Do people enjoy leveling up/level grinds?

[Zergling]

I'm actually wondering about this, since i have read a lot of descriptions along the lines of 'This game is over so quickly, the level cap is so low", "This game needs more stuff to do wit the level cap so low", etc. Is this really something a lot of people enjoy so much?


(Personally, I tend to get the most enjoyment from thinking up/reading character builds and trying them out, trying out different playing styles, seeing different types of terrain, etc., all of which are much harder to do with long level up times, or equivalents.)

[Jennifer]

I am much more like you, Zerg, in the things I find value in. (It was sort of uncanny reading your description of your preferred playstyle. )

Grinding at times is okay and prolongs the gameplay ... so the game doesn't "run out" too fast... but in general, no, I'm less into grinding and less into "Kill/Collect X" quests and more into optimizing the system and learning the in's and out's of how the classes interact and support each other and trying different builds. (It takes so long to level high enough to be able to play around!)

Plus, I love to explore. Nothing beats the sunsets and secret places I've uncovered... and I still get chills when I remember the very first time I was in the Crater... and that devilsaur emerged right on top of me out of the fog.

[SolitaryPenguin]

I enjoy the grind if it is in a new zone that I haven't explored before. I remember when I was playing TBC beta, I started my shaman, and just explored the whole newbie (1-20) zone in and out, just to get a jump on the masses when the retail version hit.

I am happy that they decreased the amount of time it takes to reach cap, but it is still amazingly boring, and stupidly, I took on the challenge of trying to get one of every class to 70 before the next expansion. If they were able to revisit the grind and somehow make it more fluid and immersive like it is in those first 20 or so levels on Bloodmyst/Azuremyst or Silvermoon/Tranquilien, I think the grind wouldn't feel so grindish. I am also a firm believer in giving people who hit 70 with one character the ability to create a character of any class they want at level 60 to grind out to 70. I know the outcries of "hooray, more noob [insert class name]" would create enough tears to fill a football stadium, but it would be well worth it.

[Ender]

Gah.. World of Borecraft.. I hate grinding, I hated having to spend hours traveling from place to place just to do quests so I could grind my way higher, just so I could sit in a raid with a ton of other people for hours on end for the slight chance that the end boss would drop 1 of x number of set items I needed for my class, and that it wasn't something I already had, and that none of the other people playing my class needed it either, just so I could compete with people who did nothing but sleep and play that game.

No I much preferred my first MMORPG, where the grind could be done in a matter of days, yet there was enough to do afterwards that the game didn't end. The end game was the wars, and politics between clans and factions, the objectives were outposts that you had to find to take over and fight to defend.

[Nadir]

If it's the lucrative thing to do, and is not a hassle, sure. I no longer play WoW, but here's an example: While I was leveling my rogue from level 43 to 45, I exclusively grinded some dragons in Dustwallow Marsh. The reason I did this was because the dragons were relatively simple mobs, they skinned leather which sold for good money in the AH, and it was good exp. The result was that I amassed around 550g after my work was done, and even had my first world epic drop in the process.

What did I do with that money? Well, I willfully stopped playing once she reached level 45, but I had the notion that I would return to the game when circumstances allowed for more leisurely play time. So I got my old, deleted level 60 priest restored, now bare naked and shit poor, and sent the poor sod some money so that he would get an epic mount. I also played for a couple of levels in Outland so as to get the guy equipped with some standard issue greens. My motivation was that I could always make more money with my rogue. This was before the exp nerfs and dungeon boosts SolitaryPenguin is referring to.

For me a grind becomes much more meaningful when -
i. My character's efficency is not bound to a limited resource. So I could tolerate, even enjoy grinding with my combat rogue efficiently dicing through enemies with not much effort and a paltry commitment of a bandage every fifteen to twenty mobs. My shadow priest is as fun to play as my rogue, but leveling and level-grinding was more of a pain with him simply because he had to drink every five mobs or so.
ii. There's a high density of mobs. This is critical. It minimizes additional downtime and maximizes the experience you're getting.
iii. There are financial benefits to doing it, as outlined in the first paragraph.
Note that in the case of the priest i. often plays against this point, as a priest has no way of self-regenerating mana between battles, unlike mages (conjure water), warlocks (life tap + life drain). Paladins don't spend mana all that much, either, and nor do feral druids -- but I don't think feral druids are very fun! And It's important to pick your mobs well. Humanoids are almost always preferable to non humanoids, except when skinning/farming a certain item is involved.

[SolitaryPenguin]

That's pretty much exactly the way I was grinding my rogue. It got to a point where I barely even had to look at the screen, and I would just kill, skin, repeat, until my bags were full, then I would go sell my shit and return to it.

My game mates just invested in one of those leveling guides which has helped cut down the /play time immensely, plus I found this awesome add on called QuestHelper which pretty much figures out your most efficient path based on the quests that you have in your log. It's made it a lot more pain free, but it's still a chore (bore) and a half.

[Seanan]

Originally Posted by Zergling

I'm actually wondering about this, since i have read a lot of descriptions along the lines of 'This game is over so quickly, the level cap is so low", "This game needs more stuff to do wit the level cap so low", etc. Is this really something a lot of people enjoy so much?


(Personally, I tend to get the most enjoyment from thinking up/reading character builds and trying them out, trying out different playing styles, seeing different types of terrain, etc., all of which are much harder to do with long level up times, or equivalents.)

While I do enjoy what you mention, I also enjoy leveling up for the purely mindless activity late at night when I can't sleep. I usually have several games going at the same time requiring different types of activity so I can pick and choose for whatever my needs are at the time.

[Zergling]

Perhaps "level grind" in the title scares people off who would otherwise respond with descriptions of enjoying it. Having said that, I will now proceed to scare those people off even more in this post.

(Please answer, though, if you do like it, since if nothing else it gives some descriptions as to where the enjoyment comes from.)

Gah.. World of Borecraft

A lot of RPG type games do this actually (Diablo 2 was in a way one long level grind, though killing creatures and magic finding was fun enough to cover it up sometimes.) and guild wars has those elite skills+faction unlocking, for example.

That said, another annoying comment is "World of Warcraft takes so little time to level up compared to other MMORPGs", which only can be said thanks ot the amazingly large amount of grind that other MMORPGs must have compared to a lot of other activities in general that people could be doing.

I am also a firm believer in giving people who hit 70 with one character the ability to create a character of any class they want at level 60 to grind out to 70. I know the outcries of "hooray, more noob [insert class name]" would create enough tears to fill a football stadium, but it would be well worth it.

My personal preference would be something besides this, only because playing 1 character over and over for the 2 months or so it would take to power level them up would be kind of boring. I have though of a different version of this that would just start everyone out at a high level and make the range smaller, but that would require a lot of work to rebalance everything.

The "noob" effect doesn't seem as big a deal as people make it out to be, though, since leveling tends to use a different set of skills and playing styles than other things people would be doing, and a lot of issues crop up when people bring those styles into, say, PvP or groups.

[Varelse]

Grinding...not particularly. Exploring can be great fun, tweaking strategies, running around slaughtering things with my questing buddy.

I've given up on quests that required too much grinding mobs, usually because the drop rate is so low.

[Ender]

Originally Posted by Zergling

A lot of RPG type games do this actually (Diablo 2 was in a way one long level grind, though killing creatures and magic finding was fun enough to cover it up sometimes.) and guild wars has those elite skills+faction unlocking, for example.

That said, another annoying comment is "World of Warcraft takes so little time to level up compared to other MMORPGs", which only can be said thanks ot the amazingly large amount of grind that other MMORPGs must have compared to a lot of other activities in general that people could be doing.

I'm more or less fed up with the grind in all RPG's, I always preferred the side quests, collecting, crafting etc. I don't think I've finished an RPG since FFVII, I gave up on Guildwars at lvl 13, WoW I went to 45 on one char, then went back and went to 38 on another, so when the gank patch came out I gave my account away.