To Grind Or Not To Grind?

In the early days of MMORPGs, there really was no option at all. If you wanted to get to the next level of character progression, you simply had to grind. For those unfamilar with the term, to grind in a MMORPG means to kill tons of monsters in an attempt to gain a level. Over the years, many new MMORPGs have come along, and the options have expanded. But, have we progressed away from the necessity to grind or simply replaced the grind with a different form of grind? Today we will take a look at the history of the grind and how it has changed over the years.

Everquest: Don't Question The Grind! Never Question The Grind!!

Everquest, despite it's name sake, was the grand daddy of grind. If you wanted experience, then you killed mobs. End of story. And, by golly we did it with a smile on our faces as we walked up hill both ways in two feet of snow too. The reality of the situation is that it was a necessity as part of the game mechanics that we accepted becuase we knew of no other way to get that druel inspiring "DING!" that we so greatly needed.

Everquest II: All hail the grind is dead. Long live the quests!

And, then there was Everquest II. The promising from God that all will be right in the world and little bunnies would be able to sleep soundly at night with out the fear of nerd raged humans hunting them down non-stop to move their experience bar a nanometer to the right. Oh the glories that you brought to us EQ2. We had quests, collections, heritage quests, lore and legend quests, signature quests, location discoveries, and more quests that so lovenly massaged our experience bar to the right. DING! DING! DING!

Lord of the Rings Online: Quests And Nothing But Quests...?

It was bound to happen eventually. Gamers complained about grinding mobs so much that eventually some game designer got the bright idea that they would do away with mob grinding for experience all together. Lord of the Rings Online came out with this game design in mind. Instead of killing mobs to gain experience, the gamer would kill mobs to complete quests. The end result is that turning in the quest would net you the majority of your experience. Along those lines, they went further and just made the game in such a way that you felt as though you were playing a movie rether then living in a virtual world. What I mean by this is that you in essence were dragged along by your nose from one quest to the next as the game unfolded a storyline before you.

There is a lot to be said about the freedom of playing a sandbox type mmorpg where you are free to make your own storyline rether then being force fed the storyline of the game due to quests. Lord of the Rings Online changed the way that most MMORPGs are made, and a great deal of what made MMORPGs special was lost due to this change. In one fell swoop, MMORPGs went from being an open-ended sandbox virtual world you live in to becoming a multi-player story line based RPG that you play online.

And, in the end, aren't you really doing the same thing. You are still grinding, but instead of getting your experience from killing the mobs, you are instead getting your experience from the quest giver when you turn in the quest that had you go "GRIND" the mobs in the first place. They simply moved the point of experience gain from time-of-mobs-death to time-of-quest-turn-in.

Warhammer Online: Grind? Me no understand grind! BASH WAG!

Just when we thought it couldn't possibly get worse, along comes the WAG!-wagon. Warhammer Online took the worst of both worlds and combined them in a hell that only it could get wrong. Not only did you have to do an insane number of quests to get experience, but you also had to grind pvp kills to get realm rank experience. Yes. You have 2 experience bars now! You heard me. TWO!!! For the love of God, I lost the majority of my real life to one experience bar, and now I have two!!!one!!11! DAMN! The worst part is that the experience gain in this game was insanely slow. Most casual gamers that stuck it out for longer then a week were lucky to make it to level 15 before throwing their collector's edition box in the garbage and tossing lighter fluid on it. WAG THIS! **POOF** Oh the humanity!

In Conclussion
It's been a very interesting first ten years in the MMORPG industry. We have seen the grind be toned down, changed names, moved from here to there, and increased. No matter what, the grind is alive and kicking in every MMORPG. They just find new fancy ways to cover up the fact that you are grinding. All being told, I think that Everquest II has the right idea. It is a nice balance of experience grind versus quest grind, and they offer a lot of different ways to get that satisfying "DING!". I guess in the end, I just like having options available to me.

Starting Out
You start the game out much the way you start out any super hero game in the character creation screen. Now if you are anything like me, you finally enter the game about five hours later because there are so many options and sliders to play with during character creation. Seriously, there is a ton of optimization available for you to utilize in making your character your own.

The Tutorial Begins...
The tutorial starts out with Millenium City under attack. The feeling is very epic and gets your adrenalin pumping right off the bat. You will find that there is a good story arch of quests that will lead you from beginning to the end of the tutorial.
 
It is very easy to find yourself finishing the tutorial with out realizing you just spent time leveling up in a MMORPG. The reason for this is the fact that the game play is very fast paced and action oriented. It doesn't feel much like your traditional MMORPG mob and quest grind. I felt more like I was playing through an enjoyable game rether then trying to chase the carrot to the next level. That is a breath of fresh air these days as most MMORPGs just make you feel like you are working a second job at times.
 
At the end of the initial tutorial area, you will enter an instance and go through a scripted fight to defeat the "boss mob" for that area. The scripted events in the game seem very fleshed out with high quality voice overs and enjoyable battle sequences. I truly wish more MMORPGs would do away with the whole "reading" thing. I love voice overs in my games. I hate reading paragraphs at every NPC just to know the lore involved in a game. Good job Cryptic!
 
Breaking in to the second tutorial area
After you finish off the initial tutorial area, you should be right around level 5, and you are given the option of either going to a desert area in the south west or a wintery area in Canada.
 
I tried both of these two zones, and I have to say that the desert area to me was a LOT better and enjoyable. The Canada zone just felt a bit unfinished to me. But, it might have just been my preference for the theme of the content in the desert zone which ranged from old west ghost towns to nuclear fall out test desert wastes (akin to the movie 'The Hills Have Eyes').
 
The leveling in these two zones move on a nice steady rate, and you can easily go from level 5 to 12 here if not more. I personally got to level 13, and then I opted to go check out the end-of-beta event in Millenium City instead of continuing on.
 

Overall Opinion
The Open Beta of Champions Online is now over, and the early access to the game starts this weekend 8/28. I had the opportunity to play the game this past weekend, and I have to say that this was one of the smoothest and most enjoyable MMORPG beta tests I have ever been in.
 
Over all, Champions Online is a very well designed, developed, and realized MMORPG. The graphics are beautiful! The game play is extremely fun! The character customization is better then any other in the industry!
 
I give Champions Online a 9.5 out of 10. I would have given it a 10, but there is no such thing as a perfect MMORPG and there never will be.