[Gaming] Grinding in games: not sexy.

If there's one thing that makes me tired in a game, it's the feeling of being repetitive.

Killing a handful of foozles (the standard literary term for random enemies... LOL) to achieve a quest goal is one thing, but the massacre of thousands of unnamed enemies for a trivial cause has to rank up there as a pretty annoying, yet seemingly unavoidable piece of work required in games for some semblance of advancement.

As I mentioned earlier, I probably killed a thousand enemies to get revered with a Burning Crusade faction in World of Warcraft. For what reason did I collect Zaxxis Insignias and Ethereum Prisoner I.D. Tags? Why, to buy the schematic that would let me make Elemental Seaforium Charges, a component required to create a Flying Machine, which was supposedly needed to create the upgraded version.

That was the hitch: I was working on obsolete information, basing my need to create a Flying Machine as a prerequisite for the epic Turbo-Charged Flying Machine. Only after spending a small fortune in gold and a bit of time grinding rep for the BC faction did I find that out.

Of course, I still made both the regular and turbo-charged flying machines, but it doesn't erase the sting of finding out too late.

While I can understand the need to grind to achieve certain small goals in games, I don't necessarily agree with it. Such feelings are exacerbated when one has the wrong information at hand to accurately gauge the need for the damned grind to begin with.

Sigh... maybe I should just read WoWWiki more before doing anything in Wrath. For a game this large in scope, I shouldn't really have to though.