With achievement systems getting more popular over the last few years, non MMO gamers are getting a chance to experience the same grind we MMO gamers have for years.  The way things are going it seems that if a game is playable online then it will get an arbitrary achievement system.  Left 4 Dead and Call of Duty: World at War are the last 2 non-mmo games I’ve played with just such systems.  While L4D’s achievement system does not provide any reward once you complete a goal, CoD’s system not only unlocks new weapons but also levels your character to unlock new features.  Then we have Xbox Live, a online system setup entirely around achievements.  The more games you play and the more achievements you complete the higher your Xbox Live ranking.

Having been in the MMO community for some time, we’ve all heard the argument from disgruntled MMO or non-MMO gamers stating that MMOs are a huge time sink and that all you do is grind.  I just find it hilarious that now these gamers too good for the MMO grind have no problem achievement grinding. You can argue that it’s different, however as soon as you add any reward to the achievement system that will give you an edge in gameplay, you are creating a grind.  Team Fortress 2 is a perfect example.  As soon as they added rewards to their achievement system, you had servers full of gamers grinding away trying to complete them.  Many gamers even stating this completely ruined the game, myself being one of them.

With C0D4, servers were setup to instantly level you to the max so you could game without having to worry about grinding your way to new weapons and game features.

The fact is that both systems are serving the same purpose, to create a system that can rank players by what goals they’ve completed.  By that I mean if you see someone with a special weapon or item, you know they’ve compelted some achievements to earn it, so in your mind they are better than your character regardless if the game has a ranking feature or not.

In MMORPGs gamers grind by completing quests, raids and PvP goals to increase their characters stats or gain better weapons and items.  In turn they are able to perform better in PvP as well as in the tougher raids/quests.   In non-MMORPG games, gamers are grinding by completing arbitrary achievements, like “Stab someone 50 times in the back while their on fire, in the air and relacing their shoes”.  Then you get a new title or weapon or whatever the game feels like giving you.

Developers should be coming up with ways to remove the grind, not to make all games grind fests.  MMOs biggest problem is that its based off of how much time you have to run the same quests over and over again to get that weapon or item. Instead of this grind/reward system that most games are currently in favor of, developers need to come up with something new.  I know that grinding in some form will always be part of MMO gaming, however I think it can be changed where it doesn’t feel like you’re grinding.