveling, PvP, or whatever it is that you enjoy.  And when you stop enjoying it, do something else, and grind that!

Becky "Tovin" Simpson
Senior Editor, ZAM Network