What MMO Grind is WORSE than relic/zodiac weapon grind?

[KaedrianLiang]

It was a given that most "unnoficial" L2 servers had triple or even 6x EXP rates. After lvl 60, it could require something from 8 to 10 hours...

The leaked server software for L2 wasn't even true to the official servers. It was the in-house developer test server software. In short private servers boosted 2 things in favor of a lesser grind. The amount of exp mobs gave was multiplied, the total exp pool of characters is not even a quarter of the original, damage of characters boosted as well, and any perks you can think of that private servers typically had: special npcs selling armor and weapons available at hand, while retail majority was crafted, all arrows except for newbie arrows were crafted. Even raid gear was crafted, you got mats from raid bosses, then you had to find a dwarf artisan (they were super rare among the player population).

Retail L2 and FFXI shared one thing, exping was best done in groups, no more like it had to be done in groups, being alone you risked getting attacked by a group of players trying to exp off a particular spawn of mobs.

Death was a fixed rate of 10% of your exp bar if you were slain by a non-PC, all deaths, aside from "fair pvp" had a chance to drop a multiple random items in your inventory and equipped onto the ground. People were brutal with this system, especially Dagger classes and bow classes that had a "feint death" and the fastest runs peed in the game. Some notorious individual would pull 30+ dungeon type monsters into a dungeon zone-in or common teleport-in and feint death on the spot, characters porting in would be instantly killed by the mobs, dagger/bow class would get up from feint and loot any items a char may have dropped upon death.

4 hours a day of leveling 300 days a year under ideal conditions got you to level 75, going from 75 to 80 took you another 300 days. Then you unlock sub classes that start at level 40 capping those out took about 150 days, then you are granted access to a 2nd subclass which is another 150 days. then as the game updated continued the level cap was raised to 90.

Each level made your character that much more powerful. So the game world would have level 75's running around and a level 76 that could easily wreck 2-3 level 75's.

Lineage 2 was one of my best ole style MMORPG experiences, then FFXI came around to NA/EU. Both games were all about socializing and adventuring. FFXIV doesn't capture this magic as much as its mostly because of the players that choose to solo what is solo'able. while the earlier titles required group adventuring.

The grind feels like its nothing when you are among friends. People just cry "omg its so grindy" because they are trying to do it alone.

[Caraway]

As others have mentioned... Ragnarok Online and EverQuest.

Ragnarok Online had 0.01% item drop chances from boss monsters that had a 72 hour respawn timer and were contested (anyone could attack it). Whether you got a drop was based on the amount of damage your party did to it. You could spend your time killing a boss and get no rewards. And if you died you lost experience.

EverQuest you had quests that did not give you clear instructions as to where to go. You had to actually talk (by typing keywords into /say) to the NPCs to get clues as to where to go. No minimap, no quest markers. You had to collect rare drops from rare spawns (placeholder mobs spawned 4/5 times or so, on a mob with a 45 minute respawn timer) that were also contested, in dangerous locations that require assistance getting to. And if you died you lost experience. And if you lost enough experience you lost a level.

Vanguard: Saga of Heroes' Epic quest involved a lot of (legit) work, and a lot of grinding. The legit work involved following clues to special mobs throughout the world to kill and get pages needed to unlock a doorway. Once in the doorway you had to complete trials for the gods within the building. Once that was done you needed to increase your favour (faction grind) through killing mobs or diplomacy (card game progression path). Then you needed to do more faction work to get to tier 2. Again, you could kill mobs for 1-10 faction per kill (endgame mobs), or you could diplomacy with a level 50 diplomat for 100. You needed thousands of faction. You also had to do more trials (special mini quests inside of the building). Then you needed to kill 100 mobs on the opposite faction's side of the building. Then you needed to grind out materials. You needed rare mob drops, ultra rare harvesting node drops, questable mob drops (100s) and these all only came from mobs in one area that required a full group to get. You also needed to know a max level crafter to help put things together. Then you needed to find and fight multiple high powered bosses that required a full six man group so you could unlock a fight that required a twelve man group. This got you your epic 'catalyst'. It was an item you could put into a socketed weapon. Which dropped from raid (12 man to 24 man content) bosses.

[Felis]

Sorry white knights, but I've never experienced something as mind-numbing as spamming FATEs in any game ever. Also length =/= boredom.

You do this only during atma farming. And you can already finish it within some days.
During Animus books you don't spam them, you camp them ^^

grinding in the older MMOs were way worse than anything in FFXIV.

in Ragnarok Online, killing all enemies of the entire map will give you like 0.01% exp to get your lv.98 character to 99.

Oh yes
And from 96-99 you needed the same amount of exp like from 1-96 (deaths not included)

[Nephera]

I remember lineage 2 sending me an email bragging about how only a handful of players had hit the level cap 2 years after launch.

[Deculture]

I went from EQ (circa 2001) -> FFXI -> WoW -> TERA -> FFXIV ARR.

If you're an old dog that's played the older MMOs then you'll probably just roll your eyes whenever you see someone complain that the FFXIV relic chain is "too grindy". The Zodiac chain is pretty casual, especially when parts of it gets nerfed over time making it even easier.

[Cemil]

Level grinding in every. single. Korean MMO. Ever. Even the Westernized ones.

Yes.
After Phantasy Star Online(Dreamcast)and FFXI my first westernized MMO was Rising Force Online anno 2006.

As a Cora Dark Priest i was grinding separate
-every single magic Tree(Dark,Fire,Water,Wind,Stone)
-my Staff Weapon
-Bow Weapon for Ranger Armor=Fast Speed
-defence for better Armor
-my Animi Pets
Level 43+ 0.01-0.03% each Mob.

Aion 1.0 on CN Server was a funny grind too.^^

[Jamez82]

I remember back when I got my Shadow Knights Epic weapon 2.5 on Everquest. Like others have said those quests required 40+ person raids to get some of the components and others you had to farm a rare spawn mob (sometimes wouldn't spawn for days) for a item he rarely drops all the while competing against several others needing the item also.

Still though... as I've gotten older my patience isn't what it used to be. The hunt grind really ticks me off.

[Kuroyuki-Hime]

Try leveling a non-FotM class in Lineage II, where on top of a soul-crushing grind you had to deal with PKers and you losing exp and gear if they killed you. Sure, Atma in this game is a bullshit mechanic, and not having the most expensive AH gear and +1s was a bullshit limitation in FFXI, but nothing can break a man's spirit like losing the piece of gear you farmed forever to a PKer or finding out by your second class transfer that your class is a pleb compared to the "good" classes.

That was early L2 (up to C2?) but I still remember the chaos of trading gear to a friend in town when hunting reds, was fun times ^.^

Getting into a larger ally more or less protected you from any reds/neutrals (in fact thx to my tag noone bothered to go for me when I was red xD)

Retail L2 and FFXI shared one thing, exping was best done in groups, no more like it had to be done in groups, being alone you risked getting attacked by a group of players trying to exp off a particular spawn of mobs.

Playing solo was valid to your late 60s/early 70s and in general just with access to buffs, but duo/trio wasnt bad up to 80.

Death was a fixed rate of 10% of your exp bar if you were slain by a non-PC, all deaths, aside from "fair pvp" had a chance to drop a multiple random items in your inventory and equipped onto the ground.

Even back in C1 (where I started) death at 40+ was only 4%. Later exp loss was further reduced 76+ (C5 or Interlude?) to 1% at 78+ and if killed from a war target only 25% penalty. Dropping stuff was removed quite early as well.

And rezzes had % on them from the start, high lvl EE 80%, bish 90% and not to mention brezes later (but even lowbie PP rez was 20%).

People were brutal with this system, especially Dagger classes and bow classes that had a "feint death" and the fastest runs peed in the game.

That only worked on PvE and noobs. You could still target a fake death, real death only with shift-click :P

Some notorious individual would pull 30+ dungeon type monsters into a dungeon zone-in or common teleport-in and feint death on the spot, characters porting in would be instantly killed by the mobs, dagger/bow class would get up from feint and loot any items a char may have dropped upon death.

Never seen that. However training bots was great.

4 hours a day of leveling 300 days a year under ideal conditions got you to level 75, going from 75 to 80 took you another 300 days. Then you unlock sub classes that start at level 40 capping those out took about 150 days, then you are granted access to a 2nd subclass which is another 150 days. then as the game updated continued the level cap was raised to 90.

Never counted my days but I started early C1, made it to 40 when C2 came around (about 6 months), quited and returned and rerolled with the release of C3. Played until Gracia and made it to 80 (was playing a PP >.>). Exp 78-79 was the same amount you needed 1-78 lol. On a good day I made about 3-5%. 3% with an avarage party, 5% with a perfect, and by good day I mean one without PvP (on our peak we had 16 wars up so these days were rare). And then you had days where you went home with lesser exp than you had before (lost once 27% to Antharas -__-)

Each level made your character that much more powerful. So the game world would have level 75's running around and a level 76 that could easily wreck 2-3 level 75's.

Ooookay? But you played retail, right? Or did you mean by a hero? (but at hero at 76?) Nuker maybe? Got my and my groups ass handed by a single sps but sps with hero UD was plain stupid...

[Aurora-Pendragon]

Aion was grindy, really really grindy, and heavily based on RNG. Miragent/Fenris pants made people rage quit a lot. I did it twice. I've never felt the boredom and frustration I actualy experience with my relic.
Relic weapon is just boring.

[Hayward]

I've only played PSO and FFXI, but you can take it as the gospel truth that any grind in XIV pales in comparison to the Tanaka-era grinds in XI. The R/M/E grinds were made all the worse due to the messed-up mindset of the players that certain jobs weren't worth playing without a R/M/E weapon (Ask any Paladin and they'll tell you once they've gotten past the stream of obscenities). If ever there was a reason to carve Yoshi's image into a mountain, it's for avoiding this pitfall entirely with the Relic/Zodiac questline.