Grinding. How I love it. While players all around the world will have different definitions of this MMO staple, everyone has to admit that no matter what game you play, getting to the really good stuff typically takes a lot of work. Otherwise everyone would have everything, and the guys who love to grind would have it all twice over! Before I really get into this MMO phenomenon, however, allow me to outline some of the biggest grinding perpetrators:

The Monster Killing Grind (AKA The Classic EXP Grind)

Ah yes, the ‘classic’ EXP grind, harkening back to everyone’s obsessive days of Diablo II, clicking through that nefarious Cow level over and over. These days there are actually very few mainstream western MMOs that incorporate the EXP grind – in fact, most have found ways to circumvent this beast by introducing the concept of the quest (more on that later!). Something that has not graduated from the EXP grind, however, is typically associated with the multitude of Japanese and Korean F2P MMORPGs on the market like Ragnarok Online (swoon), MapleStory, Lineage, Rose Online, FlyFF, Silk Road Online and even Atlantica Online. While some of these games do boast some form of questing system, they’re really just giving you a little bit more structure when deciding which monsters to kill. Instead of killing wolves for five days straight, why not kill 100 Ninjas first, and then go back to kill 100+ Ninjas to get their secret Ninja memos that they inexplicably didn’t have on their persons until someone needed them? These days, however, our beloved days of killing a werewolf for 0.02% of our bar have been replaced with a few other forms of grind.

The Skill Grind

In games that advertise zero experience points and free flowing character development, what always seems to take its place is the very similar, yet very differently named system that is the skill point progression. In Darkfall Online, one of the most recent games to advertise a non-existent EXP system, players are already citing burnout (http://syncaine.wordpress.com/2009/04/13/darkfall-burnout-the-players-or-the-game/), and, surprisingly, one of the biggest reasons given is that they’re tired of the skill grind! Apparently players no longer feel like they have to kill hundreds of thousands of little Goblins to advance – now they have to swim hundreds of miles, or cast hundreds of spells so that their skill levels are on par.

The Quest Grind

This is the one form of grind that most people wouldn’t define as such – but only if it’s done well. World of Warcraft is a great example of quests done well and quests designed to make your eyes pop out in frustration. Their addition of bombing campaigns and random PVP objectives (at least it’s fun when there are lots of other participants!) in TBC was lots of fun, while WotLK’s addition of phased questlines and riding giants made the game feel a lot like a theme park of rides, guiding you along and giving you a sample of everything there was to offer. On the other hand, grinding ‘daily’ quests for reputation gains can transform the game from being a wild ride on a giant to arriving home from work, killing X number of Y for Quest A and B, while gathering items for Quest C, repeating for quests D, E and F, and then going to sleep.

Of course, there are many players out there who really do enjoy any of these three forms of ‘grinding.’ To me, ‘grinding’ in games feels a lot like a second job – this is probably why it takes me months to get the last five levels to the cap, or why I never managed to really get anywhere with my reputations in World of Warcraft (unless I could get rep from dungeons!). The real question I have for you all, however, is this:

Should ‘grind’ be a natural feature of any MMO?

Some of the first MMORPGs I remember all featured that same EXP grind that grew to almost ridiculous proportions when you tried going from level 90-100. Probably one of the biggest reasons monster slaying featured so prominently in first generation MMORPGs would be because we simply didn’t have the technology to have players hop onto a giant in 3-D and begin decimating little monsters around us. On the other hand, however, now that we do have this technology, why have we simply evolved from excessive bovine slaughtering to becoming heroic... messenger boys, and harvesters of Ghoul Hearts (only 20 of them, mind you)? Sure there are the ridiculously awesome questlines that make you sit up and take notice, but for every fantastic phased instance we go into, there are at least twenty other quests that demand we rid them of their mutant rats (only 15!). While I already noted that there are some games that are entirely predicated upon this endless ‘grinding,’ there are many mainstream MMOs out there that really don’t know what to do with their ‘grind.’

World of Warcraft, for example, has been consistently making it easier for players to level from 1-60, and I’m willing to bet that soon they’ll do something about the grind from 60-70 in TBC. While it certainly is important for players to feel like they have ‘earned’ their characters and their achievements, do we still feel like we need to kill hundreds of Ghouls and Boars in order to be able to confront the Lich King?

Looking at offline RPGs created by North American studios to respond to the JRPG genre, players around the world have noted their intriguing game play and, most importantly, their focus upon story advancement rather than endless dungeon crawling. What most consumers also note, however, is the length (or lack thereof) of new games. When Gears of War 2 came out, I grabbed a six pack of red bull and a friend, prepared to spend a solid night (and morning) beating the thing on the hardest difficulty. We ended up sleeping at 4 a.m. because we had already beaten the game. Of course, we all remember the gaffe that was Heavenly Sword – a visually stunning game that lasted as long as a family dinner.

In the end, while it seems like there is a serious push to get away from all of this endless ‘grinding’ in MMOs, the one thing that gets sacrificed is the length, and it makes perfect sense. Once you get the gameplay properly developed, it’s not very difficult to tack on an extra dungeon of different coloured monsters. Developing original content, however, with as much awesomeness as WotLK’s phased questline, requires months of hard work and serious commitment. It all boils down to that eternal question; quantity or quality. Readers, which do you prefer?

Christopher "Pwyff" Tom
Editor
Allakhazam.com