How is the grind now?

pkim96

I really liked AO a looooooooooong time ago when I used to play.  I've been trying out a lot of games recently, and it occurred to me that I should give AO another try.

I quit playing because the grind got to me.  I played before any expansion packs were released, so I was basically doing the same random generated missions over and over and over and over and over again.  I got sick to death of it, and I eventually only did the pvp raids on that dragon and helped guildies camp.

Now that there are the expansion packs, is the grind a lot better?  I'm level 150something, and I remember the experience curve to level was insane.

theratmonkey

Well, with the expansions, you have more to do.

You can go lvl in the shadowlands for hecks, or go to dungeons in SL.

You can do AI raids, which are fun.

It's fun. I'm taking a bit of a break from it, but you have alot of stuff to do now on it.

niksa

I'm a returning player and I find that the grind isn't so terribly bad. Missions aren't the ONLY source of income or XP anymore, but you can still do them. Plus Shadowlands REALLY helps. So if you're coming back and hate the grind, definitely consider getting the froob upgrade.

sempiternal

What's wrong with grind.  Grind causes players to specialize in only that which they are interested in.  It also causes activities within the game to have value.

Phoenix_Hawk

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Originally posted by sempiternal
What's wrong with grind. Grind causes players to specialize in only that which they are interested in. It also causes activities within the game to have value.

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So long as it's within reason it's not too bad. Levelling in SL I find can be too fast. I mean 100 in a day or two is doable, 50 in a day is easy. It starts slowing down after that but there is the story of the guy with enough pre-planing and help that did 200 or 220 in a couple of days. If you really milk the hecks you can level a bit too fast but if you take breaks from them I find the progression to be rather nice. But if you want to talk about a grinder there's always Dofus. Tried that for a few months, everything possible was made into a grind in that game.

bounce

there's always enough other stuff on the to-do list in AO
than just grinding...that makes it kinda endurable
compared to other games it's rather 'easy' to level
anyway sad we're still waiting on that genius who invents
the grindless MMO
to the OP: the expansions did a lot to improve the missions-
boredom...you have alternatives now
(i still find RK-mishes creepy hehe)

nynniva

Mission grinding became faction grinding and heckler/mortig grinding in a team in inferno. You can get faster, better xp ....provided you find a group within a couple of hours and don't mind repetitive mass slaying. If you aren't in a race to 220 though, Shadowlands provided me with about a year of things to do before I got bored of it If you quit pre-SL, I'd say it is worth coming back for that, yes.

Brumazk

I'm an old player as well (beta and till Notum Wars came out). I just got that offer to get all the expansions for free.

What made me leave back then:

The mission grind. Grinding is normally boring, but AO mission grinding was mindnumbingly stupid. To get weapons/armor/credits/xp you had to visit a mission dungeon with lots of little compartements with 1 or 2 mobs in each. Clean compartement, then move to the next, rince repeat for next mission. Like working in a factory production line. You actually used an external program to search for missions giving the suitable reward, else you had to go thru hours of junk drops. Has this changed in any way and can you advance without this now?

The implants. Finding the right implants, putting them together, and implanting them was a huge pain. This was so bad you had to use a third party program to calculate the implants you can make and what you need to put them in. Doing this was a necessity and you had to go thru it every couple of levels to stay up to date. Really bad game design there, too complicated, expensive and badly implemented. And as putting together implants gave xp it was used by exploiters to bot characters to high levels over night. Probably what made me give up the game back then. Has this changed in any way?

I'd love to reactivate my old crat and explore a little, but is it worth it? And do I need to have SL to find people and advance normally now?

Brumazk 

nynniva

Lolz ...you can't get high lvl from making implants anymore - and most people choose to 'xp' in Shadowlands rather than doing RK missions. Even at lower levels, there are dungeons people go to now that are more consistent xp over time than mission repeating. I quit around the same time you did the first time, then I came back for SL/AI (about another year and a half). I quit due to some RL issues almost a year ago, and I am still deciding whether or not to come back, but I can honestly tell you that an 8+ hour a day player like myself was kept entertained by the amount of content in AO for a year and a half and it is the standard by which I measure every other MMO I try.

Still looking for one as good as AO. Not finding it. Hovering over resubscribe button. *twitch*

Beezly

Yeah, the expansions add a lot more content to the game besides grinding.