[ennui]

I have been playing WoW on and off for nearly three years now (wow, I didn't realize it had been that long until now) and my main is still around level 42 or so.

No, grinding in WoW is not difficult. It is just tedious when you're doing it alone.

I don't play as often as most people do. I work and study and go out with friends more often and only play when I'm home with nothing to do (or breaks between work) so the few people I know who do play WoW (any more) game so adamantly that they reach level 32 my the time it takes me to reach level 10 (True occurrence! I recently joined a friend on a different server with a new alt). What sucks about this particular situation is that I want to play with my friends. They, however, spend so much more time playing than I so they are constantly higher levels than I am. Even if they waited while I reached 30, in a week or so they would probably be level 45 or 50 and I'd barely be level 35 or 37 at best. So, none the less, it is a constant struggle to keep up which most usually encompasses me solo'ing. This is what happened with my main and why he is still in his early 40's. I joined a guild with friends who had all been playing since the game launched so they were all lvl 60's (the then-cap) with alts that were 40-60 while I was barely starting out with a new character. After solo'ing for 40-some levels I find it difficult to enjoy solo'ing any longer. That's a long time to play an MMO single-player style. Certainly, I had very good experiences with random same-level parties but even those people would be 20 levels higher than me the next time I saw them in-game.

On top of this, I play MMO's for a different reason. Most of the people I meet play to grind to the cap and get the "best" stuff. I, on the other hand, don't care about that cap but, rather, play MMO's with the intentions of making bonds with people in this gaming experience and sharing that experience with people who I enjoy playing with. As detailed, my WoW experience LARGELY lacks this.

So what's my point?
I'm not concerned about grinding. In Aion, the grinding can be however it wants to be and it won't make a difference to me. I just hope to find some great people who I can stick with and share the experience with. Maybe it'll be my first MMO where I join a random guild that I think will fit my play style instead of joining one just because IRL friends are in it.



Oh yeah... so I answered "hard" only because my experience has proven that it's difficult to find someone who shares my play-ethics. And solo grinding is tedious as all hell after 40 levels.