One persons grind is another persons engaging gameplay. Ashes may very well be the first MMO in quite some considerable time that I will log into each day and ask myself what I want to do today rather than what do I need to do.

Grinding without interruption will be a miracle. Open world pvp? Events that pop up near grinding area? Drama? All those things will make grinding interesting. Still remember grinding motes in Outland (WoW) while at the same time fighting other players. LoL my fondest memory was not some raid kill, but soloing three players while farming.

Lineage 2 grind was about choosing location where you were getting XP and certain materials you needed. Fun aspect was that there was always chance of some random PvP with enemy aliance. From peacefull chill farm it went to brutal fight about place in location or dungeon so fast. Overall I want to say that having lucrative places for pure grind can generate a lot of fun and drama.

Older MMOs were grindy. It took weeks in EverQuest to do anything. I can remember sitting in queue for eight days to fight a monster for a CHANCE to get a weapon drop. And when it was my turn, I didn't get the drop, and had to come back. Ashes is trying to make an MMO like older ones.

I'm new to MMO's so I have no idea but I'm excited about this game and I love your vids cause I always learn something. Thanks Chad!

AoC has held my attention span for nearly 7 years xD I think grinding is good when it's meaningful and combat is fun. From what we've seen from Intrepid so far, it does look like grinding will have a purpose and will lead to unexpected consequences and rewards, such as event spawns or story arc changes, etc. I also feel that the intended design, which benefits from grinding as a group rather than as a solo player, will help the social enjoyment that players experience, potentially contributing to sustained attention. I'm looking forward to seeing the content progression when A2 begins :3

Yo! I've been waiting for air to drop! Finally!!!

i just finished the intro and personally, i think there is a difference in what intrepid means by grind and the average defenition and i personally like intrepids defenition more because essentially, a GRIND isnt needing to do ANYTHING to reach an an goal that isnt instantaneous but rather something you do that you genuinly enjoy doing so thats why the questing and interesting gathering of resources from the world and from monsters as well as the dungeons and world events being the ways to level up i feel so far from what we have seen and been told, i dont think it will be grindy but just require a sizable time investment.

as an old school MMO player playing grind heavy games like Flyff and Ragnarok, I don't mind grinding when this game comes out. I feel like Western players don't like grinding games when it is actually kinda fun for me to kill some time or something repetitive to do while doing something else. I also got to meet players who became online friends simply because of grinding parties.

I like your take on making the grinds be back-loaded and not front-loaded. The leveling process seems like it is going to be a huge grind especially for casuals and I hope they stick with it. I think the thing with grinds is that mandatory grinds feel bad and non-mandatory grinds feel good. Having the option to choose what we grind for feels good and I think GW2 does a great job of this. GW2 has plenty of grinds but nothing that is mandatory.

thanks air!

When I was a kid I played Maplestory and hitting level cap was impossible back then. A few tried to be #1, the rest of us enjoyed our time in the game, at whatever level, because it was all subjective. It would be nice to see a developer be bold enough to try this again with a modern mmorpg.. games now days make you spend the first few days doing the same shit you done over and over mindlessly just trying to ding max level.. for what? Disappointment because there's no end game yet... and your entire leveling journey bypassed, as you were just worried about hitting max as fast as possible.

I feel like the best MMO experiences are able to layer more engaging content with the long grinds. I like finding a good spot and mob farming for hours, but I don't like being FORCED to do that without punctuated moments of intensity and engagement, such as challenging elite spawns or random world events. Even if AOC is a terrible grind, I'll probably commit to it anyway.

I think the max level grind will be the quickest grind in the game. Artisan skills/nodes/extra reward or augment paths like religion will be where the real grind is. Will it still promote getting to max level asap? Yes. But its just a power milestone, not the main goal in order to actually play the game. My guess is the max level will be raised once they realize 50 is to low

I personally do not mind the grinding as much as others, until the game is changed, and those after me do not experience the same grind I did. When it gets easier for someone to achieve what I achieved, yet much easier or less time consuming, I then feel cheated. I understand this is done to either maintain or attract more players, however, knowing this does not let me feel less cheated.

Grinding in and on itself is not bad: the grinding loop being boring is. For example, Warframe is an incredibly grindy game, but at least the grind is fun most of the time. On the other side, New World 1.0 grind was awful (I havent played in a while so idk how is it now).

This made me think of something... aoc is being build with old school players in mind...meaning its target audience will be quite a bit older than the average mmo rpg, But ive yet to see a drop of blood.... (i think) I want violence! do you agree?

And some grind doesnt hurt, and makes you hit those keys without thinking, comming from BDO, mid-End game player.

If PvP is fun and augments are done properly I don't care if its grindy.

I hope there is some good grind in the game

nice video

My hope is this with AoC. I hope that I can reach the maximum level through a long commitment quest grinding with some grind. I hope it is not like BDO's grind because that game didn't have anything to offer (The only thing that kept me logging in was the hope of a Dwarf class and my friends). I hope just like Warhammer Online, you can gain rewards based on killing equal-strength players, and the gear progression is not based around RNG gambling (maybe crafted crystals, foods, jewelry, etc).

i want incentives to grind multiple characters rather than min maxing, seasonal resets are fun too.

I don't mind if an MMO always has something extra you can do to 'grow', but you need a proper 'power curve' for that to work in any MMO where PvP is a core piece. If you can get to a point fairly quickly, say 2-6 months, that has you able to compete in 1v1 and GvG at a reasonable level, then it works. I'd rather a more fair 'playing field' but if most can stay within roughly 5% of the 'power' of top players, I find it works. Also, what is grind? Some 'grind' is actually enjoyable gameplay for many (too much to say on this). Clear grind was Aion's PvE/PvP end-game event to get gear where you had to do the one piece of content not 100s, but 1000s of times (or so it felt, lol, I eventually left, was great with the flying combat but that was grind grind... ugh). Some grind can work, like DAoC's group mob XP bonus and leveling grind made grouping far better than solo but it was also (initially) what would today be considered 'hardcore' since mobs could really add in some areas (tanglers, har!). This built a 'better player' as far as mechanics and group play were concerned, but most importantly built community and realm cohesiveness. There is no way to replicate that these days but Ashes could have pieces of those ideas at end-game, if designed well.

I play BDO I doubt any other game is as Grindy as that 😂

If I don't get to play Ashes with Chad, I don't wanna play it.

Hope so

My life For AIR !

Let it be grindy. There needs to be a separation between casuals and no lifers.

I figure there will be some type of grind but if it's enjoyable, then I won't care much.

So here's my thought. One option is to let users buy "awesomeness" using real world cash and 90% of players absolutely hate that system. Grinding is the same mechanic, but you're substituting time for cash--which 90% of players absolutely hate because they have jobs, families, etc. So what is the third miracle alternative? Get rid of "player level" altogether, thus you log in, find a purple sword, and you simply are awesome? I believe MMOs should literally create a marketplace to let players who like to grind sell accounts for real-world cash to people who don't have the time but want to play. I also see the Path of Exile trade system--where people who find amazing things can get rewarded for their ability to identify amazing things--as perfectly acceptable. But there is no other non-time, non-cash system.

For Zoomers, grind is a 1 minute tutorial boss fight.

This is all motto till we get to play it.

That attention span study was a marketing ploy. It's 100% untrue. Just FYI. Attention spans isn't something that's ever had actual funded research towards it because most research is directly related so some form of profit or benefit and know attention spans doesn't really provide either of those. It was a gotcha claim by Microsoft I believe. I can't remember who but it was a big tech company. Total bogus.

Air! lol

Steven said that AoC will not be grindy. Unless you want a Freehold. Then a Freehold will be an EPIC GRIND like no other game has ever had. This game is not for everyone.

Ashes of Creation will be not very good playing solo it possible but more time to farm.. you need like 5 or more friends to play it. because of the PVP stuff around it will hurt solo player.

wait, you get air free??

Yep, ain't no way "ashes won't be grindy". Unless they literally stop us from playing more than 2h a day - the game will have grind.

To me grind is a state of mind. Either you enjoy the content you are doing or not.

I find using the word "grind" is a terrible way of saying "playing the game".

your sponsor sounds like a scam

No, it won't be grindy. Why? Because this scam of a game is never going to release in a state playable enough that anyone will want to grind.