Teh Grind

In Dan Fortier's MMOWTF column at mmorpg.com, he talks about the history of the dreaded *grind*. Here's my own personal take on the topic.

1. Why grind? - The concept of EXP was introduced in the 70s in traditional pen-and-paper RPG games like Dungeons and Dragons (the granddaddy of RPG games). Basically, power and levels were equated to the number of monsters and loot that you kill and collect. This in turn, ends up in a never-ending vicous cycle of kill-loot-sell-kill-loot-sell in order for a character to advance. It really is a tried and tested method. Since all power can be relatively based on numbers, simply adding another zero to a numeral and you got infinity to play with.

2. Where are we headed? - Love it or hate it (some say the Koreans love grind, hence games such as Lineage I and II). Grind will be part of MMORPGs. But I think that the industry is heading into the right direction by incorporating stuff such as quests and instances into content. In the years to come, I feel that new games will involve the USERS more by emporwing them with generation and development of content. I heard in Perfect World, for example, that a future patch will give players the power to landscape and shape the environment. Sweet!!!

To quote Dan;

The nature of MMORPGs makes any kind of large scale GM system financially infeasible and without a way to permanently die or an intelligent system of rewarding player skill other than the mindless and repeated slaughter of endless monsters. The concept of grind had become a natural evolution of our gaming styles.

Kudos to Dan for a cool article!

Peace!

GM T