Quote:
Originally Posted by Tuurin
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So the question is, was Thott wrong, or just over-simplifying? His point was that what has become known as grinding in MMOGs would burn out most players, but I don't think that has proven true (at least for the P99 fringe). In fact grinding is/was arguably the most compelling part of the EQ experience- grinding exp, faction, plat, LDON tokens, keys, AAs, etc. all became basic tropes of EQ and probably the most compelling part of what kept people coming back.
In my perspective, once things became LESS grindy, the game lost it's flair and became pretty blah. PoK books, easy leveling (Palud Cav), mercs, bazaar, /melody, etc. all made the game "easier" and required less repetition, grinding, etc. which made me more inclined to try something else. It sounds odd, but for me at least true.
Or perhaps Thott was right and most of the (normal) players were turned off by grinding exp or whatever and went for greener (WOW) pastures, and P99 is all that's left of the deviants who actually like repetitive content?
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Personally what I take from Thott thoughts is that large level spread in various zones and dungeons was bad design. Karnor should not have allowed people to go 45-60 in the same zone. Past lev 50, zones should never had more than 2 level ranges, continuously pushing people forward and making room for new comers. Rather than having everyone from 45 to 58 pile up in the same camps. So its not about grind itself, but rather distribution of grind across many different zones rather than just 2-3. People not get tired of killing mobs. They get tired of killing exact same mobs in exact same room for 5 levels straight.
And I think there is a difference between making game less grindy vs dumbing it down. Paludal was great zone design wise, but insane ZEM made it bad. There was no need what so ever to devalue old zones like that. It wasn't made to make game less grindy, it was made to sell expansion. By contrast MOST of Luclin zones were undeveloped empty and pretty much useless square boxes. Only a handful of zones were actually well made considering all the innovation Technics were already available at that time.
Also, a lot of people hated LDON for being copy-paste, theme-less & mindless auto-runs. And I agree. What I do like about LDONs that you could do a dungeon from start to finish to get to the end goal/end boss without just having to sit in 1 room for 5 hours. While LDON was simplistic it was also a foundation of future dungeon design for next gen MMOs.