[...] examines the grind in light of these perspectives and finds something to like about the grind of questing. Firstly, [...]

I like quests, I really do. I just think my mass producing them, and letting them become their own grind, what is special and fun about them goes away.

In DAoC, people actually worked together OFTEN on people's class based epic quest. I probably did other people's level 50 epic weapon quest at least 30 or 40 times. The quest was challenging and interesting and meaningful to your character (or your friend's character). So people helped each other.

But when you are going to be doing 50 quests a day, it isn't meaningful. When someone asks you for help, unless they are a close friend, many people think "dude, look it up on wowhead, or just move on to one of the other 200 quests."

What I tried to do here is see why people don't view questing as such a grind when they did for monster slaying. I think the main thing is that the quests involve moving around and a wider variety of actions for optimal rewards. EQ's style of camping a location involved a lot less variety for maximum efficiency. As you point out, though, that lack of variety lead to a lot more social interaction between people.

I had an interesting experience in LotRO the other night. My GF and I decided we wanted to do a group quest, so we got together 4 other people. Waiting around for the group to form was less exciting than going out and doing quests ourselves. When we finally did get the group together, we did the quest and the group almost immediately split apart. What you predicted was exactly what happened: few of the group had similar quests besides the one we did, so they had no incentive to help us with other group quests. A bit of a disappointment after doing what was a pretty cool quest that only worked with a group.

My big gripe with the "new grind" we get from questing is that:

1) It is no better, functionally, than the "old grind."

2) It is actually worse in a lot of ways (see the article, I don't want to be spammy and rehash).

3) It gets far too much of a pass for not being a grind, when it really is.

4) Because of this deceit, games are leaning too heavily (imho) on quest based advancement, and ignoring other forms of advancement that are still enjoyable to a lot of people and don't have the same negatives that quest-heavy advancement has.

I totally respect that different people like different things. What makes me stand up and say "WAIT A SECOND!" is when people delude themselves about what a feature really is, and what effects it has. That was why I felt the need to expose some of the problems with quest heavy advancement.

Great post Brian. Thanks!

My pet theory is that grind arises because the MMO endgame is different from the leveling game. People don't complain about the grind, usually, until the game matures and the endgame is established. Suddenly people that were okay with the leveling game are grinding so that they can play the endgame with everyone else. It's a fatal flaw in MMOs that few have been able to overcome.

[...] “Psychochild” Green wonders if all grinds are bad grinds? After all, people play Solitaire for hours on end, and in fact most casual games are the same [...]

(1) Introduce more variety into the combat system. As others have pointed out, solo combat in MMOs often consists of identifying an optimal "skill rotation" and using it in every single fight. That mean that every fight is pretty much identical. In Klondike, in contrast, the initial setup of the cards is different every time you play, so there is some variety.

I thought Wizard 101 had an interesting way of handling this. Combat plays like a collectible card game: You construct a deck and are dealt seven cards as a starting hand. So every fight is a little bit different, especially given that you can change your deck around between battles.

(2) To echo Sente's point, don't require one type of gameplay as a prerequisite for a different kind of gameplay. In WoW, anyone who wanted to raid, PvP, or be dedicated crafter had to complete hundreds of hours of mostly solo questing beforehand.

One thing that I like a lot about both Eve Online and Free Realms is that different aspects of the game are more or less independent of one another. So a player who enjoys, for example, crafting can enjoy that without having to complete a level grind.

Part of the grind problem is that in many games where you have a grind (which I see as "forced" repetitive content) is due the level structure used in the game and that the time for reaching max level is generally quite long.

... without the level part.

What do players want to do? They want to do X. How are they able to do X? By doing Y over and over. That Y then becomes grind.

I feel like I'm that old guy in his chair always rumbling about the same things... Anyway, here we go again about SWG.

There's 2 things I really wanted to do in SWG. The first one was to be that doc that would boost and heal everyone before and during combat, mostly because I was quite bad at combat in MMOs. The problem: You're of no use if you're not a master doctor. Here's go the grind to master doc. It was grind because that wasn't what I wanted to do. I just wanted to be a good doc for combat situation but I couldn't be unless I was a master.

Sure I had fun chatting with people while I was macroing but that wasn't what I was aiming for.

The second thing was to hunt jedi (I had learned some tricks since my doc time). First problem, you can't track one effectively if you're not a master bounty hunter. Second problem, you need to fill some other skills in some weapons because even with the best strategy, it all comes down to numbers. So what do we get? Grind to get master bounty hunter because you can't do what you want before reaching it (or else you will always fail).

So to earn the right to hunt jedi, I had to grind my way up to master bounty hunter. Grind because the path wasn't what I wanted to do. I wanted to get to the destination! Sure, I could have tried before... But numbers against numbers, that wasn't just possible. So grind I did.

WoW was a bit different. I enjoyed playing WoW solo with occasional "social" interaction. My motivation to play WoW was that "hey, I'll be able to visit that zone and kick some ...". Sure it's fun for the first 2-3 levels you get in a zone. But when you realize that you'll have to do this 10 more times to get to that next cool zone, it gets old quick. "Ok I get it, I know what is the theme of that zone, I've learn how to use my new skills can I move on now?" No! I still have to do 20 missions in that same zone to get to the next one!!!

So where are we? Grind is part of the game unless you allow players to do right away what they want. So the trick would be to let players what they want to do right away and let the player skills have an influence on the success... (that sounds like an FPS). So I'm wondering, unless you provide equal ground to everyone, can you really remove grind? Because in the end, grind is not defined by what system you add to the game but what players are aiming to do. Heck, some would probably even consider the improvement of player skills as grind (ever heard of that complaint about kids being able to play a game all day long while you have to deal with a job, wife, dog... and not able to invest as much time in X game to improve your skill?).

Reduce vertical progression

Many traditional MMOs like EQ and WoW give you a strictly vertical progression in power. You replace fireball A with fireball B that does more damage. This creates a treadmill effect as you end up fighting monsters with more hit points. But besides just the treadmill effect this worsens the grind for a few important reasons. A level 80 in WoW is several thousand times stronger than a level 1. They have 10,000% more hitpoints than a level one for example. The difference even between a 79 and an 80 is huge. This makes the game feel like you aren't anywhere until you're at the end.

Now compare that to a horizontal progression system like EvE Online. Granted EvE Online has no skill grind because of offline skill progression but just play along for a moment. In EvE Online you start training skills that you're going to use forever. They aren't replaced, only enhanced. While you may progress from a Frigate to a Battle Cruiser or beyond your frigate training is still relevant too as all ship types are needed for different purposes. That means even though you're progressing along the ship sizes each stop on the way gives you some end-game usable power. Effectively you are choosing your own grind rather than the game telling you to go through it. Likewise in other horizontal based games like Darkfall you don't see as much of an increase in power. Every skill you gain in Darkfall helps your strength but a new character compared to an established one is an order of magnitude smaller than in WoW. At most you'll maybe gain 100% to 150% more hit points.

In these systems you typically end up feeling more free to explore around or complete things because you want to. There's not as much of a force pushing you from your current situation to a more end game one. You may still decide to go and grind skills or money but it's a less compelling force.