Vanilla WoW was a notorious grinding treadmill, and time has done little to discourage the practice; the aforementioned daily quests, justice points and faction rep rewards of Cataclysm are still designed to squeeze that last drop of humanity from players with equal sadism. It’s an ugly word for an ugly device, creating the illusion of replayability through sheer mindless repetition.
From an IGN article about moving on from WOW. What’s fascinating to me is that vanilla WOW was, for MMO veterans like me, a major relief from grinds. It introduced the concept of questing to gain levels instead of endlessly killing mobs for XP. It was so very much less grindy than anything that preceded it, and it’s only become less grindy since. I think the writer of that article would faint if he were asked to play Dark Age of Camelot as it was when first released. Everquest would kill him on the spot.
But the tastes and expectations of gamers have moved on even from that. I confess I’m looking forward to Secret World and Guild Wars 2, to the point where I might even build a gaming PC to play them. Maybe.
