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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Zelda Themelin" data-source="post: 5381953" data-attributes="member: 167">Ah, innocense of relativly new player. I've played since beta. Not activly though, I tend to do these half year drop outs, but I got back always when my life got boring. The grinding is there ahright, it's however really forced at highest level. Leveling is not really grindy, it's just boring. And most of the quests are really pretty much 4 different type. I very rarely even read quest texts. Original reason for this is I used to play on on pvp server, and that was time when ganking in levelin areas (mainly around tarren mills, and after that certain jungle coast get really popular, and mind controlling people to run into lave in blackrock) you had to be very fast in taking and returning quests since you were going to die.Blizzard did make some big changes into pvp after game evolved. Back in early versions pvp server people were trying to get massive "wars" to happen. That ended up crashing the server. Later patch you could no longer have honor from lower lv player and and blizzard introduced Battlegrouds.Those changes killed real world pvp, only ones that remained were those griefers/gangarks who didnt' need other rewards to haress low levels.Weird thing really, I used to like leveling more with gankers, I guess they made quests more exating. Yeh, it wasn't fun to do constant corpse runs, but it kinda brough up my fighting will. Between beta-classic-tbc-wolk-cataclysm patch (and verious major patches), wow has changed quite a lot.And leveling is actually faster and easier and there are more quests, and you don't have "dead" levels as far as quests go. Game has always tried to be balanced, success with this is constantly debated. However it has succesfully became more streamlined.If wow was rpg. it feels like game system has gone through edition changes, and dm's have changed, but kept using staff and cracters from old dm:s.Latest change iin gameplay is actually about as big as difference between D&D3 and D&D4. With similar goals, to simplify things, so that game would be easier to balance again.And many players were crying bloody murder. Yeh, that was really big change. But wow players generally get more whiny about minor things too compared to d&D players. No-one seems to have that sort of great feelings toward, say WotC. Blizzard on the other hand. Yeh, both are ignoring you as person, but blizzard is actually running your game, and there is no real communication and changes come out of blue, and that said those blue posts and patch notes don't inform about everything. And there has been cases where important information concerning changes has just failed to apper anywhere until it's discovered in actuall play.I think you are still in lucky spot where you don't simple feel the grindiness, you still think going over to same raid instances is fun. It's still called grinding raid instances, by all I know in wow at least.But you have one very important thing, pleasant company to play with. And friend's happiness is catching sort.And I am not sure you would under those circumstances feel the grind either, even in thos infamous asian games. Not for while, at least.Grindy feeling, I've noticed is related to when you "have to" do something repentative you feel is boring to get to some (in this case immaterial) goal. Like doing some instance until that one item drops. Like having to max out reputation of some faction, to get some reward. Or get x amount of gold to get that awesome mount, or get some titansteel for your crafting. There are gold sellers because getting that gold is immensivly grindy. It takes lot of time. Many working adults don't have the time. WoW:s economy is too competive about time used. Success demands you play lot doing specific useful things in game, often very grindy things. Or you can become Auchion House expert. Not all can make it work, I did that when I got bored at getting items/gold myself. It's basicly buy cheep, sell expansive.All MMO:s are very grindy. That's how they keep customers. They can't come with real (interesting) content for millions. YOu aren't gathering for your gaming group you are creating for great number of people with various tastes. So they have go for basic human nature. Our need to compite and to gather. Then they paint this very simple basic setup with many "stories". But they arent' really effecting nothing, world doesn't change no matter what players do, you just get levels and stuff.This is major differance say between Dragon age and WoW. Single play computer games always have had rather linear storylines. Perhaps spiced with some ahem "grinding" (sorry I rather like the word). This is missing from Dragon age it just has linear story, you can choose to do more quests than main plot requires and you get some rewards, but it's really more about getting more story.Those games have shorter life-span. And if they were good sellers we get next part very soon. Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2, Mass Effect 3 to come. Dragon age origins, dragon age the awakening, dragon age 2 to come.Blizzard makes games with longer lifespan. But they have Diablo, Starcraft and WoW MMO. And WoW is pretty good MMO.I think it's great we can have many possbilities of computer games to choose to. Tabletop rpg:s fills a diffrent spot. No real person dm, can be great and suck the way those MMO:s do. When people loose their friends from tabletop gemes to some MMO, it's likely not only hobby they give up. MMO:s if played competitivly consume lot of time. They are addictive pretty much the same way slot machines are with little poker added. Fun comes from more complex reasons but addiction really from very similar reason than for those games. Not everyone playing MMO is unhealthily consumed by it. Some are honestly just having fun and are righfully insulted by such alligations.If you want your players back from MMO to game table, best way to usually have it, is keep asking them to play, tell how awesome your game was. And wait. If they are addictive personalities they might never come back to play rgp:s at least not as often. They prolly just change their MMO when they get bored. And some will find they prefer that hobby over tabletop rpgs. Back when I was kid we had this friend who started becoming elusive about our roleplaying. When comforted him about it regularly and he always gave this irritating answer "I can't neglect my duties for my computer". Yeh he seriously said that every damn time. It sounds more stupid in finnish. Ah, and then we got back at him hitting and throwing some pillows we called "his name here" simulators. We were 11 years old at time. And mind you that pillow war that followed was much much more fun than any roleplaying game.</blockquote>

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