>"I think they're daily grindfests now." They were never not grindfests. EQ, Lineage 1/2, FFXI, and most of that era were almost entirely about the grind. The

>"I think they're daily grindfests now." They were never not grindfests. EQ, Lineage 1/2, FFXI, and most of that era were almost entirely about the grind. The difference is that you were forced to grind with friends. FFXI in particular was physically impossible to progress without a full party at all times, and there were no ingame mechanics to facilitate that. You had to talk to people and form relationships. Individual servers were real communities with long running rivalries, alliances, reputations, and prestige. That's the heart and soul of the genre that made those games unforgettable, and was lost when WoW took over and introduced dungeon finder and server sharding.