When did it become Grind Wars?

Don't argue and say it didn't because there's so much proof supporting it did pretty much completely become grinding. I want to say when Nightfall came about.

Factions, after being the Alliance with max Kurzick/Luxon was required for Elite Mission entry.

GW has plenty of optional grind but.. yeah, not a lot of required grind.

There's no more exploring to be done, so when new content stopped being available and they substituted PVE skills that increase in power with title rank for content, we moved onto grind.

Frankly, it's an ingenious way to get people to keep playing with minimal effort from ANet. How many thousands of hours have people logged farming titles instead of leaving GW?

if you honestly believe this game is now grind wars or dying then im sure you know the reason why. Why do you u need a topic for us to explain? Look it up im sure many people have had the same thread as you...I know you already said theres so much proof and how i shouldn't say "oh no its not" yet its a matter of opinion, especially where i can also say theres PROOF that its not?

I myself still enjoy the game and play for fun... if i don't fancey grinding then i won't...
Isn't the point in a discussion to allow both sides, why not let us have this opinion too? Ah well i sure this post has shown alot of hypocracey as did yours

When you make a class (assassin) to do one or two elite areas just for the fact you want Obsidian armor on another class I think that is a pretty big grind, but if it's required is another argument and may not be necessary. LB/SS and the Allegiances titles are bad because they tie PvE skill efficiency to them.

You're right and that's what a lot would say, but e-penis is nothing to mess with and therefor that's where the title issue comes in.

You are so RIGHT my new friend.

its only grind wars when you want it to be, it doesnt have to be a grind if you dont make it one.

I say factions too, but moreso because of the Kurzick/Luxon titles themselves. 10 mill to max. All that was available in the beginning was FFF...

It took them long enough but at least now faction donated to alliance adds 2x to the title, VQing, urgoz, etc... add to the title, AB, JQ, FA all give alot more faction. And now you can even get 4x this weekend...

It would still be one of the most impending signs of grind if it werent for mqsc and dtsc. The kurz/lux titles used to be one of the largest grind titles in game, and I believe that just before or after is when the original philosophy behind GW blew up.

I heard that a thousand times over. But if you don't want it to be a grind then you also don't want to do elite areas or PvP much for that matter.

Every ongoing game needs an aspect of grind, it is the difference between a typical console game which takes 8 hours to complete and then collects dust and the kind of game you can play for years.

The important thing to remember is that for the most part, grind is optional in guild wars. This game only has 20 levels and two quests required to maximise your stats. Rare and expensive weapons/armour are just as effective as their cheap or common counterparts in battle. The rest is up to skill, or rather common sense. Playing through all the missions, dungeons, quests etc is perfectly possible with minimal grind. Making the casual player just as effective to play with as die hard players.

Of course, if that were all to the game, then it is likely that only those who occassionally play would be left, since people who play more often would have got bored long ago. The introduction of titles etc is commonplace in many games is even incorporated similarly with console games (eg achievements on xbox360). The purpose of this is so that people can work towards goals, be it for prestige or simply something to keep our interest in the game.

If you don't like grind, then don't grind. Just be thankful you don't play a game in which hundred of hours of gameplay are required to bring each character to a decent enough level to fully enjoy the game.

Be thankful? My good friend... You are sadly mistaken if I would pay $15 a month to play a game that takes months to reach level cap.

It's way, way faster to reach an epic'd out character in World of Warcraft than to get KOABD in GW.

I consider GWAMM a load of crap. I'm talking about level cap, the basic thing in every MMO. If I had to put the time into Guild Wars to get max armor like you have to in WoW then it's game over.

Factions' titles started it. Nightfall exacerbated the problem and the updates after that made it worse. EotN continued along that path.

I barely had any rage at Factions, Nightfall had a bit, and then EoTN made me want to explode.

When did grind start? When the game came out (i.e., Prophecies). Why? Because after you beat something once, it becomes grind. Farming was also very dominant since Prophecies

When did "real" grind start? The first grind title (and thus the real obvious grind) came out with Factions. Those being the Alliance titles, Un/Lucky, and other rank titles (only non-grind titles are cartographer, protector, guardian, vanquisher, and skill hunter - though those are still grind if you do them on a second character, technically).

When did grind become popular? With Nightfall and the Sunspear/Lightbringer titles. And it only worsened with Eye of the North and the four reputation titles.

I like this answer. You don't bash the tread, but simply give the question and the answer.

I'd say the grind started when the content got stale. When there's nothing new to do, one generally returns to old things that had some sort of benefit from repeating (whether that's amassing riches or working towards titles), which is another way of saying 'grind'.

So, for each person, it's a different time for when the content got stale. For those who played hardcore from the very start, the grind started pretty early, for later adopters who play more casually, they may not have gotten to the grind yet.

That's how I look at it.

edit: I agree with Konig's answer too

when you decided to play pve. me? ive never really grinded too much of anything other than when ursan came out and there was a 2x norn rep weekend, but even that was only a few hours to 160k.

but i would have to say theres have been 2 types of grind (three if you count farming i suppose); 1) title grinds for whatever benefit. Mainly lightbringer. 2) skill-linked farming, mainly ursan and SY!.

While theyre both grinding, i have not really been forced to grind lightbringer because DoA was never very attractive to me, i was forced to do ursan for literally everything though. glad thats over. so i would say it truly started with the opening of the doa and when it was required to be grinded for necessary effects.

Grind starts when a player has finished all there is to do in the maingame and non-grind titles such as vanquisher.

AFAIK, GWG simply likes to overreact. There's not much to consider grind outside of a few optional titles. I don't think the GW community likes to accept GW isn't an ever-updating game and once you've "beaten the game" and got 100%, that's it unless you grind.
It's online, but it can be comparable to Yoshi's Island on the snes.

I've been playing for 4 years and can say it's never once become Grind Wars for me. I'll do what I want when I want and I'm happy with that. If I don't think something is worth my time, I won't do it. The only one responsible for forcing yourself to grind is you.

I think the thing is:why anet doesn't understand that guild wars was a great game and why didn't the tried to keep it as it was before FC,instead of trying to keep as many players as possible making pve so easy? The real "deaths" of GW were IMHO:
1)NF;practically introduced titles farming and many and many overpowered skills
2)PVE skills: Ursan,lux/kurx skills,eotn skills...many of them are way too overpowered
3)Really BAD updates:as i said before,the point in ANet way of updating is in making pve more and more and more easy,and add new features to the game to make it sound interesting to old players who got bored,or to fascinate new players.Not to mention the skill updates.

Grind has become more prevalent as GW has grown older:

Rolling new characters and farming were the only real forms of grind in Prophecies.

Factions brought titles (I think), and almost all titles require grind. Also, it has the Befriending the Luxons/Kurzicks quest which require 10k faction.

Nightfall continued the grind with more titles and more quests requiring either a higher level or more sunspear reputation to advance.

EotN picked up a plank of wood, wrote "GRIND" on it, and slapped us in the face with it. It has 4 reputation titles linked to dozens of skills. To use the new skills well, you have to grind reputation points. Those points can only be obtained by repeatedly vanquishing and completing missions, quests, and dungeons.

Fortunately, most of the grind is optional.
You consider Vanquisher a non-grind title? o.o

I'm wondering more and more, when did it become QQ Wars? Play and have fun or don't play and leave. Stop whining. If you've beaten all campaigns and gotten to GWAMM with one character, congratulations, you've beaten the game! Go PvP or find some other RPG or whatever to get through the day. No real point in playing GW (except if you have different reasons like pve'ing with guildies, or being addicted to UWSC or something). Don't come here whining about how 'grindy' GW is. Try a /age and see how many hours you've put in. I know I've put in 1500+ hours and I haven't experienced grind so far. If you've put in 5000+ hours and complain endlessly about the 'grind', then maybe you've hit the ceiling and it's time to find another game.

I'll admit I raptorfarmed my way to r10 asura for event items (I wouldn't call it grind since it's completely optional and I enjoyed beating the hell out of that Rekoff). I've gotten to r10 deldrimor and r10 ebon vanguard by completing the master of the north title (deldrimor with the NM and HM dungeons required for the master of the north title and ebon vanguard by handing in the nm and hm dungeon books filled in by doing the master of the north title). Add the vanquishes required for the master of the north title and I'm r9 norn. No grind needed to max 3 of the 4 reputation titles.

Edit: damn I forgot that I did grind: ss/lb. Maxed those by grinding a weekend of double ss/lb points. Was my personal choice though, those titles don't benefit me at all since I had completed protector and guardian of Elona before the ss/lb weekend.

Technically, it's as non-grind of a title as Guardian. In Vanquisher, you're killing monsters again and again - sure - but the builds and locations differ. Much much different from the common kind of grind which is the same action, same location, same enemies (if there are enemies). Vanquishers is just the same actions of "search and destroy" - but different locations and enemies.

So it is a non-grind title, just the "grindiest of the non-grind" so to speak.

I don't like grind.

The act of repeating the same or similar tasks for a specific goal over and over, whether that be farming, titles or anything else. You could probably argue that everything is grind, like playing through a campaign. That's only true if you repeatedly do so.

I also don't like the lazy recycling of existing content ala Hard Mode to somehow provide longevity of gameplay, its a cheap move by the developer.

Both of these are now present in Guild Wars, they weren't there at the beginning, and if they are there in any great degree for the sequel, then i'm not interested in playing it.

The day the Hall of Monuments took effect. Yes it is optional grind but because people like Guild Wars alot they feel obligated to grind for the Hall of Monuments, not to mention people love/want cosmetic rewards for Guild Wars 2.

Well really the people who severely limit themselves to PvE, which is basically like 25% of Guild Wars, just simply run out of things to do and have no other choice but to grind. I mean i don't understand why people insist on doing ONLY the mindless c-space grindage that is PvE, but after a while of doing that it's just a matter of repeating it. Those are the people who are grinding and to be honest it serves them well.

Can't understand why the majority of GW players do it but they do.

I don't, and i don't grind anything ever and haven't in 4 years. You people make your own problems, sheez.

PvP is just as much grind as the vanquisher title. It's all just fighting with the same rules, usually people bring the same builds themselves, and many times they may very well fight against whatever builds are the meta. So it just becomes the same thing.

And honestly, I think people who play PvE is larger than 25%...

I think the PvE players outnumber the PvP players greatly.

not changing the game and making it stay pvp oriented with campaigns introducing ppl to pvp rather than pve grindfests would have solved the grind problem, but i cant think of any other pve content that is awesome enough and does not include grind other than professions, but all they did was rushing NF and the concept of giving 6 professions double the skills than 2 was awful alrdy, that could have been done balanced but meh =/

epic quote dude

I'd say its the 90% of GW

I do PvP because I genuinely enjoy it and not for the grind. Just because you don't like grind, I personally am not a big fan of it, that doesn't mean you won't do PvP or elite areas. therefore your argument is invalid on this point.

Grind truly began in Nightfall, because that was the first occurrence of effects or skills linked to title progression, and that forced players to push out the highest rank in order to get the best effects, which would eventually be demanded by everyone once enough people's ranks were high enough.

Although, you could consider that rank discrimination. But, there was certainly rank discrimination in PvP, and I'd say the difference between the discrimination in PvP and PvE was that PvP ranks were mostly based on an even combo of time and skill while PvE required a great deal of time and not necessarily so much skill.

You could say it started in Factions with the introduction of the title system, but nothing from those titles at the time directly affected gameplay, and were more of a personal achievement system than anything. It was unfortunate to see this title system used improperly after that, but going back on it can't happen at this stage of the game.

The way I see it, grind is inescapable: it's just a matter of how mandatory it is. You still have to get to level 20 - but people don't mind that because it's relatively short and sweet. Heck, when that's perceived as taking too long, people cite it as reasons for not liking to start in a particular campaign.

Everything else? Is optional grind. Frankly, you don't need LB, or SS (unless you're on an NF-born character). You don't need the title-specific boosts Asura, Deldrimor, Norn and Vanguard titles give you - it's perfectly possible to stroll through GWEN HM without using a title-specific buff. GWEN may well be the biggest offender - if you want an armourset from GWEN, you need r5 in the corresponding title track, sure. Again, not mandatory - GWEN armoursets are considered prestige armoursets, except for the one set available at Boreal. On top of that, you'll gain a few ranks in the titles simply by playing through the game. You don't actually have to max it - if you grind to max it, that's by choice and not because the game forces you to.

People would probably already have started shooting for titles before HoM; HoM just made sure that everyone, good player or no, felt entitled to said titles. The lovely trainwreck that was Ursan was the one that made grind mandatory if you wanted to PUG, or if the people you knew only wanted Ursan. If you had friends who didn't care, or if you h/hed, again - not a problem.

Oh, and someone cited Kurzick and Luxon titles - well, yes. Grind. But even HoM doesn't require max allegiance rank - it requires r4. The people who want to max Kurzick and Luxon titles are probably going for GWAMM, and that's their own choice.

In other words - if you want the rewards for a grind title, you'll have to get that title. But 1. you can complete all campaigns + expansions without said title; 2. you don't have to force yourself to do it all at once. I'm getting my titles slowly and as and when I want them, so it doesn't feel like grind to me.

Even meta builds get tweaked often between teams, and even 1-2 skill differences can affect the performance/gameplay of the whole build. Otherwise this basically gets shot down from the simple fact that unlike monsters, players use different strategies and tactics dependent on tons of factors that change the game each time (even if they did use the same build), something that is currently unfeasible from an AI aspect, preventing PvP from becoming "grind". The social interaction between all players and tactical variation prevents it from being such because each match is completely different, even if it's the same 2 guilds facing off against each other for a 2nd time with the exact same 2 builds, stuff like map choice, a player making a tactical mistake, etc etc etc all will affect the tactics employed and change how the rest of that game is played.

The monsters in the Vanquisher title may all employ different skills, but they do not employ different tactics per se, they're all bound by the same exploitable A.I. and never make any attempts to change their strategy or do anything actually smart to counter whatever you're doing. So I wouldn't say it's the same thing.

These days, there's no difference between a 100-300 fame farm and grind. Same idiots with different names and classes on the other side, really. If the other side is terrible and not a challenge, it's grind.

I haven't GvGed much since '07, but when I have ladder play has been just as bad (except when you happen to catch a decent team). Can't speak to ATs these days; they used to be good.

You're invalid at this point, but I love PvP with or without grind because it's pick up and play fun.

He said 25% who play exclusively PvE. I think that actual figure is closer to 50-60%. With a good 15-30% doing both PvP (counting casual FA/RA type PvP) and PvE, with the remainder 10-35% being the only PvP crowd.

I think we should ban the use of a percent symbol unless there is factual evidence or quoting straight from something (i.e. a skill).