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Breakfast Topic: Finding motivation to level or grind
Arrowd of the US Cairne server has a question: How do you keep leveling without getting bored, abandoning a character, or rerolling? She says that she's had around 14 characters, and she's never managed to stick with one past about level 45. She always gets bored, and she wonders if there is a way to avoid it. Now as I've mentioned before, I've leveled a lot of characters myself, and have a few 70s, but even I can sometimes get a little bit tired of the grind, and sometimes even I need to make up goals to keep myself focused. Sometimes I even need it for my level 70s if I'm running low on gold or raiding supplies. In that way, I can definitely feel where she's coming from, but I do (usually) manage to keep myself motivated. Sometimes, for me, the Motivation is pretty simple. For example, on that Shaman I'm leveling, what keeps me going is the prospect of getting some sweet Dual Wield action going. I'm actually having a lot of fun with her, so I don't need to focus on it too hard, but the idea of imagining her with 2 axes enchanted with Windfury is a mental picture that is too awesome to put into words. I mean, we're talking cover of a Dragonforce album awesome. So now I turn the question over to the rest of you. Whether it be leveling on a lowbie or grinding on a 70, how do you keep yourself motivation when the going gets tough and you get tired out? Is it the promise of a new skill? A new piece of gear? What keeps you charged up and logged in?
Van Hemlock: The distrust of recruits and the path of acceptance
Podcaster and PlanetSide-fragger extraordinaire Van Hemlock recently had a look at EVE Online's Empyrean Age expansion, and gave his take on what's needed to get the most from factional warfare. He tackled The Empyrean Age in two parts: The Distrust of Recruits... and The Path of Acceptance. In The Distrust of Recruits, Van Hemlock was surprised that factional warfare isn't quite as accessible as he envisioned. He wasn't daunted though, and prepared to move his main character into the battlefield. Except, there were one or two issues. Perhaps the main one, which is a core mantra in EVE, is that you "don't fly what you can't afford to lose." By joining up with any of the militia, you become a war target for two other factions, who will attempt to kill you on sight -- no matter where they see you. No matter what you've done. That's the price you pay for access to this level of PvP, a first in the game, but for some that price tag is too steep.
Officers betting against the raid
After the 20th Supremus kill the game can get a tad boring. There's no doubt about it. Raiders know well that you have to spice things up to keep it fun. One way to do that is to have a lively bunch of people you raid with. With them things can get "interesting" at times. The fellow officers and I in my guild have decided to make things interesting by betting on the number of people that will die during Supremus.For some reason Supremus always manages to kill a few too many people. Not too many that we can't one-shot him, but enough that it makes you scratch your head. No one dies on Illidan, Council, etc... but Supremus? Run for the hills!So to keep the fight interesting someone picks a number, say nine. That number is "the line." Myself and a couple others will take under the line, and a couple others will take over. If less then nine people die, each of us gets 20g. If more than nine die the other folks get 20g each.Is betting against the raid like this a good thing?
Disclaimer: Faction grinding is not actually fun
Faction grinding may be a bore, but it is a necessary evil in games like World of Warcraft. As much as you may not like sitting around an area and killing the same creatures over, and over, and over again for items, you may be doing just that once you hit the level cap and have nothing better to do. All of a sudden, that faction grind is looking mighty tempting.Kaliope heard through the grapevine that Blizzard might be considering a new method of achieving faction points. One of the possible ideas mentioned: letting faction unlocks occur on an server level rather than on a per-character basis. Instead of doing the grind with every single one of your characters on a server, only your main would have to grind all the way up to exalted. Then, all of your characters on that server could claim the benefits of having the exalted level.Obviously this would mean some angry customers and more high-end items hitting the market, so the idea isn't perfect. But there's an interesting discussion going on at Kaliope's blog about how to ease the grind so it actually can become fun, rather than a slow and painful gameplay element.
Player vs. Everything: Starting over
Most of us have spent a lot of time playing our favorite games. Chances are good that unless you're totally new to the MMOG world, you've got at least one character at some ridiculously high level, armed to the teeth, sitting on a big pile of gold amongst the trophies of your slaughtered foes. You might even be part of a guild and still play that character with your guildmates on a regular basis to go topple foes of ever-increasing power. It's good to be a dragon-slaying, world-destroying, gold-hoarding demigod of awesomeness. That's why it's so tough to start over, sometimes. Whether it's rolling up an alt on your current game or picking up an entirely new game, it can be really frustrating to go from a bloodthirsty, battle-hardened warrior who wades into combat swinging an enormous, glowing two-handed sword to some level 1 nobody with a leather jerkin and a knife. All of your accomplishments on your old character seem pretty far away when level 3 wolves are having you for a light afternoon snack, and a brand new grind stretches out interminably before you. Is it any wonder why plenty of players don't even bother with having alts and stick to the game they like?
Breakfast Topic: Daily chores
Some people really seem to enjoy repping up with various factions. I am not one of them. I've known people who complete the maximum amount of daily quests on multiple characters. It's fantastic that Blizzard has opened up opportunities for relatively easy gold and reputation, but I wish there was a little more variety in the experience. Prior to Patch 2.4, when the limit was ten, I don't think that I ever completed more than four or five dailies per day. Now that we've been bombarded with Quel'Danas dailies and the limit is twenty-five, I do up to eight on rare occasions. I almost always complete the daily battleground quest, but that's about it most days. I know that they're an excellent source of gold, but they feel like such a chore to me. I find daily questing to be almost as much fun as washing dishes and doing laundry. If it means I never get epic flying mounts on my characters, so be it. How many dailies do you do and what keeps you motivated to do them?
TurpsterVision: Did I mention there is a war going on?
Every Tuesday think "T" for Turpster and take the "a" in "day", capitalize it, remove the little bit in the middle, turn it upside down and you get a "V". Put the two together and you'll have TV for TurpsterVision -- the best Internet video podcast on Massively! (Never mind that business about it being the only video podcast on Massively...)Another average week, another fantastic TV Episode. This time around I've decided to have a look at Richard Garriott's Tabula Rasa. I've heard a few good things about this title, but to be honest, I've heard far more bad things. I am not one to make up my mind on a game before I've played it, so I went down to my local store and picked up a copy. It just so happened that the Collector's Edition of the game was cheaper than the standard edition – go figure. I'm not complaining since I get a nifty little floating robot non-combat pet that follows me around!To see the review as always you have to take the step into the void and join us on the other side of the break.
Player vs. Everything: Age of Conan's 250 hours
It's going to take you 250 hours to get to level 80 in Age of Conan. That's the big news today, and I'm not sure exactly how I feel about that. On the one hand, that tells us very little about the actual game. Saying you have 250 hours of content means nothing unless that content is fun content. On the other, it does let you know exactly what you're getting into as far as a time commitment goes (on average). It's also important to note that that's pretty close to World of Warcraft's benchmark, too -- most players can get from 1-70 in 6 to 14 days played. I think my first 70 took me about 7 and 1/2 days. What's a good length of time for the leveling game to be, anyway? If you make it too long and drawn out, won't many players quit in frustration before they ever get to the top (EverQuest was notorious for having players that never capped)? Maybe. Let them level too quickly, though, and they'll quit if there's nothing to do at the top. Even if there is something to do when you're capped, for many people, leveling is the game. I'm probably one of those people. I hate structured PvP (like arenas) and while I dabble in raiding, I really have more fun leveling. So is 250 hours long enough to keep you interested? And why even tell us that in the first place? What does Age of Conan's 250 hours mean to you?
Anti-Aliased: I wear funny hats and I'm proud of it
Since when did role-playing become a dirty word? Apparently even mentioning the initials of the dreaded "RP" is enough to make people want to prove John Gabriel's Greater Internet Dickwad Theory as loudly as possible. Players go out of their way to make others feel uncomfortable and to ruin any sort of fun some people may have. Is it because it's the internet? Or have we forgotten the history of the role-playing game?Because I can't exactly spend a whole column talking about the horrors of the internet (NSFW) I'm going to be focusing on the place of role-playing and how it got interjected into these online games of ours.
WoW Rookie: Azeroth Reputations
WoW Rookie is brought to our readers to help our newest players get acclimated to the game. Make sure you send a note to WoW Insider if you have suggestions for what new players need to know. Grinding for reputation is a part of the game. Think of it as leveling up with different factions. Last week we looked at the levels of reputation. This week we'll examine some of the reputations that you encounter in Azeroth. Each of the major cities represent factions reputations that you can grind up with by completing quests and donating cloth. Increasing your reputation with the cities of your faction gives you the opportunity to purchase their racial mounts and tabards, in addition to discounts from vendors. For example if you play a Human, you can rep up to exalted with Darnasus in order to get a Nightsaber mount. Be warned, though because of scaling restrictions some models may not have access to all racial mounts.
Breakfast Topic: The easy/hard grind
I'm currently working through Zangarmarsh on my Hunter, and this weekend I spent a lot of time grinding two completely different kinds of mobs. The Withered Bog Lords in northern Zangarmarsh were cake for my Hunter -- they weren't exactly gentle with my pet, but he was able to eat the damage, and I could have grinded right away on them all day. At the exact opposite end of the grinding scale, however, were those stupid Umbrafen Eels -- not only were they under water (always annoying), but they've got this on-hit electrical damage thing that just drove me nuts. I stayed to play with the Bog Lords for a long time, racking up the XP, but as soon as I was done with the Eels, I got out of the water and stayed out.Fighting these two back to back got me thinking: what's the easiest/hardest mob to grind on? Some mobs (like the tigers in Stranglethorn or the bears/spiders in Ashenvale) are super easy to grind -- they have no special abilities, they're spaced out, and they go down fast. But others -- most gnolls, in my experience, and lots of casters -- are just annoying as all get out; they run around, pull others, heal up when they're almost dead, and give you lots of headaches while taking them down. Those are the mobs you don't sit around and grind on -- they're the ones you avoid completely after you've done whatever quest requires you to kill them.What are your favorite or least favorite mobs to just grind on in the game?
Why PvE shouldn't be a dirty word in WAR
For almost as long as we've known about Warhammer Online, we've known that Mythic has intended for the game to be a PvP player's paradise. It's a game that from the beginning has emphasized the merits of its RvR gameplay. Tired of mindlessly killing bears for bear pelts in World of Warcraft? Come to WAR, where instead you're rewarded for besting your human-controlled foes in battle. It's not a grind, it's a test of skill! Over at the Greenskin, they're cautioning us not to drink the RvR kool-aid. While player versus player combat can certainly be a center-piece of the WAR experience, it has the capacity to be every bit the boring grind that PvE gameplay is. Substantively, is there really any difference between collecting 1000 player skulls and 1000 NPC skulls? The DAoC expansions suffered from an over-emphasis on PvE for progression, so their hope is that WAR benefits from that experience and Mythic implements both in moderation. After all, as we've explored before, aren't PvE and PvP really complementary? Doesn't PvP depend inherently on the faction ties we develop collaboratively tackling public quests? It's a good point, and one we hope Mythic keeps in mind in their recently-extended polishing period.
Singing the praises of Heroic Countenance
Lariana on Skywall has words of praise for "Heroic Countenance," a new NPC spell in patch 2.4 that unlocks you to the Heroic mode of MrT -- to get it cast on you, you have to complete the instance on Normal mode first by doing a quest to kill of Kael'thas once and for all. Basically, it replaces the Heroic reputation keys, which Lariana says were a much less interesting system than Heroic Countenance.And Bornakk basically confirms that Blizzard agrees (well, all he says is that they'll talk about it on the next Blizzcast, but he adds a smiley, so odds are that Blizzard is down with the Heroic Countenance). They've been talking for a while, too, about making the reputation grind easier for alts and guilds, so maybe this type of spell is how they'll deal with that -- get it cast on one of your characters, and it will be cast on all of them.The only question, then, is what to do with all those Heroic keys that we've picked up. The answer is probably nothing -- Blizzard doesn't really care, it seems, about updating old content, and my guess is that the instances in Outland won't be changing much from their current form. But in Wrath, it might be fun if the keys stayed, but opened up other, less consequential content. Instead of Heroic mode, what if a Revered rep key opened up the way to an additional optional boss, or an additional loot area per run? Not enough to make it necessary, but enough to reward those who went all the way with the reputation factions in the game.
Breakfast Topic: Easy Mode
Roadkillowns of Aerie Peak posed the question on the official forums, what is the easiest class to level? Hunter came up most frequently as an easy class to level followed by Warlocks. They usually have very little downtime. Protection Warriors and Holy Priests were often quoted as the most difficult to level. Having leveled a Shaman, Paladin, Hunter, Priest, and Druid to level seventy myself I have to say that as a solo character, the Hunter was hands-down the easiest for me. Between my pet carrying agro for me and the glorious Feign Death ability, I was always good to go.
Wealthy elves I have known
It's probably true that the best way to make money in the game is to farm primals, but sometimes you just can't stomach the idea of killing yet another elemental or -- given how busy most of the primal hot-spots are -- having to compete to kill them. It's in trying times like these that your thoughts turn to quieter pursuits like flower-picking, finishing some quests you left lying around, or at least taking your mindless slaughter act on the road.For my money, nothing beats the manaforges in Netherstorm. The elves there are like hundreds of milling, unsuspecting piñatas, ripe for the clobbering. Over an hourlong grind session with not-terrible gear, and with occasional breaks to tell people that you will never set foot in Shattered Halls ever again even if it is the daily, you can get the following:
Are daily quests leaving casuals behind?
Daily quests have come a long way from when they first appeared. They first seemed to be the perfect solution for those stuck at level 70 with nothing to do, the casuals who really didn't feel like moving on to the 10 and 25-man game, or just didn't have the time to. They were a great way to break up the monotony of making money by grinding mobs with lucrative drops or mining and herbing. They also let you progress slowly and steadily towards that magical 5000 gold mark and your own epic mount. Sure, they're still good for all that, but they've also gotten to be so much more. So really, what's the deal with dailies now? Let's look at it after the break.
A tale of grinding, sucking and snowboarding
Cameron Sorden has an interesting post about grinding and why it sucks over on his blog, Random Battle. It's mostly focused on World of Warcraft, because like many of us he plays the game quite a bit. We can all agree that grinding endlessly is no fun, but some of the suggestions made by Cameron seem a bit strange. Such as the idea of having a snowboarding mini-game in WoW to off-set the tedium of grinding. Now we get what he's trying to say here, "Add more stuff other than monster killing, quests/raids and battlegrounds please." And sure, putting in a mini-game where you snowboard down the Alterac Mountains wouldn't be the usual grind-fest, but it also has nothing to do with WoW. Then there's his claim that wow needs to become even more casual, which we're not even sure how it could do that without renaming itself "Club Wowkinz" or something. Cameron feels it will be a necessity for World of Warcraft to add new and interesting ways to alleviate the grind, but from what we've seen there are mostly more raids on the horizon. Yet we would argue that even though people say that grinding isn't what they want, they don't seem to realize it's what they keep buying. It's not as if World of Warcraft is nearing 10 million subscribers, right? Oh wait, yeah, it is.
Forum Post of the Day: Bring back the honor grind!
Believe it or not, there is actually someone out there who wants Blizzard to bring back the old honor system. You remember: the system where you had to slave away for hours and hours (and hours) day after day (after day) in order to get anything epic -- especially the "Grand Marshal" or "High Warlord" epic weapons. Apparently, Pahs thinks that the time sink the old honor system required proved a deeper dedication on the part of the players who went for it. Nowadays, anybody -- even people with jobs(!) -- can just earn up their honor points and spend them like money, when, according to Pahs, such folks should be content to "talk to a few friends and maybe do a BG or two." He says, and I quote: "Why people with real life responsibility's want the same treatment as people who can input more time into the game is beyond me."Yet a surprising number of posters in his thread agree with him, citing the number one problem with the current system: the appearance of AFKers in all the battlegrounds. Naturally, it offends our sense of justice that AFKers can get honor gear for free by having their characters sitting in the battlegrund leeching off of their teammates, while they themselves don't have to put in any effort at all. In the previous system, players would have had to actually kill the enemy and win in order to progress past rank 5 or so. Likewise, the old system's ranks and titles were fun -- people always like to be able to distinguish themselves from others, though whether for a genuine feeling of achievement or some kind of "Better than thou" badge, depends on the individual.But going back to the old honor grind in order to get rid of AFKers would be ridiculous. As Tyren says, the newer system, with arenas and objective-based world PvP in addition to battlegrounds, is a vast improvement. It provides more access and variety to more players, and exchanges time for rewards at a far more reasonable pace. What we see in this case is a classic example of people reminiscing about the "good old days," which were never really that good to begin with, simply because frustrating problems have appeared along with the improvements. As much as we all may hate AFKers and other new problems, it's much better to go forward and find new ways to solve such problems than to go back to such an unbalanced system with far more serious flaws of its own.
The Daily Grind: The daily grind
At this point, it's still pretty much assured that if you're playing an MMO, you're going to be grinding a bit. Sure, it's possible that there are MMOs out there where you can get all the way to the highest level just by doing quests, or by running with groups, or even by doing PvP. But there are still times in every game where we've done all the quests for a certain level, there's no one around to group with, and we're just PvP'd out. For those times, there's the regular old grind.So what's makes a good grind? For me, a great grind has to have three different things: 1) It can't tax my mind too much-- I'd like to have a movie or some music going on in the background, or be able to multitask in some way (in fact, I'm writing this post while mining in EVE). 2) It has to be worthwhile-- I need to be earning gold, or XP, or collecting something while I do it, or else there's no reason to grind at all. And 3) it has to be fun. Even in EVE, I have a good time browsing the market and dreaming of ship upgrades while mining, and it's broken up just at the right time by an NPC pirate arriving to become drone fodder. There's nothing wrong with a little mindless fun, but the fun has to be there all the same.Did I miss anything? What makes a great grind? And what's the best game/place/situation to do some great MMO grinding in?
Confronting the grind (and finding it in ourselves)
Ryan Shwayder pointed us to this fun little rant he posted on that most nefarious of MMO subjects: "the grind." Yes, the grind, that mythical beast that lies at the bottom of every MMO, slowly sucking the fun out of it. Wait, "mythical"? That's right-- Shwayder says that there is no grinding in MMOs. That constant, repetitive killing that you do to push your character to higher equipment and levels? That, my friend, is what you bought the game for.An interesting point, and in a sense, he's right-- the only RPG I've ever played without a little repetitive grinding is actually Progress Quest (and if you're in on the joke, you know you don't actually play that game at all). It is true that "the grind" only rears its ugly head not when players are signed in and playing the game, but when they're out of game, and looking at all the stuff they need to do to wield that +5 sword of boar slaying. In a good game, actually grinding is actually fun.Then again, we are only human, and there is so much boar killing you can do before you decide to move on. And since playtime is more and more at a premium, there's nothing wrong with developers making something that previous required 100 boars killed to require only 50, and create a whole other reward for those other 50 boars. But Ryan's also right in saying that the grind is mostly in our heads-- if we got everything we wanted right away, there'd be no reason to play the game. "Grinding" to the highest levels is what playing most MMOs is all about.
