At first glance to an untrained eye, I will admit it's easy to make the mistake that this game has no grind in it. I mean, you start out as level one, with the max level being only level twenty, which can be reached fairly easily through fun, sometimes challenging missions that gamers enjoy to compete on. To add on to that, you can start out as level twenty in order to enjoy the player vs. player combat right from the start. How could this game possibly be grinding if I don't have to sit here for hours slaying snails in order to level up so I can move on to green slimes?

    The reason is this; Remember the definition of grinding I gave above, well the last part of it is what I am talking about. In Guild Wars, they have simply changed the goal that you are grinding for from the common goal in online gaming, but the action, whether most realize it or not, is the same action in the majority of online games. Instead of fighting monsters over and over in order to gain levels, you have a different objective when you start the mission or go out into dangerous terrain with a party full of henchmen. Haven't figured the goal out yet, well the goal is items, specifically rare items.

    Allow me to put it in perspective. Say you have just bought the game and you create a level twenty character and you immediately head over to the player vs. player arenas in order to compete, in hopes that this game where the player vs. player is so cherished for being based upon skill and strategy, not cumulative time played, lives up to expectations. Could you possibly beat an average player, meaning someone who doesn't suck at player vs. player, who has been playing for over a year? No. I don't care how good you think you are, you can't. The fact is that without items a player vs. player character is basically a level one, except with more base damage and health as well as some other attributes.

    You have no elite skills, you have about 20 skills total per class, probably about half of that in reality. You have no weapon upgrade parts, giving you a lot less defense, attack, health, or whatever your opponent has on his axe shaft. You have no gold for runes to equip onto your armor, everything is just standard stuff that a level twenty role-playing character could get by killing the easiest of monsters. You have nothing compared to your opponent, thus skill plays no part in the competition. When you're using a base skill that does 30 damage on your opponent and he's attacking back with a skill that freezes you for five seconds, and drains fifty health a second for ten seconds with a seven second recharge time, how the hell can skill help you out there? It can't.

    In Guild Wars, you must play through the role-playing mode in order to gain skills, upgrade items, gold, and weapons. All of these items are essential to beat harder missions as well as have a shot in hell in the player vs. player aspect of the game. People may think that this form of grinding is tiny in comparison to the grinding in games like Maplestory, so allow me to use my previous experience to give some specific examples of how bad this grind was in Guild Wars. Back when the game was new and player vs. player actually meant something in the Hall of Heroes, players would wait for up to hours at a time in order to get into the Underworld for a small chance of getting a single ectoplasm which they could sell for a hefty price to other players for crafting. People would stay in the desert and farm griffons, doing about five runs at an average of ten minute a run in order to get one rare equip to use in combat or sell for gold.

    The fact is, Guild Wars is grindy as hell!




    Now let's look at some non game-specific examples. Say you're playing an online sports game, just because the genre is popular we'll say racing. How on Earth can a racing game consist of a grind? Well, all you're doing is racing over, and over, and over in order to gain gold or whatever to buy upgrades for your cars. You might be playing tennis matches in order to win gold to buy a new tennis racket to win more matches to get more gold and so on! Even in Fury, the game which allegedly erased the grind, a grind is still as present as ever. You're constantly fighting others in battles that don't differ very much in order to get new items and get gold in order to get the next tier of armor as well as faction points in order to get better skills. If you don't do this, you don't stand a chance as you continue to play. Your rank increased, but you'll have skills doing half the damage, armor with half the attributes, and a weapon that does a third of the damage.


    You just can't eliminate a grind. Imagine a racing game where all you did is race. Nothing to unlock, nothing to achieve, you just race around and around. It would get boring, fast. The fact is, that without a goal online gaming gets boring. Some games might take longer to get boring such as Guild Wars if you're given all the items and skills right from the start, but what's the point? Every gamer wants to achieve something, without anything to achieve gaming just isn't the same.

    But why exactly do some games not come across as grindy, while others bore the hell out of us and seem ten times more grindy? It's because the game developers attempt to hide the grind. They don't want you to know it's there, not because it's a secret, but because anytime that the grind is so obvious you can detect it without having to think at all the game is going to get boring and old, quickly. In Maplestory, they lay it right on the table from an early level and show you it's going to be grindy because all you're doing is killing monsters over and over for hours on end. In games like Guild Wars however, they hide it and have you do challenging missions to distract you, missions gamers will enjoy. These keep your mind off of the fact is, all you're doing is killing monsters in order to get items. But once you get to the end and find yourself repeating missions for items and achievements, you'll understand that the grind is still certainly there.

    So stop dreading the grind, start embracing it. It'll make gaming a lot easier so you're not switching games every two weeks.