Every time I grind mobs for hours on end, I want to blow my head off, frankly. The process gets mind-numbing, repetitive and the opposite of fun. Obviously, one might say that’s the idea behind it, but it wasn’t this way in some games that I’ve played.

In FlyForFun / Lineage 2 I met multiple amazing people I spent ages with, talking about random nonsense while beating the shit out of mobs in batches. And that experience I attributed to the statement of “In the 2000s, MMOs were the social media, so now it’s gone, buddy”.

But it’s not true, is it? I’ve understood that in FFXIV while grinding Eureka, where the same feeling occurred. Just 2 random peeps, inviting me to a group, chatting for 3 hours while desperately trying to find a much-needed mob to kill.¹

A fluke, isn’t it? Happens. And then the same thing happened in Bozja.

On the other side of the spectrum, we have something like Black Desert Online, where it was a hassle to play and type at the same time. Same in SpiritVale.

“I wish to type something” - says a yapper

“lol” - answers a mob whose attack is higher than 3 of your healthbars

First Idea - Active / Passive grinding

So the first observation is the proportion of active vs passive time spent grinding.

I don’t want it to be mistaken for “Stop the grind, move to a safe location, reply, go back, grind, repeat”, as here, mentally, we’re not grinding, we’re postponing it and swapping it with chatting.

IMO, it can be achieved in multiple ways, which I have seen working.

1. Autoattack as a viable option - WoW-style, where while u auto, you are simultaneously grinding and are free to quickly type out something in chat

2. The mana problems, where after killing X mobs, you’re tapped, so you sit and replenish the mana - Lineage 2 approach

3. Health trading, where instead of mana you trade health and you gotta sit and replenish it - FlyForFun approach / partly Eureka experience

4. Low replenish rate of mobs, where after running a train, you sit back and wait till the mobs come back to roleplay as victims once again - again Lineage 2 / partly Eureka experience

5. Wait times till ‘events’ or the like start - waiting for events in Bozja, where you just have to click 1 button every 10 minutes or so.

All of these approaches create ‘dead time’ which, in people’s heads, doesn’t count as stopping the grind, since it’s part of the grind. Because imagine you pop your +50% experience scroll for an hour. You wanna go into a corner to quickly reply to someone? Lmao, no, ofc. But how does it feel to sit and drink because everyone has to do it? In my mind, it’s fine.

During those downtimes it’s possible to communicate with your party, but where do you get one though?

Second Idea - Party should be encouraged

This one is smaller, but party play should be encouraged for this.

Be it party exp buffs, like FlyForFun / SpiritVale, or just efficiency like Lineage 2.²

This gives at least a starting point for a conversation about the mobs / location / game itself.

However, this doesn’t work in SpiritVale for shit, as you have to constantly move and attack, otherwise you’re in a pickle. Parties didn’t help there, so it’s just a factor for growth, assuming the first idea is done, I think.

But that creates an issue of speedrunning vs solo play, where solo play becomes annoying and long, as it forces one to think a party is needed to play (whereas it’s not, but it would feel bad to grind solo).

Now assuming you have active/passive grinding with a party system, what’s next?

Third Idea - Yappers

We’ve come a long way from the idea of supporting classes, who are limited by some sort of resource to regen and are god awful without it, so why even bother hitting the mobs.

An example would be Blade Dancers in Lineage 2, or Ringmasters in FlyForFun. Your worth is just to buff the party and then either sit on your ass to regen mana, or click “Follow” on your carry and wait to throw a random heal if needed.

In this situation, you’re expected to have extremely low APM, always encouraged to be in a group and also always wanted. During the downtime you’re free to talk and do whatever.

And in my experience, it takes a particular type of person to easily start a conversation. These classes do not necessarily need to start the convo but they’re well-equipped to actually continue it, especially if you have several supports in your group.

They can just keep talking between themselves and the rest of the party can chime in if they want, or just (like me) feel like part of the conversation, while not necessarily contributing to it.

And it makes the concept of grinding actually closer to the concept of sitting in front of a fire at night, tbh, but this way you actually have something numbingly stupid to do in the meantime (grinding).

And this line of reasoning I think applies to current developments in WoW Forever. In my mind, WoW Classic has always been about that ‘journey’ as they call it, where you level, meet people, enjoy your stay.

And now they’ve added those camps, which you can set up and stay in for a bit to get a buff. This functions as a segue into a potential chat with someone there.³

But the leveling done through questing works against this, as people scatter while questing, whereas when grinding you stay in one spot for quite some time.

So all in all, I think it’s needed that some friction exists to facilitate the chances of social interaction sprouting, and then to give the chance for it to continue growing.

As a final example, take Aion 2’s pet grinding. God it’s fucking horrible - solo and punished for grouping kinda (except Abyss), perma pressing buttons. God forbid a white boy wants to yap (unless it’s Discord).

Counter Points

But does the MMO population want it? I can see how it’s horrible to have any of those 5 things in point one. Nowadays it’d be branded “slow”, and the social aspect, well - if the Aion 2 community could play with bots, they would.

However, if an MMO is supposed to be social, it should have a system like this (which doesn’t guarantee it’ll be social, though). And yes, I can see how the view of ‘MMO doesn’t have to be social’ can exist as well.

Another issue is “Then autocombat is the ultimate way to implement it”. Ultimate? No, but it does indeed qualify, straight up. Would I personally play such a game? Hell naw.