Interesting article on MMOsite.com involving GW and Grind

Grinding is a mental state. If you find fun in an activity, it's not; otherwise, it is.

Any attempt to put it in a concrete definition ensures a " fail."

^Yum has it spot on.

Well I think the best way to explain what I think they're saying is to compare it to a movie. You can tell the story in 10 minutes or you can over-dramatise it, giving it more action and making it last longer. Most movie makers like to make their story drag on to keep people interested.

So if someone finds HFFF entertaining then it mean's it's not faction grinding?
oh i c

"Grind" happens when you're not having fun.

He is talking griffon farming. I dont think he played any time recently.

Anyone mentioning grind in GW would go for reputation titles to showcase grind.

I guess articles could be rewritten like this:

Long time ago i tried GWs. First, I tried that PvP thingie and was getting owned seriously. All i remember is loosin heluva hp while being snared. Clearly, It was imba and you had to grind a lot to become imba like that too (cuz you need to grind to get power in every game .. gw cant be different, right?).

Sins you cant get better throught leveling, it must be items, so you hafta farm them!

So i went to farm stuff. It was boring, but reaaaallly needed to do that, y know. And uw was not open so i sat there for hour waiting for it to open. That was pretty grindy.

I also faintly remember doing missions and hoping for good drops. Guess that was grind too. Because like ... doing mission didnt give me drops so i though i hafat to moar of them. So i like ... did. Grind!

PS: i might have not figured out that i can equip unlocked items on pvp character, because i think that i can only get runes for it with gold.

---

Author seems to be totally clueless.

And you don't have fun when the 'path' is way less interesting than the 'reward'.

When you are making your favourite mission, do you have in mind the image of the shield and swords?
No... when you are having fun in a mission, you don't remember about that until you see it.
But when you are making a boring one, the shield and swords animation is all what you are waiting for.

Boring grind is the same. In the case of GW, the grind done with a title piles up with the grind you make with the next ones.
"I have already done this a lot of times, why is it that I see no reward?".
That's when it's grind.
When you are doing the 700th Margonite run, that's grind.
When you give the 5th completed HM dungeon guide,that's grind.
When you open the 10.001st or the identify the 10.001 rare item, that's grind.

What awesome skill is this??? This skill makes ursan look weak.....

guess you havent played many of them then...in the 8-bit gen they were all grind-fest just to level.

It makes a couple points, but in reality Guild Wars wan't a grind until EoTN came out. I think hard mode is ridiculous and there is no way I could do it without Ursan, but I liked the game before hard mode and Ursan. If your knew to the game and you bought the PvE then you should just play through a character or two and unlock some skills and buy others with hero points.

Well that was a good laugh. Pity articles like that (don't fear the grind!) is only bad publicity on GW's part.

Guess I'll be off doing some more HFFF...

Indeed. The best part about playing those oldies on an emulator today is that you can turn on 10-50x speed for a few mins and eliminate grind

Right. So you can either be a bad player who grinds and uses ursan to beat Hard Mode, or be a good player who can beat Hard Mode without PvE skills. There is a difference between being forced to grind to finish the game and being forced to grind because you don't have the skills to play Hard Mode. EotN even has that nice pseudo-level 20 buff nowadays in case leveling before going there was too bothersome.

Maybe you should just stay you had jrpgs like Final Fantasy in mind and we'd be done with your "rpgs are grind" comedy.

If one can find fun in it, so no it's not grinding for him(though I doubt anyone could). And your point is?

Let compare the concept of grinding to happiness, and you'll get a better picture.

Damn, they seriously know jack shit about what grind actually is.

I think someone needs to learn how to apply attributes, and get that shitty skill off their bar. Dear oh dear, what a shambles.

That's when the reward itself is subject to the person. Beating Halo on Legendary the first time around was a pain in the ass, but was I glad to have gone all the way through? Sure, I'm damn satisfied that it was worth it.

That's where this largely varies: A person may not be fully enjoying what they're doing, but it lies in the players hands to determine if crossing the finish line was worth it. It's when you find out the reward isn't worth it that's quite a let down, but that's a bit less about the grind itself.

If a person is not having fun and asking themselves "why am I doing this?" without an answer, then that's a very different problem.

excuse me hfffing is fun it was a dead title to me while i thought you had to ab now is just a matter of time till my 27th

The writer believes its that hard to get items. Hell, you can buy a perfect green for 1K these days, and you make that amount just getting out of presearing

But why exactly do some games not come across as grindy, while others bore the hell out of us and seem ten times more grindy? It's because the game developers attempt to hide the grind. They don't want you to know it's there, not because it's a secret, but because anytime that the grind is so obvious you can detect it without having to think at all the game is going to get boring and old, quickly

I think this is the key point of the article.

GW is not different, after content is exhausted, people get offered some grind to continue playing.
GW at least has most grind more or less optional, but all their content enhancements, be it titles or faction skills, are grind heavy.

And unfortunately, GW grind does not taste too good. It is very very shallow and repetitive.

I just wonder that he focuses so much on attaining skills and not on faction related skills and so on. He played GW, but obviously he did not experience that aspect.

I did not have to start after Nightfall, I had already all skills unlocked.
But for new players they offer for some bucks unlocks, as the author of the article is quite right: Without many skills unlocked you cannot compete.


Still, I do not really want to take his advice.
I do not embrace the grind, I think less grind is good for me and other people that do not live in the basement and still want to play some kind of MMO.

And we can be glad that we westerners usually do not experience really hardcore asia grinders... they would find all GW grind unchallenging, quickly achieved crap.

I laughed, sighed and stopped reading after this part. If I missed anything after it worth reading, let me know.