Be Excellent To Each Other

Yup.



Nope. There's some where you do, mostly the Korean ones that are built that way. But the big example is always WoW and well... it's bollocks.

WoW was launched some years ago. It received universal popular and critical acclaim. A ton of 90%+ review scores. Had any of those reviewers had much 'endgame' experience. No of course not, it took a long time to level up to 60, so what was being reviewed and what hooked people in was the 1-60 levelling game. And the critics all said 93%, game of the year, etc.

It's still there.

You get through it quicker now - when the first expansion launched Blizzard lowered the 1-60 levelling requirements so the 1-70 time would be around the same as the 1-60 time. Likewise with the launch of the second one they're doing the same to the 61-70 content so again if you buy both expansions it'll take as long to get one character from 1-80 as it did from 1-60. So there's no ever increasing ceiling which could cause problems.

But then along come the WoW fanatics.

Sigh.

"OMG I have 5 characters at level 70 and am bringing up my 6th, levelling up is such a GRIND!".

OF COURSE IT FUCKING IS!

YOU'RE PLAYING THE SAME GAME 6 TIMES OVER THE COURSE OF 3 YEARS. AND THE GAME IS ABOUT 400 HOURS LONG.

Final Fantasy 7 is a great game. Baldur's Gate 2 is a great game. Both offer 100s of hours of playtime.
Experiment: try playing nothing but FF7 or BG2 repeatedly for 3 years. You'll get bored. Of course you will. What are you stupid?

WoW is a great game. But the whiners whining about a grind forget the first time they played it, the thrill at swooping over the land on a griffin, of getting your first horse, killing your first boss monster... It's brilliant. But yeah it's not so great the 7th time around.

So yeah, it winds me up. Especially as people are all "WAR is WOW but better as there's no grind". Yes there is. You just can't see it. Because it's all new to you. You're not bored yet.

And you were doing so well.