[WoT]
Mr. Funk seems to be oversimplifying things, not to mention coming across as somewhat biased.
While I will agree that grinding (being repeated actions or a repeated series of action to obtain a specific goal) can be tedious, the question of timeframe and difficulty is completely ignored. There are some RPGs that are brutally unforgiving with character death, while simultaneously requiring the player to assemble certain elements in order to progress their character forward with XP, money and equipment with rapidly increasing time requirements as opposed to games with little penalty for character death in combination with advancing quite rapidly. He is correct in saying that one of WoW's more notable features was the questing and quest incentives (which hopefully applied to the class you were playing at the time). However, if a mage in WoW wanted to obtain a Staff of Jordan at lv 40 or a Glowing Brightwood Staff at 54 (I am pre-Burning Legion so bear that in mind), they would need to repeatedly kill a specific enemy type in hopes of obtaining the drop or acquiring enough gold in order to purchase it from the AH from people who had done the same or just gotten insanely lucky. The player could alternatively run instances to obtain comparable or superior items, but regardless of other factors they would need the luck for a particular enemy to drop said item, otherwise they would have to rerun the instance again. Barring incredible strokes of luck, repeated action for the purpose of reaching a specific objective. While the individual quest's flavor text is nice, few quests rise above the overly used formula of bring item to this person or kill those guys.
In a similar omission, there are some inherent difficulties in comparing a large number of FPS games to MMORPGs, the central one being that when playing an FPS the player starts and ends each match in essentially the same condition. You'll always begin the match with just a knife and a pistol, and you will always end the match with just a knife and a pistol. The reason so many game modes have a central objective, time limit or point cap to the match is because otherwise it would become boring. Certainly the human element of your opponents is noteworthy in regards to combating tedium, but the one dimensional character played in an FPS really shouldn't be compared to the multi-faceted MMO avatar. The main issue with RPGs is the question of how far the character has to go in order to reach their next achievement and how much resistance the player can endure before the process becomes less enjoyable. The main obstacle for the developer to overcome is to ensure that the player is fittingly rewarded for their achievements, and that is where the trouble lies. I would suspect that when the proverbial Batman proclaims that the game is "Just a grind!" that they merely felt that the invested time and effort were not well rewarded and of course the level of accomplishment each player feels from the same achievement will vary person to person. This is also omitting the impact of having PCs contest against any computer opponent: the cpu characters will always react the same, and more often than not become formulaic.
On a similar note, Mr Funk makes the comparison between story driven games such as Drake's Fortune or Mass Effect(s) and MMORPGs and it is the intent of the developer where most of the frustration seems to be coming from. In ME the intent of the developers was to allow the player to experience a story through someone they had a fair yet limited amount of control over. While it was nice obtaining weapon upgrades, the fighting was indeed a means by which the character would advance and experience more of the story, which in that context amounts to a linear series of intents or objectives. MMOs on the other hand deal more with the spectacle of what the individual player themselves can do and the setting they can perform in, particularly in regards to other players. While the player does need to obtain levels in order to equip better weapons or spells, at the same time the player is advancing for the sake of those abilities or equipment as part of defining what their character is and what they are capable of. One mage may wish to obtain the AoE ice effect in order to control crowds. Another may wish to obtain the distanced AoE ice effect in order to bring down multiple enemies at once. In each example the player's intents are different, but they will both have to kill 100 mandragora to obtain it. In ME the intent of different player's are the same; to get the next tasty vittle of story which will be exactly the same for all of them, but how they approach the path leading to it is left to their own discretion.
I realize that next week's article will counterpoint most of what he has said in regards to "grinding", I just felt the need to address what I felt to be omissions and inconsistencies in what he wrote.
[/WoT]
