Why Did the MMORPG Become a Grind?

What does the phrase MMORPG mean to you nowadays? Travelling through the World of Warcraft showing off your epic loots? Defeating dark Jedi with your guild mates or perhaps for some, myself included, it represents a problem within gaming as a whole...

[zeal0us]

Guess it make it easier on the developers. When a player completes all the quest for his/her character, the only thing left to do is grind until the next level of quest is open to him/her. A method back then used to keep a player playing the game rather just up and quitting.

[WeskerChildReborned]

Back when i use to play MMORPGs, i would usually grind cause i just wanted to hit max level just for something to do.

[Dac2u]

MMO's have always been a grind. I started out playing UO in '98. It didn't feel like a grind at first because everything was so new, but once I figured out how the game worked everything could be a grind. Farming gold, starting a new character, working your mule for ingots and leather, it was all a grind.

I switched to EQ awhile later and it was also a massive grind. Once you hit 50+ the game came to a screeching halt, it would take hours to build up a good buffer just so you wouldn't lose your level when you died.

[karlowma]

I think it's the players of MMO who sort of force the games to become grindfests. I doubt it was really foreseeable that people were going to spend hundreds of hours a week playing the same game. With that type of time investment, it's pretty tough to keep content fresh. Thus, to satisfy the players' demand, and to keep them invested in the game, the grind was born.

[wollie]

exactly right.

There's no way to keep people who play 50+ hours a week on one game entertained for long with out repeating content. The best games have fun content though so you don't mind so much.

[UnitSmiley]

It's because in mmo all the fun stuff comes during the "endgame". So the plays have to force themselves to perform tedious and repetitive tasks to even be able to get access to the good stuff. It's a design flaw. The game should be fun to play the whole way through. Think about it, we don't pay for and play through entire single player games just to get to the last level.

The quality and charm of mmos comes from the fact that you play with other people, but the genre has gotten ridiculously stale and the gameplay needs to improve. The game should be fun the entire time you are playing and it should never feel like a second job. I'm hoping Guild Wars 2 stirs things up in the mmo would.