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I am not talking about the dance show on MTV from the 90's. But I think everyone who has played any MMO for a good length of time knows what I am talking about.
For those that don't know what I am talking about I will try to define grinding the best way I can. Grinding in a MMO is performing the same or similar action repeatedly to get a result. It could be picking flowers, killing monsters or selling items to other players. If you are still unclear about what I am talking about wikipedia has an excellent article about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grind_(gaming).
I don't think there is anyway to avoid this aspect of the game. I think much of the grinding that is needed is unavoidable. Items can be sold between other players and these items have a perceived value. There has to be ways to make money in the game so people can trade much more easily. If a good way to make money is to repeat the same action over and over again then so be it.
I don't mind grinding that can be done as an individual player. What I do mind is when it is part of a group or as a raid.
If I wanted to get a pair of the Warglaive of Azzinoth I need to drag at least 9 other people with me to Black Temple and have a very small probability that this item will drop. If I reserve the item for myself, what do the other people get out of it? I am thinking now that as I write this that the only thing I can offer them is gold. And it has to be enough gold to justify the amount of time they have spent in the raid. If they can make more money doing something else with their time then they should do that instead. I guess this is fair, I want an item for cosmetic purposes and I have figure out how much time and effort I am willing to spend to get it.
But currently we are grinding ulduar to get a useful item for one of our healers. Val'anyr,Hammer of Ancient Kings I guess is an item that would be very useful for our main tank healer. The problem is that the fragments that drop for the item have an incredibly low drop rate. If it is a good week we can get 2 fragments after a full clear of ulduar. Thirty Fragments of Val'anyr are needed to get the item and after many weeks of farming I think we have 8 of them. Requiring 20-25 people to grind through a raid for several months to get an item like this is just silly.
Super Simian Sphere is a northrend zone world drop item that must have a very low drop rate. I finally had this drop me me in a LFD run in oculus. I lost the roll of course but what disturbed me more is I have run hundreds of heroics and WOTLK raids this past year and I only have seen this item drop once in all of that time. It seems to me that this is an extremely rare item or I have been incredibly unlucky all of that time. It seems to me with the amount of time I have played this game the past year that I should have several of these on various characters.
I understand that rare items like these are the carrot that will make players continue to play the game, but my thinking is that the drop rates can be adjusted on these items to make them more common. I don't think getting a particular item or achievement should be described as a "soul crushing" grind. I don't think that at anytime a game should punish people for attempting do something. I guess the people that have gotten an item would be very excited because it is so rare and can enjoy it more but those that miss out just feel resentful about the whole situation.
The trash monsters in the game also seem to contribute to the repetitiveness experienced in the game. Why do the trash packs have to be the same composition all of the time? Could the trash maybe be a bit different to kill each time you face it? Making a group of people kill the same monsters again and again is what will burn people out. I think trash should be different each time you kill it. Or maybe when you have finally killed the last boss in a wing of a raid instance maybe that trash should not appear again and the next time you go back kill that boss you can go straight to the boss to kill it?
