The Grind (WoW, Rift)

WoW
The latest patch in WoW brought a whole new set of daily quests with the Isle of The Thunder King. To me this feels like Isle of Quel' Danas all over again, not a bad thing, just lots of competition and lots of mobs all over. I do wish the isle was friendlier to just helping tag mobs, like open events. Maybe GW2 and Rift have spoiled me on these types of play. I find it hard to forget about that type of cooperative game play once you try it. I had to wait quite a bit on respawns for some mobs, but I only really did these on the first day, which was really hopping.

A highlight, for me, upon entering, was hearing Gideon Emery voice Lor'themar Theron (my favorite voice actor), so that was a real treat! There is also another area around, where you can farm mounts and a battle/vanity pet, hunter pets and such. I have not made it there yet but I plan on heading there to check it out, later on today. From what I read, the pet is 999 bones collected and the mount is 9999. I have no idea how hard these are to gain. Add in rare mob hunting and there is a nice bit to look forward to getting done.

All in all it seems cool, still a bit of a grind for more gear, locked behind faction, locked behind more points. If I am going to grind out a faction, why do I have to do more grinding for rewards. I don't know, maybe it is just me but it just seems kind of blah when you combine it all. I'm a completely different gamer than I was years ago I suppose. But I am glad to see new content, there is so much to do at 90.

Rift
I've been logging into Rift on much more of a regular basis. The Carnival event is here, which I have been very excited about. It has changed a lot from last year and all I can say is... Grind. Even if the grind is alleviated with another phase of the event (I read there will only be two phases, I keep seeing people hope to see more but that doesn't seen the case), making people grind with mind numbing content isn't good at any point. Plus, Trion hasn't given any feedback or comments to the pages and pages of complaints on the forums, not looking good.

Mind numbing? The easiest way to get tickets for currency (there are three currencies for this event, yes, THREE), is the balloon popping game, joining a raid group there and hitting your space bar for extended periods, over and over. Pop 30 balloons for one ticket, rinse and repeat  I did it for about two hours, I don't think I can do it again. It is very hard for me to sit there doing that. There are other games but none seem to be fun and the balloon popping is the fastest way for tickets. I really wanted a couple of items with them so I had to grind them out, I still want a float (giant parade float for housing) but I don't know if I can do those games for 500 tickets. The items are very, very overpriced.

You won't be able to get everything with this event. But I don't want everything, I just want some of it. I also don't want my space bar to break while I go insane from boredom at the same time. So, I'm sort of stumped as why Trion would do this. Then again Storm Legion was such a grind, in my eyes, it really soured me in the end. I hope this is not the direction Rift is heading into, a big huge grind for anything and everything.

There are still other things to do, a few. The parade has been cancelled this year... Which I am sad to hear, I missed it last year. But you can still hunt pinatas and do rifts for beads, there is even a herbing and skinning quest for them as well and you can just log into the phone app for them as well. Plus, there are some really neat housing items, a huge stage, some banners and horses (from the race games), which I made into a sweet carousel. If you'd like to see it, I'm on Faeblight, it is listed as Starlight Carousel. The carousel is at the top of the dimension, up the stairs in the back, way, way up top! Character's name is Belladahna. The dimension is far from finished but the carousel is pretty much set up. It was a lot of fun to create!


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I guess at the end of the day I don't mind a grind if it is varied and fun to some extent. Like grinding rifts isn't bad but hitting my space bar to grind tickets does feel... well, bad; Like mentally ill type of bad, or lab rat type of bad. And grinding faction isn't that bad in WoW, daily quests net good money, but I don't feel like grinding instances on top of it though. I don't have to have it all, just give me a little something for my effort.


Edit: Poking around I saw that someone (Michael Hansen Game Designer - Live Content) did make a comment about the event- here. Lol... People might just take that advice.