What's the point of ranks?

[gifthorse]

You do realize all these games with "engrossing quests" still make you do nothing but kill X mobs, gather X items, go to X location and wiggle your toes....
they arent any different at all and people need to realize that

so instead of 200 hours of killing mobs, you are doing 200 hours of someone telling you to go kill those mobs

I know other MMOs are like that. I'm talking about the 'ideal'. Im not talking about what crap other games have done.