WoW came out, and individualized the leveling experience in such a personal and convenient way, it felt amazing to be doing all these neat little wrapped up quests to chunk away at the XP, i felt like i was accomplishing so much. It wasn’t a grind at all, and felt refreshing.

Fast foward years later, now I cannot stand quests at all anymore. I refuse to play a game again that has hubs where you gather quests to go out and kill/click/fetch whatever anymore. Its simply the worst kinda grind imaginable to me because i’m tired of it. In fact, i would love to go back to the days of grouping up with people, camping a spot, and all working together to pull stuff to chip xp off for hours again if it means no more hubs.

Point is, the next big thing in MMO’s will have come up with a way to change the compulsion loop of the grind in a truly refreshing way… but it will still be there nonetheless, waiting to be over exposed eventually as well.

Chasing titles and other such things were also some of the things endgame players wanted to do, and with Eye of the North and the addition of dungeons (and Hard Modes) we went to crazy measures to clear content regularly.

The pvpers obviously have a lot of content. The explorers are well catered to by providing huge lush environments full of detail. The crafters get a very freeform crafting/harvesting system to keep them busy. Will the legendary quest for weapons keep the “Achievers” happy, with its (probably) strictly cosmetic advantages?

Probably not, but then again name one MMO where the hardcore progression players did not consume the entire content within 2 weeks of launch. And that particular crowd will not be using the cash-shop in any case (it is vanity stuff only, after all). In which case A-net is wise to let them go and ease the server loads a little.

They will come back, after all, when the expansion pack is released 1 year down the road, introducing new lands with 1 or 2 extra classes, in a typical Guild Wars fashion.