

The repetitive and boring gameplay in WoW is probably intentional. - amichail
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grinding_(gaming)

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DarkShikari
I came to the conclusion long ago that the only effective way to have
effective non-grinding gameplay in an MMORPG is to base the game around
competition between players. It is infeasible from a monetary perspective
(development costs) and a practical standpoint to have _interesting, custom-
built content_ to fill years of gameplay.

What can break this barrier is interactions between actual people, which are
far more interesting and variable than anything a developer can put together
himself. The purpose of the game world should be to facilitate competition
between players as best as possible.

Finally, a game should also be based around an activity that is inherently
enjoyable without the existence of progression. For example, Team Fortress 2
is a lot of fun to play even though you're not "leveling up" or getting "epic
equipment". World of Warcraft, by comparison, wouldn't addict anyone if there
were no levels or equipment.

I can recall many games that have done either (or both) of these to some
extent and were far more fun and interesting than any WoW clone:

1\. Planetside. Not merely an MMOG first-person shooter, but one in which the
primary content of the game consists of player combat. Shooting people in
multiplayer games is fun, and doing it for territorial control with your
friends in a persistent world is even moreso. Global Agenda looks like it
might be bringing this concept back in 2010.

2\. Shattered Galaxy. One of those games that got great review scores in every
magazine and then disappeared off the map. A somewhat flawed but still very
fun MMORTS, it was a blast to play even ignoring the progression aspect, and
consisted entirely of player-vs-player team tactical combat with territorial
control aspects. Incredibly addictive despite the pretty minimal progression
system.

3\. EVE Online. Failed miserably at the "base itself around fun activities"
moniker, but based itself almost entirely around player-vs-player combat,
empire-building, and market-based competition. To this day, it has set a bar
for epic-scale player competition that no other game has gotten near.
Basically all of the game's content was entirely player-generated: wars
between player-run alliances over player-built space stations using player-
built spaceships constructed using player-mined minerals.

In short, make it fun, and make it about competition between people, not
between people and Orc NPCs.

~~~
PieSquared
>It is infeasible from a monetary perspective (development costs) and a
practical standpoint to have interesting, custom-built content to fill years
of gameplay.

Huh. Autogenerated MMORPG content seems... remotely plausible. Or at least,
some of it could be autogenerated. The terrain, at least, and names. Maybe
some of the quests. I haven't seen anyone trying this though, I guess it's
hard to make autogenerated content pleasant.

~~~
alex_c
The compelling part of a RPG is the process of discovery - discovering the
world, the story, monsters, powers, etc. If the content is hand-crafted,
there's always something new around the corner, which keeps the game fresh.

The problem with autogenerated content is that the process of discovery
changes to discovering the algorithms used to generate the content. Once the
player has discovered those algorithms, it's impossible to continue having a
fresh experience. So "autogenerated" is, at best, taking hand-crafted content,
repeating it a few times, and changing some details in the hope that the
player won't notice the repetition right away.

This is, of course, only in the context of traditional RPGs - more sandbox-
style games, like Dwarf Fortress, or Love (or, hell, at the other extreme of
auto-generated content, Tetris) can do just fine.

~~~
Tichy
Nethack seems to succeed with generating interesting automated content. It is
even fun to just read the "elevation stories", each of them is different.

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EvilTrout
As the creator of a MMO, I can tell you it's absolutely intentional. Our
initial design document had the word "grinding" it in many times; I'm sure
theirs did too.

If you want people to sink hundreds of hours into a game, the gameplay is
going to include a LOT of repetition. The tricky part is to keep it fun and
engaging despite this.

~~~
algorias
If a design document of mine had the word "grinding" it in many times, I'd do
something else instead.

Another way to make people sink hundreds of hours into a game is to make it
play well competitively. It's surprising that one of the prime examples of
this (StarCraft) comes from the same company as WoW.

~~~
albertsun
There's a fair amount of rote and practice involved in becoming good at
StarCraft. The "grinding" in WoW can also lead to subtle and gradual
improvement at the game that makes you better at it.

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Alex3917
Pretty much all modern video games are designed to exploit the same four or
five cognitive flaws. The best way to see this in action is to sign up for
Idle RPG:

<http://idlerpg.net/>

The one thing video games are good for is learning to recognize these
patterns. That way at least you'll have a fighting chance at avoiding people
who use this stuff to try to exploit you in real life.

~~~
rms
Can you list those cognitive flaws?

~~~
WinterAyars
In MMOs it's easy: go look at the psychology of rewards. Psychologists found
that if you rig up an experiment where you take rats and give them a button
where they get food when they press it they'll more or less do the sensible
thing: when they're hungry they press it and then eat.

However, if you rig it up so that if they press it they some times do NOT get
food they'll immediately press the damn button until their tiny paws fall off.
(No joke.) Even though they could do the same thing (press it until they are
no longer hungry), the inconsistent rewards makes them freak out. It's the
same thing with MMOs--that's why MMOs have loot that you have a better chance
of winning the lottery than getting: because it makes people play 24/7 until
they die of exhaustion.

As for myself... i prefer to play games that aren't quite as blatantly copied
from psychological experiments. Once you buy into the internal logic of the
MMO you're done for until you crash and/or quit.

~~~
pkulak
This is also why gambling is so addictive: intermittent reward.

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iron_ball
I discussed this a long time ago in a comment:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=226688>

The reward treadmill is the secret to retention. Get 'em hooked with quick
rewards in the early part of the progress curve, then string them along at the
highest levels. Otherwise people will quit in droves before the expansions
come.

~~~
zephjc
I remember someone mentioning that WoW (and other good MMOs) have a 30 second
rule, in that you can run 30 seconds in any direction and find something to do
(even if its killing more mobs) in order to keep the player's attention

~~~
loganfrederick
Bungie, the Halo developers, as well as many other developers follow this
philosophy. How can you take 30 seconds of fun and repeat that throughout the
entire game? That's what many studios strive for.

~~~
zephjc
That's true too, but what I meant was more specifically for MMOs (and games
that have the player move in similar ways) - any bits of fun in the game
should be not more than a 30 second drive/walk/run from another one.

Imagine, for instance, a map of Elwynn Forest (if you've played WoW) and
construct a graph over it of all the quest-related things to do or see - none
of them should be more than a 30 second run from the nearest neighbor. Whether
this is _actually_ the case is an implementation issue :)

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chrischen
"Thus, by creating a direct correlation between in-game power and time spent
grinding, every player will at least have the potential to reach the top 20%
(although the Pareto principle will still apply to the amount of time spent
grinding)."

This is like translating your time and effort into worthless in-game currency
(reputation in game). At least if it was based on real life skills like
accuracy and response times, you could train these real life skills and get
benefits in and out of game.

Call of duty rocks, no need to grind (as long you're not trying to level up).
I can just hop in and dominate. I imagine that people who play Call of Duty
online are the least likely to also play World of Warcraft regularly.

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DLWormwood
Given my experience with many solo RPGs and with a couple MMOs besides WoW,
I'd say modern WoW is actually pretty gentle on the grinding curve than most
games. (Try playing Etrian Odyssey or FF XI, gads...)

I stopped playing after WoW after about a year not due to boredom, but
frustration with end game content and game play emphasis during holiday events
due to the new achievements system. It really ruined what really was, for me,
a laid back, semi-relaxing game turning it into a grunt fest.

For some, the "boring" content is more meditative instead.

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bretpiatt
Grinding is only boring and repetitive if you just try to be average while
doing it allowing for a huge margin of error. Compare this to playing chess or
poker, is it "grinding" there to play the same thing over thousands of times?
If you are just mindlessly shoving pieces around a board, going "all in" every
hand without looking at your cards, or if you just randomly "grind" -- yes all
3 of those activities sound horribly boring to me.

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Luyt
While it is certainly possible to grind in WoW, it's not mandatory or
necessary. You can get well along doing instances, quests and player-versus-
player, and even get good items on the way. No need to grind 1000 trolls to
get a good sword or staff ;-)

I myself prefer doing instance groups more than anything else in WoW.

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scotty79
Aversion to grind is why I prefer Diablo 1 to Diablo 2. First one is hard
enough to be adventure. Second one is just a grind.

My aversion to grind might be also the reason why I don't seek daily job.

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dubcomesaveme
subscription fees + time invested in leveling = sunk costs

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_costs#Loss_aversion_and_th...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_costs#Loss_aversion_and_the_sunk_cost_fallacy)

players will spend more time playing than they would otherwise want to due to
their perception of sunk costs, hours of gameplay provided expands to meet
this demand with a grinding mechanism being the cheapest type of gameplay to
offer

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elai
I can't stand WoW. I try playing for 30 minutes and just quit.

