I meant kid as in a baby goat.

Kid you need to chill. I promise everything will be okay.

If you're going to insult someone on a video game website, try knowing the English language first.

(continued because of length)
My point is that it seems to me that for some you, the ends justify the means i.e. you're fine with grinding because you like what it leads to. For me, the means is more important than then ends. I don't care about what I get, I care about what I do. I believe there are better ways to advance players in MMORPG's than grinding, but I think right now most developers focus on the end rewards rather than the mechanism that gets players to those rewards. I don't think leveling in MMORPG's should be easy. They should definitely be challenging. But grinding isn't challenging. It's easy, but boring. The challenge lies in tolerating it long enough to get rewarded. That's not how games should work.

I think some of you are mistaking me for a WoW player--believe me, I am not. I've even written an article about my issues with grinding in WoW on this site (http://mmomfg.com/2009/08/grinding-caught-in-the-... I really don't care about WoW, and haven't played it consistently in a couple of years. You're saying the same thing nightbloom said though: "Grinding hasn't really bothered me personally." But do you enjoy it? Do you like grinding? Or do you just tolerate it because you like other parts of the game (in this case, Aion). You said grinding bothers people that like to race through a game and not enjoy it, but guess what? I don't enjoy grinding! It sucks. Killing 10 of enemy X over and over again is not fun. Collecting 10 of item X over and over again is not fun. And then you say that having the same start zone is good because you know what to expect and can get through the zone faster. Aren't you the one racing through the game?

Instant gratification for success in a game isn't necessary, but instant gratification for enjoyment in a game is a priority.

What I'm saying is that I don't think powering through a grind is an achievement, it's a tolerance. Western MMO's have problems with grinds as well. Developers should be more creative than that when designing games. Taking out the grind and making a game easy are not mutually exclusive.

Also, that graph doesn't say much at this point. It's only natural that there would be spike when the game comes out in the U.S. Wait a few months and check the graph again. If Aion is still up there, you have a valid point. For reference, here is a similar graph using Warhammer: Age of Reckoning, which came out in September of 2008: http://www.google.com/trends?q=World+of+Warcraft%...

Back to my original question, you said you don't find the grind boring or negative, but do you enjoy grinding?

So do you enjoy the grind, or see it as a tolerable means to an end? Certainly there are more productive ways to challenge, or 'weed out' as you say, players that don't involve boring them to death. That's like making a show where the first part is super boring and trying to reward viewers who had the time to suffer through it and hope it got more interesting. I'm not saying that western MMOs are better about this, but I will never think of grinding as anything but a negative. If you want to weed out players, make it too hard for them. That's at least something to be more proud of for players who do make it to higher levels.

That's actually a really good point Fred. While I think the graphics are very crisp and well rendered, they come off as pretty vanilla.

I'd say that's a big stretch. You'd have to make some pretty hefty connections between the two regarding a natural game play evolution from 2D to 3D (if that makes any sense). Besides, JW's point was that MGS wouldn't work in 2D, which is true. MG is a completely separate game. MG may have lead to some of the ideas in MGS, but they weren't ideas that required 2D graphics. That just happened to be the technology at the time.