To be honest I dont agree with the OP, I am fed up with games that give players everything on a plate, look at wow and just about every other game out at the moment, they all offer really fast in roads to end game and end game pvp within only a few short days.
Dont you people realize that when you earn something so easily that you have nothing invested in it, and therfore have no real attachment to it, it breeds poor communities people come and go, people act like twats because they dont really care about the game, its community or their character therein because they as I said have not gotten attached to it.
Dont know about the rest of you but I would much preffer a world I can get totally lost in, I want a game where hardcore players can play 24/7 and still take a year to level cap, I want a game with so many crafting options that a player can really be unique in the things they make and people can come to know them, and rely on them for the items their known for making, I want an mmo that DOES NOT HAVE THOTTBOT, or other sites like it, they ruin the immersion , I want an mmo where I need to read the damn quest log, not just pick up the quest open map run to dot kill stuff collect loot run back.
Give me a breathing, rich, deep world that I can get lost in, discover things in that's not all over some damn website, give me a game that's open world, massive in scale, and lore rich, and let me truelly play within it, let me mold it, and let it hurt when I mess it up.
I want a world that when I get killed I sit back and think SHII********TTT , and not sit there without even batting an eyelid just run back to corpse and gogogogogogoogogogogog, give me a world where if I see a mob thats 5 levels or more above me I really cack my pants and want to avoid it, and not just think screw it grave yard is close to where I wana go i'll just let it eat me.
I think people have lost track of what, or just how deep, fulfilling and rich mmo's can be, their all just far to used to this watterd down canned crap that is being shoved down our throats now.
I like how so many people are making random assumptions, the game hasn't even hit beta, or testing of any sort for anyone except internal, yet people are stating there's "NO GRIND" and raiding is obsolete, how do people know all this?
It is so cool that so many people have played this game already and know so much about it. I mean we know that they could not be going off the hype machine. Those comments are never ever ever false.
As a matter of fact, I just played this game today, and so have hundreds of others. You have any questions?
You know people are still playing GW1 after 6 years, right? The same game with optional grind and a quick path to max level, where 3/4 of the game is "endgame?"
You don't like it, fine. Darkfall exists, EVE exists, ArcheAge is coming down the pike.
I like how so many people are making random assumptions, the game hasn't even hit beta, or testing of any sort for anyone except internal, yet people are stating there's "NO GRIND" and raiding is obsolete, how do people know all this?
In a word, precedent. This game is made by the same people who made GW1, which hews to that standard.
Do you know of any reason why we should assume the devs are lying when they specifically lay out how gear will work and be acquired (they have) in GW2, given they made GW1 with the same goals?
Can you think of an MMO released ever where the devs said there would NOT be raids and then there WERE, instead of the other way around? Do you imagine ArenaNet will slip in all this raid content secretly to surprise people?
To be honest I dont agree with the OP, I am fed up with games that give players everything on a plate, look at wow and just about every other game out at the moment, they all offer really fast in roads to end game and end game pvp within only a few short days.
Dont you people realize that when you earn something so easily that you have nothing invested in it, and therfore have no real attachment to it, it breeds poor communities people come and go, people act like twats because they dont really care about the game, its community or their character therein because they as I said have not gotten attached to it.
I think the OP is talking about optional grind, as in you don't have to have a certain "gear score" to advance and do the next content. Since it's "easy" to get gear with the max stats then you are choosing to play content because it's fun and maybe you want a new looking piece of gear even though it might have the same stats as your current gear. So you are choosing to play content because it's fun and you want to, not because you have to. (and it is HAVE to, when you have to grind and grind, even if it's boring and not fun, until you get the right gear to be able to do the next content)
And maybe it will be too easy to get the gear with the best stats, but who cares. I would much rather play a game that relies on skill instead of who has the best gear. And if that means that everyone has the same stats for gear, I would say that's good, because it levels the playing field and makes skill the deciding factor of a fight.
I do think that people will get attached to some gear. If you really want to get the complete set of armor from a dungeon you can grind the dungeon till you get it all. I would think someone would feel accomplished and attached to a complete set of armor they earned.
If GW2 delivers what it promises, I am going to be a very happy gamer. I have no problem with finishing up leveling in a matter of weeks or a couple of months, then going off to pvp. I love to pvp, and I hate endlessly grinding gear in the same instance over and over in hopes of not getting smashed by someone who has been playing for years and has the best of everything. Same goes for grinding pvp gear in pvp where all I do is get one-shot, all in hopes that one day I'll be able to one-shot the newer players.
If I get bored of pvp for awhile, well, I also love rolling alts, and crafting, and fluffy stuff like player housing. If these guys want to make money off me between expansions, they'll easily be able to do so by selling a ridiculous number of character slots on top of a reasonable number of slots to start off with.
I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.
Every game has some form of grind. It's unavoidable in this genre, in my opinion. We'll just have to wait and see how entertaining they make it and how well they mask it.
Every MMO has grind and so will GW2. What matters is how well Anet masks that grind and turns it into fun activity. And i have faith in Anet. They surely won't make grind obvious and boring like SE did with FFXIV.
It's easy to say that every MMO will have grind, but when I was playing through Prophecies I didn't experience any that I can recall. If I'm wrong, point it out, but I played through that like a single-player game, I didn't stop, and I blew through the content of Prophecies in under a month. I didn't have to repeat a single dungeon, and the crafting materials I needed for the next stage of my armour were freely provided by the game. And if I didn't have enough to craft one piece of armour, then the collection agents would provide.
The very definition of MMO grind includes repeating the same repetitive task over and over. I recall doing this in WoW because I remember staying in the same areas and fighting the same critters for far too long. But in Prophecies I barely had enough time to get acquainted with an area before I was ushered on to the next, through a series of cut-scenes and story missions. On replaying Prophecies I even found out that it's entirely possible to complete the game by going through the story missions alone, without doing any of the side quests, even.
This is how ArenaNet managed to avoid grind - by making progression fast and painless. There was no need to keep players hanging around endlessly in an area fighting the same stuff over and over, and there was never a need to repeat content as there was in games like WoW. In WoW you have to repeat content, it's mandatory. In Guild Wars you can optionally repeat content in Hard Mode, but you could also choose to continue to blast ahead. If you tried to avoid repeating content in WoW you were punished for it. You'd get killed over and over because you didn't have the gear for that area. In WoW you had no choice, in Prophecies you did.
This is what made the grind of Prophecies optional, as I pointed out previously. Now, the question is this: Why the hell would ArenaNet look away from that? If you look at the Guild Wars 2 FAQ, they promise the same anti-grind design ethos that Prophecies had. In other words, they'll push you through content quickly without ever forcing you to repeat it. That, in an MMORPG, removes the grind. Guild Wars 2 can be a game without forced grind.
If you don't believe that then go and play Prophecies, becaus the only reason you wouldn't believe it is because WoW and Blizzard has hacked you so much that you can't believe it's possible. But the truth of the matter is that it's already been done. Prophecies did it. It's there and waiting for you. It's evidence that it can be done. It's evidence that Guild Wars 2 will follow the same design ethos.
An MMO without a grind? We must be in the twilight zone.
Champions Online did it. You could pick a build that's overly powerful and you can blast through the game. I completed Champions Online in under a fortnight.
If there's no grind, there's no reason to play.
You must never have played even one single-player game then in your entire life. I feel for you. Single-player games have a beginning, then the content, and then an ending. This is what Prophecies had. You play it for the storyline and to see what's going to happen next. If you only play MMORPGs for grind then I feel really, really sorry for you. You have no idea. I feel horrible for you. Go out and buy yourself a good single-player RPG, like New Vegas, it'll do you the world of good.
Players are always grinding something in MMOs... gear, money, xp, etc
That is an optional choice. The problem is forced grind, not what people do. Presenting what people do as an element of the game is a logical fallacy. So fallacious argument is fallacious. Very much so. Hacked people will be hacked. Haters will hate. But that doesn't reflect on the game. In WoW, you have two choices: Grind or don't play. In Guild Wars 2 you'll have two choices: Grind or don't grinid (just continue on with the content).
Apparently the latter is impossible for you to wrap your mind around. Again, plain a single-player RPG, it'll do you the world of good.
What do you instantly get the best gear upon reaching max level?
In Prophecies? Yes! I see no reason that this will change in Guild Wars 2. In fact, they've promised us that it won't. At max level you will likely have the best gear already, and the only things you 'grind' for then are cosmetic upgrades. Don't believe me? Go read some damn interviews, they've said this over and over. Don't like it? Go play WoW.
Not a lot of fun just to have everything handed to you, kinda defeats the purpose of playing a game.
It's not handed to you. Fallacious argumnt is fallacious, and idiotic. If you have one tough challenge to overcome before getting something then it's not 'handed to you.' If you have one tough challenge to overcome and you're then forced to repeat that 200 times to get what you want, then that's grind. Guild Wars 2 will opt for simply having the players do the tough challenge once. It's there in Prophecies. You don't understand because you've played too much WoW and not anything else, it seems.
This is what made the grind of Prophecies optional, as I pointed out previously. Now, the question is this: Why the hell would ArenaNet look away from that? If you look at the Guild Wars 2 FAQ, they promise the same anti-grind design ethos that Prophecies had. In other words, they'll push you through content quickly without ever forcing you to repeat it. That, in an MMORPG, removes the grind. Guild Wars 2 can be a game without forced grind.
If you don't believe that then go and play Prophecies, becaus the only reason you wouldn't believe it is because WoW and Blizzard has hacked you so much that you can't believe it's possible. But the truth of the matter is that it's already been done. Prophecies did it. It's there and waiting for you. It's evidence that it can be done. It's evidence that Guild Wars 2 will follow the same design ethos.
The point here is not that grind is optional or not but that every MMO has grind. Also it depends upon players and their attitude. I consider grind in every MMO to beoptional. If i don't want to do it no one can force me to it. Prophecies had an optional grind but i know many players spending considerable amount of time farming for armor even though all it did was add a different look, many spent lots of time coming up with unique builds to grind (farm) for gold to buy exclusive pets/weapon skins..etc, grind for titles is another example. If you are bored with PVE you can do PVP but again it was a grind filling up your factons and climbing the ladder.
But like i said, it depends upon devs if they can mask that grind and make it fun or turn it into a monotonus activity which bores you to death. If you are playing MMO you can not avoid repeptition.
There are two arguments being made here, and not by the same people. So, to address the first of these arguments, it's time for an analogy!
Take baseball. If baseball were a typical MMO (not every MMO, a "typical" MMO. Choose a popular one and you will likely find the mark), one would only be able to hit singles when it comes time to bat. It is still completely possible to win a game by hitting singles; you progress to first, then second, then third base and finally home for a point. Anybody can win a game by hitting singles. It might even be an interesting endeavor by those participating, as you can steal bases if you are skilled, etc.
Now, Guild Wars 2 as an MMO comes along and is saying you are allowed to hit home runs. Most people, given the option, would like to hit a home run because you get a point each home run, instead of waiting four rounds for the exact same point (stealing bases notwithstanding).
However, you are still playing baseball! You still have to go up to bat, still have to swing the ball, still get three swings at the ball, still can be walked, etc. When some of you say that every MMO must by definition have grind it's like saying that the game of baseball is a grind because the two teams don't just roll a die in the beginning and concede victory to the winning roll. This would be a case of reducing an argument to its 0s and 1s until it becomes ... what's the word... absurd. Nobody is arguing that the game should hand everyone victory and gear for logging in.
That's the first argument.
The second argument goes as follows: there are people who equate every piece of content in a game with every other piece of content. They make no differentiation between a dungeon and a cool pair of shades. If it's pixels, it's content, and they want all of it. To such a person there is no point in making a distinction between optional and mandatory grind. All content, to this person, is mandatory. Their goal is to consume the game entirely, like an alien race would consume Earth and leave it uninhabitable in every science fiction movie blockbuster ever made.
This is why these people say that every game has grind, and from that perspective, it makes sense. However, I would argue that such a person isn't actually playing for fun, but for consumption. The consumption is the fun, not the game. It doesn't actually matter what's in the game, and therefore, in my opinion, GW2 should not cater to such individuals. They'll consume every piece of content and move on anyway.
An MMO without a grind? We must be in the twilight zone.
If there's no grind, there's no reason to play.
Players are always grinding something in MMOs... gear, money, xp, etc
What do you instantly get the best gear upon reaching max level?
Not a lot of fun just to have everything handed to you, kinda defeats the purpose of playing a game.
You'll probably get max armour before max level in GW2. You'll buy it from vendors. However, if you want to get max armour with a certain look, you'll have to work for it. Thankfully, you won't have to waste your life 'earning' anything through repetitious grind. For example, each of GW2's dungeons has an armour set, amongst other rewards. When you beat a dungeon's explorable mode you get a token, which you can then exchange for something you want, rather than get some random loot that's no use to you.
Furthermore, Arenanet defines grind as being boring, monotonous and as something which gets in the way of having fun [Manifesto]. The developers don't want you to have to work through something you don't like in order to get to the fun stuff. Thus there are many options for how players can advance through the world. If you want to PvP and you're not fussed about prettiness, you aren't forced into raids just so you ban be equal to others.
"Those who stand at the top determine what's wrong and what's right. This very place is neutral ground! Justice will prevail, you say? But of course it will! Whoever wins this war becomes justice!"
Don't forget that Anet did mention that gear would be more important in GW2 than it was in GW1, so you won't be able to buy gear with max stats from vendors. Or atleast you will actually need to do dungeons to earn the tokens needed to buy the gear, just look at the Karma system.
Originally posted by sidhaethe Can you think of an MMO released ever where the devs said there would NOT be raids and then there WERE, instead of the other way around? Do you imagine ArenaNet will slip in all this raid content secretly to surprise people?
It doesnt matter what the devs want, it only matters what the players want.
During Rift's closed beta Trion said that class balance was an impossible goal so it would not be a priority for them. However, every update to Rift has seen huge amounts of class balancing.
If the players demand instanced raids in GW2 then ArenaNet will give the players instanced raids.
If you think the players are going to be content with GW2s meager end game content just because it has "fun gameplay" then you are sadly mistaken.
Can you think of an MMO released ever where the devs said there would NOT be raids and then there WERE, instead of the other way around? Do you imagine ArenaNet will slip in all this raid content secretly to surprise people?
It doesnt matter what the devs want, it only matters what the players want.
During Rift's closed beta Trion said that class balance was an impossible goal so it would not be a priority for them. However, every update to Rift has seen huge amounts of class balancing.
If the players demand instanced raids in GW2 then ArenaNet will give the players instanced raids.
If you think the players are going to be content with GW2s meager end game content just because it has "fun gameplay" then you are sadly mistaken.
Yeah, ArenaNet are just staying up all night worried about player retention when they don't have subscriptions to lose, an entire audience of GW1 players, single-player fans who hate MMOs, and MMO players who are burned out on raids entirely.
They've decided on their audience, and it's not you. Fortunately for them, everyone else's money is just as green.
Can you think of an MMO released ever where the devs said there would NOT be raids and then there WERE, instead of the other way around? Do you imagine ArenaNet will slip in all this raid content secretly to surprise people?
It doesnt matter what the devs want, it only matters what the players want.
During Rift's closed beta Trion said that class balance was an impossible goal so it would not be a priority for them. However, every update to Rift has seen huge amounts of class balancing.
If the players demand instanced raids in GW2 then ArenaNet will give the players instanced raids.
If you think the players are going to be content with GW2s meager end game content just because it has "fun gameplay" then you are sadly mistaken.
In a traditional MMO like WoW, the whole system is designed towards leading people to raiding. If you want the best gear, the only way to get it is to raid week in and week out. I kind of enjoy raiding, I like the challenge of it, but I'm also doing it because I want to be more and more badass and I'm stuck being part of a raiding crew 3-4 nights a week.
It's possible that people will want raiding encounters. But maybe not. People will probably be able to get very similar power gear through PVP, dungeons, crafting, or grinding, the difference will probably be skins and vanity. If it's possible to get a badass skin by doing a difficult 5 man dungeon, there really isn't a reason to do a 10 or 20 man raid unless there's even more badass skins or something (assuming they stick to vanity). And even then, with giving people a token every time, how special can you feel when you equip 20 people with the same stuff each run? It's a lot more BS than just finding 5 friends and going.
It's possible to look at the endgame content as being meager, but it's also possible to look at it as deemphasized. The game simply doesn't want to be about doing dungeon->heroic->raid 1->raid 2->raid 3 and you're done so you might as well just PVP or hang out in cities because there's nothing worthwhile to do until the next expansion. Leveling up another toon just means repeating content and facing the same gear grind at the end.
What GW2 lets you do is level quickly, and with a wide variety of personal story options. Just based on the choices a human can make at character creation, you can probably see 3 wildly different stories with only a little overlap. Add in 5 races and you'll run out of character slots before you run out of stories.
Also, consider that PVP actually is meaningful. It's not just battlegrounds that give you 3 tokens for a win and 1 for a loss but other than that the outcome doesn't matter. Win/loss standings are kept for your server and used to match you up against other servers. I think there's going to be some serious pride associated with that.
It's possible people will be asking for raid content, but it's also possible people won't once if they see they don't need it.
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it."-Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
Comments
To be honest I dont agree with the OP, I am fed up with games that give players everything on a plate, look at wow and just about every other game out at the moment, they all offer really fast in roads to end game and end game pvp within only a few short days.
Dont you people realize that when you earn something so easily that you have nothing invested in it, and therfore have no real attachment to it, it breeds poor communities people come and go, people act like twats because they dont really care about the game, its community or their character therein because they as I said have not gotten attached to it.
Dont know about the rest of you but I would much preffer a world I can get totally lost in, I want a game where hardcore players can play 24/7 and still take a year to level cap, I want a game with so many crafting options that a player can really be unique in the things they make and people can come to know them, and rely on them for the items their known for making, I want an mmo that DOES NOT HAVE THOTTBOT, or other sites like it, they ruin the immersion , I want an mmo where I need to read the damn quest log, not just pick up the quest open map run to dot kill stuff collect loot run back.
Give me a breathing, rich, deep world that I can get lost in, discover things in that's not all over some damn website, give me a game that's open world, massive in scale, and lore rich, and let me truelly play within it, let me mold it, and let it hurt when I mess it up.
I want a world that when I get killed I sit back and think SHII********TTT , and not sit there without even batting an eyelid just run back to corpse and gogogogogogoogogogogog, give me a world where if I see a mob thats 5 levels or more above me I really cack my pants and want to avoid it, and not just think screw it grave yard is close to where I wana go i'll just let it eat me.
I think people have lost track of what, or just how deep, fulfilling and rich mmo's can be, their all just far to used to this watterd down canned crap that is being shoved down our throats now.
I like how so many people are making random assumptions, the game hasn't even hit beta, or testing of any sort for anyone except internal, yet people are stating there's "NO GRIND" and raiding is obsolete, how do people know all this?
As a matter of fact, I just played this game today, and so have hundreds of others. You have any questions?
People will have to grind events to gain karma points to access better gear. GW2 isn't totally grind free.
Anything that pulls mmo's away from the level level level, geargrind fest of current endgame tragedy is very GOOD imo.
No bitchers.
You know people are still playing GW1 after 6 years, right? The same game with optional grind and a quick path to max level, where 3/4 of the game is "endgame?"
You don't like it, fine. Darkfall exists, EVE exists, ArcheAge is coming down the pike.
In a word, precedent. This game is made by the same people who made GW1, which hews to that standard.
Do you know of any reason why we should assume the devs are lying when they specifically lay out how gear will work and be acquired (they have) in GW2, given they made GW1 with the same goals?
Can you think of an MMO released ever where the devs said there would NOT be raids and then there WERE, instead of the other way around? Do you imagine ArenaNet will slip in all this raid content secretly to surprise people?
I think the OP is talking about optional grind, as in you don't have to have a certain "gear score" to advance and do the next content. Since it's "easy" to get gear with the max stats then you are choosing to play content because it's fun and maybe you want a new looking piece of gear even though it might have the same stats as your current gear. So you are choosing to play content because it's fun and you want to, not because you have to. (and it is HAVE to, when you have to grind and grind, even if it's boring and not fun, until you get the right gear to be able to do the next content)
And maybe it will be too easy to get the gear with the best stats, but who cares. I would much rather play a game that relies on skill instead of who has the best gear. And if that means that everyone has the same stats for gear, I would say that's good, because it levels the playing field and makes skill the deciding factor of a fight.
I do think that people will get attached to some gear. If you really want to get the complete set of armor from a dungeon you can grind the dungeon till you get it all. I would think someone would feel accomplished and attached to a complete set of armor they earned.
there is gonna be a wee bit of grinding, but it'll be fun unlike most MMOs.... I just know it
If GW2 delivers what it promises, I am going to be a very happy gamer. I have no problem with finishing up leveling in a matter of weeks or a couple of months, then going off to pvp. I love to pvp, and I hate endlessly grinding gear in the same instance over and over in hopes of not getting smashed by someone who has been playing for years and has the best of everything. Same goes for grinding pvp gear in pvp where all I do is get one-shot, all in hopes that one day I'll be able to one-shot the newer players.
If I get bored of pvp for awhile, well, I also love rolling alts, and crafting, and fluffy stuff like player housing. If these guys want to make money off me between expansions, they'll easily be able to do so by selling a ridiculous number of character slots on top of a reasonable number of slots to start off with.
I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.
~Albert Einstein
Every game has some form of grind. It's unavoidable in this genre, in my opinion. We'll just have to wait and see how entertaining they make it and how well they mask it.
An MMO without a grind? We must be in the twilight zone.
If there's no grind, there's no reason to play.
Players are always grinding something in MMOs... gear, money, xp, etc
What do you instantly get the best gear upon reaching max level?
Not a lot of fun just to have everything handed to you, kinda defeats the purpose of playing a game.
Every MMO has grind and so will GW2. What matters is how well Anet masks that grind and turns it into fun activity. And i have faith in Anet. They surely won't make grind obvious and boring like SE did with FFXIV.
It's easy to say that every MMO will have grind, but when I was playing through Prophecies I didn't experience any that I can recall. If I'm wrong, point it out, but I played through that like a single-player game, I didn't stop, and I blew through the content of Prophecies in under a month. I didn't have to repeat a single dungeon, and the crafting materials I needed for the next stage of my armour were freely provided by the game. And if I didn't have enough to craft one piece of armour, then the collection agents would provide.
The very definition of MMO grind includes repeating the same repetitive task over and over. I recall doing this in WoW because I remember staying in the same areas and fighting the same critters for far too long. But in Prophecies I barely had enough time to get acquainted with an area before I was ushered on to the next, through a series of cut-scenes and story missions. On replaying Prophecies I even found out that it's entirely possible to complete the game by going through the story missions alone, without doing any of the side quests, even.
This is how ArenaNet managed to avoid grind - by making progression fast and painless. There was no need to keep players hanging around endlessly in an area fighting the same stuff over and over, and there was never a need to repeat content as there was in games like WoW. In WoW you have to repeat content, it's mandatory. In Guild Wars you can optionally repeat content in Hard Mode, but you could also choose to continue to blast ahead. If you tried to avoid repeating content in WoW you were punished for it. You'd get killed over and over because you didn't have the gear for that area. In WoW you had no choice, in Prophecies you did.
This is what made the grind of Prophecies optional, as I pointed out previously. Now, the question is this: Why the hell would ArenaNet look away from that? If you look at the Guild Wars 2 FAQ, they promise the same anti-grind design ethos that Prophecies had. In other words, they'll push you through content quickly without ever forcing you to repeat it. That, in an MMORPG, removes the grind. Guild Wars 2 can be a game without forced grind.
If you don't believe that then go and play Prophecies, becaus the only reason you wouldn't believe it is because WoW and Blizzard has hacked you so much that you can't believe it's possible. But the truth of the matter is that it's already been done. Prophecies did it. It's there and waiting for you. It's evidence that it can be done. It's evidence that Guild Wars 2 will follow the same design ethos.
Yeah i am. I just really want to read all the text i can find and not rush though it like all the other MMO's i've played.
The point here is not that grind is optional or not but that every MMO has grind. Also it depends upon players and their attitude. I consider grind in every MMO to beoptional. If i don't want to do it no one can force me to it. Prophecies had an optional grind but i know many players spending considerable amount of time farming for armor even though all it did was add a different look, many spent lots of time coming up with unique builds to grind (farm) for gold to buy exclusive pets/weapon skins..etc, grind for titles is another example. If you are bored with PVE you can do PVP but again it was a grind filling up your factons and climbing the ladder.
But like i said, it depends upon devs if they can mask that grind and make it fun or turn it into a monotonus activity which bores you to death. If you are playing MMO you can not avoid repeptition.
im happy to see atleast one mmo and their devlopers and supporters are doing it right, starwars and gw2 are
two games im waiting and was looking for, but starwars dissapointed my so far not letting many country to play it,
so i hope it wont happen same to gw2 too, would be very glad to play this game
There are two arguments being made here, and not by the same people. So, to address the first of these arguments, it's time for an analogy!
Take baseball. If baseball were a typical MMO (not every MMO, a "typical" MMO. Choose a popular one and you will likely find the mark), one would only be able to hit singles when it comes time to bat. It is still completely possible to win a game by hitting singles; you progress to first, then second, then third base and finally home for a point. Anybody can win a game by hitting singles. It might even be an interesting endeavor by those participating, as you can steal bases if you are skilled, etc.
Now, Guild Wars 2 as an MMO comes along and is saying you are allowed to hit home runs. Most people, given the option, would like to hit a home run because you get a point each home run, instead of waiting four rounds for the exact same point (stealing bases notwithstanding).
However, you are still playing baseball! You still have to go up to bat, still have to swing the ball, still get three swings at the ball, still can be walked, etc. When some of you say that every MMO must by definition have grind it's like saying that the game of baseball is a grind because the two teams don't just roll a die in the beginning and concede victory to the winning roll. This would be a case of reducing an argument to its 0s and 1s until it becomes ... what's the word... absurd. Nobody is arguing that the game should hand everyone victory and gear for logging in.
That's the first argument.
The second argument goes as follows: there are people who equate every piece of content in a game with every other piece of content. They make no differentiation between a dungeon and a cool pair of shades. If it's pixels, it's content, and they want all of it. To such a person there is no point in making a distinction between optional and mandatory grind. All content, to this person, is mandatory. Their goal is to consume the game entirely, like an alien race would consume Earth and leave it uninhabitable in every science fiction movie blockbuster ever made.
This is why these people say that every game has grind, and from that perspective, it makes sense. However, I would argue that such a person isn't actually playing for fun, but for consumption. The consumption is the fun, not the game. It doesn't actually matter what's in the game, and therefore, in my opinion, GW2 should not cater to such individuals. They'll consume every piece of content and move on anyway.
You'll probably get max armour before max level in GW2. You'll buy it from vendors. However, if you want to get max armour with a certain look, you'll have to work for it. Thankfully, you won't have to waste your life 'earning' anything through repetitious grind. For example, each of GW2's dungeons has an armour set, amongst other rewards. When you beat a dungeon's explorable mode you get a token, which you can then exchange for something you want, rather than get some random loot that's no use to you.
Furthermore, Arenanet defines grind as being boring, monotonous and as something which gets in the way of having fun [Manifesto]. The developers don't want you to have to work through something you don't like in order to get to the fun stuff. Thus there are many options for how players can advance through the world. If you want to PvP and you're not fussed about prettiness, you aren't forced into raids just so you ban be equal to others.
"Those who stand at the top determine what's wrong and what's right. This very place is neutral ground! Justice will prevail, you say? But of course it will! Whoever wins this war becomes justice!"
Don't forget that Anet did mention that gear would be more important in GW2 than it was in GW1, so you won't be able to buy gear with max stats from vendors. Or atleast you will actually need to do dungeons to earn the tokens needed to buy the gear, just look at the Karma system.
1) Some people play video games for fun.
2) Some people play video games for the journey, and not for some kinda virtual "reward".
During Rift's closed beta Trion said that class balance was an impossible goal so it would not be a priority for them. However, every update to Rift has seen huge amounts of class balancing.
If the players demand instanced raids in GW2 then ArenaNet will give the players instanced raids.
If you think the players are going to be content with GW2s meager end game content just because it has "fun gameplay" then you are sadly mistaken.
Yeah, ArenaNet are just staying up all night worried about player retention when they don't have subscriptions to lose, an entire audience of GW1 players, single-player fans who hate MMOs, and MMO players who are burned out on raids entirely.
They've decided on their audience, and it's not you. Fortunately for them, everyone else's money is just as green.
In a traditional MMO like WoW, the whole system is designed towards leading people to raiding. If you want the best gear, the only way to get it is to raid week in and week out. I kind of enjoy raiding, I like the challenge of it, but I'm also doing it because I want to be more and more badass and I'm stuck being part of a raiding crew 3-4 nights a week.
It's possible that people will want raiding encounters. But maybe not. People will probably be able to get very similar power gear through PVP, dungeons, crafting, or grinding, the difference will probably be skins and vanity. If it's possible to get a badass skin by doing a difficult 5 man dungeon, there really isn't a reason to do a 10 or 20 man raid unless there's even more badass skins or something (assuming they stick to vanity). And even then, with giving people a token every time, how special can you feel when you equip 20 people with the same stuff each run? It's a lot more BS than just finding 5 friends and going.
It's possible to look at the endgame content as being meager, but it's also possible to look at it as deemphasized. The game simply doesn't want to be about doing dungeon->heroic->raid 1->raid 2->raid 3 and you're done so you might as well just PVP or hang out in cities because there's nothing worthwhile to do until the next expansion. Leveling up another toon just means repeating content and facing the same gear grind at the end.
What GW2 lets you do is level quickly, and with a wide variety of personal story options. Just based on the choices a human can make at character creation, you can probably see 3 wildly different stories with only a little overlap. Add in 5 races and you'll run out of character slots before you run out of stories.
Also, consider that PVP actually is meaningful. It's not just battlegrounds that give you 3 tokens for a win and 1 for a loss but other than that the outcome doesn't matter. Win/loss standings are kept for your server and used to match you up against other servers. I think there's going to be some serious pride associated with that.
It's possible people will be asking for raid content, but it's also possible people won't once if they see they don't need it.
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it." -Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007