Curse

Big_Iron · Jan 08, 2007, 07:59 PM // 19:59

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Originally Posted by devils wraths

well i dont think they do those chests they added into nightfall are very handy for people who carnt farm or things. i mean on one char i got all chests but the starting ones took me an hour but still i made 50k from that. and thats better than nothing

Or you can farm presents in LA. I made 50k yesterday from that. I'm sure many people have made even more than that.

Dark Kal · Jan 08, 2007, 08:48 PM // 20:48

For all the people saying: "A-Net doesn't encourage farming/botting, what a dumb thing to say.". Ofcourse they aren't literally encouraging it I was pointing out the irony that the more they try to prevent it the more they are actually encouraging it. If they make it harder and harder to earn money they push people more and more towards buying gold with real currency.

Now, I'm not saying they should make farming easy that really isn't the point of my thread. My main point is the anti-farming code and nerfing popular farming spots are more hurting the average player than it actually has had any effect on money farmers (the farming in the title thread actually refers to money farming not regular farming). I would suggest they remove the anti-farming code and stop nerfing farm areas (this doesn't mean they should stop balancing skills). the Griffin nerf for example was completely unnecessary how much did it influence money-farmers? It virtually didn't. How much did it influence regular players? Hardly, they just found another spot to farm. As Kryth said no matter how many areas or things you nerf people will always find another way.

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Scores are irrelevant to armor drops. The daily high scores take a few minutes to update.

It was meant to give you an idea of how many souls I kill per run, I'm well aware it has nothing to do with the drops. Updating the scores in a legitimate way (no 55 hp monk) takes more than a few minutes either that or you don't know what you're talking about.

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It helps if you know how to farm before you start doing it. I'm also struggling to figure out why people who blatantly do the same thing over and over again -therefore triggering anti-farm code - are complaining about triggering said code, when all it takes to avoid it is to do something else every once in a while.

That's exactly my point don't you think money farmers know all the tricks to bypass the anti-farming code? That people who are making a living of this aren't the best people who know how to get around it? That's the exact reason I said the anti-farming code is hurting the average player and not the money farmers.

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However, disabling the anti-farm code and no longer nerfing probably isn't the answer either. While the GW economy isn't perfect, it would be a disaster if professional farmers were allowed to continue unchecked.

Professional money farmers already know how to bypass the anti-farming code and just farm areas that haven't been nerfed instead. The are many games (amongst them MMORPGs) that in fact don't have an anti-farming code and their economy is just fine. There really isn't a need for doomthinking since the farming code doesn't have that big of an effect that it would completly ruin the GW economy if it was removed.

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There is a cap on the amount of armors you can "farm". They did this so people won't farm them, but players can still get them.

I'm pretty sure the cap isn't 3! Since that's the amount of armor remnants I've got in total, so it is in fact hurting players. Like I already said all I want is 1 more remnant for my whispers hero, not to sell them.

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Ok a couple of quick things here. First off ANet does in fact support farming. That's the official word, They released a statement to that effect on www.guildwars.com but I'm too lazy to look through the archives for it. Secondly, they do not support bots, that tidbit is also in the statement they issued. Thirdly the "anti-farming code" has never been officially confirmed by A net, at least not to my knowledge.

The first two things are adressed at the beginning of this post. Your third point is incorrect Gaile Grey comfirmed the anti-farming code, it's in the 'Game and Dev Tracker' forums somewhere :-p

The whole 'anti-farming' code and nerfing popular farm spots is just a placebo to pull the wool over our eyes. It makes people think A-Net actually does something against money farmers and bots while in fact they probably don't feel like spending the time or resources on dealing with the problem or they realize there's not much point in trying. Evidence for this is the bots in Granite Citadel which has been reported here (and most likely on other forums) and there has done nothing against them. And gold still sells for the same price it always has. Either that or it actually was a very poor attemp at reducing/stopping money farmers, laugh :-)

Blackest Rose · Jan 08, 2007, 09:20 PM // 21:20

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Originally Posted by Muk Utep

They're not encouraging it, that's just stupid. They're trying to prevent it, and one opinion is that they're doing it wrong and hurting the legitimate players more. They're not encouraging it, that's something else.

QFT
Anet are not encouraging farmers at all but the issue is that they're not discouraging them in the right way.

They have nerfed farming in order to discourage farmers.
Unfortunately they have also made it more difficult for the average player to do some non-commercial farming to gain personal ingame wealth.

By making it more difficult for the average person to amass enough wealth they're inadvertantly pushing the average Joe to resort to buying from commercial farmers as otherwise they'd never get what they want.

The end result is just that farming becomes more difficult so commercial prices go up.
It wouldn't surprise me if the number of people buying stuff from farmers is actually increasing and those commercial farmers are making more money by charging a higher price now....

Rather than make it harder for farmers to farm they somehow need to reduce the demand. If there's little demand then farmers will reduce.
I don't exactly know how Anet could do this but they are smart people

- unfortunately nerfing farming isn't working against commercial farmers though....

End statement : Making it harder to farm just makes what you farm more valuable, it doesn't discourage commercial farmers while it does discourage average Joes.

Savio · Jan 08, 2007, 09:52 PM // 21:52

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Originally Posted by Dark Kal

the Griffin nerf for example was completely unnecessary how much did it influence money-farmers? It virtually didn't. How much did it influence regular players? Hardly, they just found another spot to farm. As Kryth said no matter how many areas or things you nerf people will always find another way.

So what's the bother? Anti-farm code doesn't affect anyone else in the area, just you. And it means you've been farming the same area for too long.

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It was meant to give you an idea of how many souls I kill per run, I'm well aware it has nothing to do with the drops.

But Souls don't drop armor remnants anymore. It's the same as if I wondered why my Grawl farming build doesn't get me any Mursaat Hornbows.

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Updating the scores in a legitimate way (no 55 hp monk) takes more than a few minutes either that or you don't know what you're talking about.

I meant updating as the scoresheet changing after you finished a run. If you mean update as in "set the high score", then it typically takes a couple of hours to set a daily record and about 10 hours to beat the current all-time record. The scorekeeper does not record high scores if you didn't die to finish the game - if you warped out or exited the GW program, it won't be recorded.

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That's exactly my point don't you think money farmers know all the tricks to bypass the anti-farming code?

It's called "not repeatedly entering and leaving the same area over and over again", which is either accomplished by moving to a different farming area or clearing out the whole area instead of just select mobs. It's not a big secret.

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Professional money farmers already know how to bypass the anti-farming code and just farm areas that haven't been nerfed instead.

Anti-farm code refers to how an individual player's drops are reduced from repeatedly entering an area, until that player doesn't receive any drops from monsters anymore. I've yet to see any evidence conclusively pointing to an area-wide drop nerf aside from complaints from players that they aren't getting "good drops".

Additionally, money farmers don't care what they get, as almost everything just goes to the merchant. Player farmers who complain often are talking about not getting that extra-valuable "good drop" to sell to other players.

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I'm pretty sure the cap isn't 3! Since that's the amount of armor remnants I've got in total, so it is in fact hurting players.

There is no cap. Drops just decrease after you get so many armors (usually 4), and possibly it goes back up after time.

As a side note, why do you people keep suggesting that farming is the best or only way to make money in this game?

tomcruisejr · Jan 08, 2007, 10:22 PM // 22:22

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Originally Posted by Dark Kal

The more A-Net tries to prevent farming the more they encourage it. By implementing anti-farming code and nerfing farming areas they are making it harder and harder for everyone to make money. The professional money farmers will always find a way around this, while it makes it much harder for normal people to get money. I mean why bother grinding for days/weeks for money while you can just go work for one hour and just buy 100k gold? The professionals might always find a way around these restrictions, but that doesn't mean the average player will, who'll just get fed up and buy the gold or just plain stop playing. Now if there was no anti-farming code much more peole could get gold and therefor there would be less reasons to buy gold with real currency or use bots to attain it.

For example: I've been grinding the Lost Soul challenge for 3 days now getting scores around of 100 - 200 (I've broken the daily record on several occasions but the record keeper just ignores my high scores) for one single armor remnant to give to my whispers hero which I still haven't gotten even after killing endless amounts of lost souls. Because of the anti-farming code there's no point in trying to grind this any longer, since my chances drop lower and lower the more I try. I'm now considering just buying one armor remnant from a farmer, GG A-Net.

That's what i call "out-of-the-box".

Dark Kal · Jan 09, 2007, 12:40 AM // 00:40

Ah, someone fixed my quotes thank you, I'm new and I guessed that would work but it didn't. I'd edit my post myself but for some reason the forums load really slowly for me.

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Originally Posted by Savio

So what's the bother? Anti-farm code doesn't affect anyone else in the area, just you. And it means you've been farming the same area for too long.

I'm argueing two things:

1 Remove the anti-farming code
2 Don't nerf any more areas

The part you quoted was merely an example of my second request but I can see how that got confusing. I was always under the impression that the anti-farming code was merely there for gold-for-currency money farmers not for the regular players. Although there's no evidence for either side AFAIK, so I have no way of being sure.

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But Souls don't drop armor remnants anymore. It's the same as if I wondered why my Grawl farming build doesn't get me any Mursaat Hornbows.

Ah yes, you are quite right after farming a few mad souls I did in fact get a remnant, I apologize. Was this announced in an update? I didn't know because the first three remnants I got was from killing lost souls and wasn't aware they changed it.

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I meant updating as the scoresheet changing after you finished a run. If you mean update as in "set the high score", then it typically takes a couple of hours to set a daily record and about 10 hours to beat the current all-time record. The scorekeeper does not record high scores if you didn't die to finish the game - if you warped out or exited the GW program, it won't be recorded.

Ah, my bad I misinterpreted. You can add "if you lose connection" to that list BTW. But no, yesterday I beat the daily high score and after I got a score of220 I decided to suicide so I'd appear on the list (I lost connection the day before and didn't even get gold then) so I let the mad souls chasing me kill me while I'm in the wurm. I die I get the message "New High Score" again (first appears when you break it) and I recieve 500+ gold and the game teleports me back to the challenge. So I go to the record keeper nothing has changed, I go back hours later still nothing has changed. I did lose connection to the friend server maybe that prevents it as well.

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It's called "not repeatedly entering and leaving the same area over and over again", which is either accomplished by moving to a different farming area or clearing out the whole area instead of just select mobs. It's not a big secret.

There are other things that aid in bypassing the anti-farming code such as deleting and recreating new characters after a few days, although what you mentioned is indeed the main way of dodging it. But If you are farming for a particular green item it's kind of hard to go do something else if that green item is the only thing you are intrested in at the moment. Where as money farmers can just swith farming places as much as they want, hence the anti-farming code is more a menace to the average gamer than it is to money farmers.

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Anti-farm code refers to how an individual player's drops are reduced from repeatedly entering an area, until that player doesn't receive any drops from monsters anymore. I've yet to see any evidence conclusively pointing to an area-wide drop nerf aside from complaints from players that they aren't getting "good drops".

Ah there's a big bad on my part. You have to view the sentence as two seperet parts:

Professional money farmers already know how to bypass the anti-farming code (in reference to the anti-farming code).

Professional money farmers farm areas that haven't been nerfed instead (in reference to nerfing popular areas).

But that's totally my poor grammar's fault.

English isn't my native language either, sorry.

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As a side note, why do you people keep suggesting that farming is the best or only way to make money in this game?

What alternatives do you offer? Farming is the most effective way to get money. Unless you do runs although that doesn't pay that well either.

Xethrion · Jan 09, 2007, 01:36 AM // 01:36

Actually, power trading is the most effective way to get money..

ss1986v2 · Jan 09, 2007, 02:02 AM // 02:02

the issue is the difference in what the bot/ebay farmers are farming and what the average joe is farming. the average joe is looking for gold items, green items, rare materials, and other such expensive things. but this isnt where botters make their money. they sell everything they get: crap white weapons, worthless armors, collectible items, crap materials, and all the worthless junk some players dont even bother picking up. thats how they make their money. selling junk to the merch for 3g-20g over the coarse of weeks adds up.

botters arent stealing your armor pieces, or perfect gold weapons, or those hard to get greens; they are selling the crap of gw, and getting rich off of it. so until you are willing to farm for 18 hours a day, for a month, in some random zones, selling every little junk item that drops, i dont think anyone can complain that botting is stealing money out of their pockets. if you want it that bad, just farm like they do. you dont get to complain about botting when all you farm is greens, ectos, and chest runs. botters arent killing you there.

Malice Black · Jan 09, 2007, 02:39 AM // 02:39

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Originally Posted by Xethrion

Actually, power trading is the most effective way to get money..

True but to power trade correctly you need a good amount of gold to start of with.

A-Net has no problems with farming they actually encourage farming. If you search the forum and find Gaile's post concerning farming you can read her statement for yourself.

A-Net doesn't encourage botting but they admit it is a big issue and one which they are trying to resolve. The Dying Nightmares were added to UW for a reason. DoA has random patrols for a reason.

Smart farmers know how to beat the Anti-Bot code. Hint: farm 3-4 areas and rotate on a regular basis.

Yes it's "Anti-Bot" not "Anti-Farm".

ubermancer · Jan 09, 2007, 03:20 AM // 03:20

On a note, it is easier for a bot to interupt rend enchantments then it is for a human.

nytestalker · Jan 09, 2007, 03:42 AM // 03:42

gold != items.

The code lowers the drop rate of good items. Not the chances of getting gold.

Actually. The farming code HELPS gold farms. As gold is one of the lower dropable items. So the more the farmer grinds an area the more likely he is to get plain gold drops.

The more you farm an area, the less likely you are to get an item.

Keeps the supply of items generally level, and the influx of gold somewhat even.

The problem, is the demand for things that you DO NOT NEED.

Like. Hero armor, is really pointless. There is no efficiency gain for having epeen armor.

Although, the OP's arguement about working IRL for one hour or two weeks ingame for 100k gold is absolutely true.

If anet really wanted to get rid of bot farmers, they would sell gold through thier store at extremely cheap rates.

(kekek HINT!!!!!!)

Div · Jan 09, 2007, 06:57 AM // 06:57

Why do people need so much gold? It's not like you need to be wearing FoW armor on all the chars to get around...

Anarkii · Jan 09, 2007, 07:46 AM // 07:46

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Originally Posted by holymasamune

Why do people need so much gold? It's not like you need to be wearing FoW armor on all the chars to get around...

There's nothing much else to do in PvE once you beat the game, is there? So people set goals for themselves - titles, vanity items etc.

Maria The Princess · Jan 09, 2007, 07:58 AM // 07:58

im with the OP on this one.

and the anti farming code doesnt really hurt the boters. the guy leaves his PC runing for the night, the 55 monk repeats same actions. the morning the guy wakes up to 100k and a full inventory. nurf? ok lets move to the next place with melee only mobs. ok so it takes 5 hours instead of 3 hours.. big deal, the guy is sleeping this time anyways.

by decreasing drop rates of vanity golds, by doing that horrible chest nurf, in general by making "money making" harder and slower sometimes the players who are used to get money the easy way (like farming for 15 mins to buy a cap sig, or farming for a week to get a 15k set, or do a chest run) are being pushed to the corner. now they cant make money as fast, so they are steadely getting pourer.

once they reach a low number they realise that they cant make money the same way as they used to. and then they want to make a new character, buy skills, craft a 15k armors, getting runs, etc. players who were ever ritch are used to that and not being able to do that is like taking the fun out of the game for them. now by not letting them get gold is pretty much taking their fun out of the game.

thats what pushes new clients to ebay gold instead of farming it. some adapt and make money diffrent ways (instead of chest runs, maby green farm?) but those who didnt adapt are either turning to ebay for their gold needs, or just quitting GW, which is not good for ANET either.

Gun Pierson · Jan 09, 2007, 08:15 AM // 08:15

As this is an interesting topic I'll post what I wrote down in the snowball fight botting topic as it suits here more:

A few days ago I saw a documentary about mmo's and bot farmers on TV and for the first time I witnessed how big that business actualy is. They interviewed a few farmers and managers. The funny thing was that one manager was a seller of mmo's at first but he switched to selling ingame gold as they earned way more money than selling the games.

One farmer explained she was constantly deleting and making new characters to deliver the gold to buyers and she said this was a waterproof method. Some companies had 30 pc's constantly running. They're everywhere in the world, USA, Europe, Canada, etc. The employees looked like enjoying their job and had everything they wanted in the office and earned a good salary. The story of the poor Chinese sweatshop farmer abused by his boss is defenitely out of date.

I now understand this goes way beyond Anet's control at this point, same goes for Blizzard, that's why bots are all around us. And people are making big money out of it.

I want to add one more thing, I've read somewhere that bots seem to farm easy areas with easy creeps. They get less valuable loot but that doesn't matter as the bots are running 24/7. I've also read that Anet made a trap by creating an easy farmable area for bots so they could spot them easely as human players are not interested farming there. I don't know if this is actually true.

Shadow of Light · Jan 09, 2007, 11:33 AM // 11:33

The *only* grinds I've had problems with in GW is the absolute necessity to acquire Luxon/Kurzick faction in order to progress the storyline in Factions, and Sunspear/Lightbringer points to progress the story in Nightfall. It's... ok the first time. Maybe even the second. But for all my other characters I just want to get on with mapping and capping. >.<

(It would be oh so sweet if, after having completely finished, say, Nightfall, that all subsequent characters to go through Nightfall could just walk to outposts, map and cap, without having to repeat missions and quests over and over and over... (though the option to do missions would still be available!)).

But we're on farming more than grinding. I don't think GW encourages farming so much as having fun, but they *do* want their players to stick around, you know

This means providing extra things for us to do, sights to see--and items to gain. Collectable stuff and elite stuff, like FoW armour, is there for people to have something to do or invest time in. No one's holding a gun to your head, and it's not necessary to do. The nice thing about it is that you don't have to sit at your computer for 10+ hours at a time for GW 'farming'. You can do a bit at a time, whenever you like, and it adds up to whatever item you happen to be working for. Or you don't have to do it at all.

Sophitia Leafblade · Jan 09, 2007, 12:11 PM // 12:11

Ive never had an issue with grinding in gw, and since Nf even less so, in nightfall i have a amble income just form playing through the game, enough to afforda full set of 15k armour after ive completed the game with 1 char. The only grind people grind for is money for foW armour or Rare Greens. FoW armour is just a prestige item, its no better stats wise than any other max AL armour. If people want it they have to accept the fact its meant to be not easy to get. Thats the point of it, if it was so easy to get it wouldnt be Rare and it wouldnt be as prestigious.

As for weopons, there are alot of easy ways to get decent weopons, the effects weopons have is very limited. eg a req 9 sword isnt going to do much more damage than a req 8 sword, probally an extra 1 damage a hit, whats 1 damage? its nothing in gw, its the skills that do the majority of the damage not the weopons themselves. the bonus effects i can understand are desirable (eg. more energy, skill recharge etc.) but they arnt That usful, an unmodded collectors weopon can get you through the game easy enough so green weopons are prestige weopons.

Anet has added numerious hings in gw to increase the income from general playing and i think they have done a great job of improving the flow of money since Prophecies.

The so called grind in the luxon kursick parts are no real grind at all, u can just play a few Allaince battles, or do the actuall quests whihc dont take that long, its part of the story to befriend them. you only think of it as grind since u want to rush your character past that primary quest asap (one reason people think of Cantha as very fast paced since they ignore vurtually every non primary quest)

As for Lightbringer / Sunspear points, well there is no grind there either, just quest (remembering to activate the blessings) and do missions as normal and there is no grind, (once again its thought of as grind by people who want to Rush through asap without questing which takes away alot of the fun of the game)

Cass · Jan 09, 2007, 03:13 PM // 15:13

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Originally Posted by Sophitia Leafblade

Ive never had an issue with grinding in gw, and since Nf even less so, in nightfall i have a amble income just form playing through the game, enough to afforda full set of 15k armour after ive completed the game with 1 char. The only grind people grind for is money for foW armour or Rare Greens. FoW armour is just a prestige item, its no better stats wise than any other max AL armour. If people want it they have to accept the fact its meant to be not easy to get. Thats the point of it, if it was so easy to get it wouldnt be Rare and it wouldnt be as prestigious.

As for weopons, there are alot of easy ways to get decent weopons, the effects weopons have is very limited. eg a req 9 sword isnt going to do much more damage than a req 8 sword, probally an extra 1 damage a hit, whats 1 damage? its nothing in gw, its the skills that do the majority of the damage not the weopons themselves. the bonus effects i can understand are desirable (eg. more energy, skill recharge etc.) but they arnt That usful, an unmodded collectors weopon can get you through the game easy enough so green weopons are prestige weopons.

Anet has added numerious hings in gw to increase the income from general playing and i think they have done a great job of improving the flow of money since Prophecies.

The so called grind in the luxon kursick parts are no real grind at all, u can just play a few Allaince battles, or do the actuall quests whihc dont take that long, its part of the story to befriend them. you only think of it as grind since u want to rush your character past that primary quest asap (one reason people think of Cantha as very fast paced since they ignore vurtually every non primary quest)

As for Lightbringer / Sunspear points, well there is no grind there either, just quest (remembering to activate the blessings) and do missions as normal and there is no grind, (once again its thought of as grind by people who want to Rush through asap without questing which takes away alot of the fun of the game)

Your post shows you're a relatively inexperienced player, and your arguments are not applicable to those that are more experienced.

1) Sure, FoW armor is a prestige thing. So is 15K, so is Hero armor etc etc. Nobody denies this. It does not end there. Since the campaign/story content of the game is extremely limited and completely rigid (virtually no random twists, encounters), the only thing for PvE players to pursue after having played through the game is vanity stuff. If there was no vanity stuff, these players would stop playing for sure. Now realize that you can probably finish each campaign in about 100 hours, doing all quests and such as well. That is much, much less than what I have logged on my account... and this is true for many players without a doubt.

2) A weapon requisite does not matter for its damage output as long as you match it. If you have 12 in Axe Mastery, a max dmg req 7 and a req 10 axe will deal the EXACT same dmg.

3) Luxon faction and Sunspear/Lightbringer requirements (though the latter have been dropped recently I think) are perhaps not a grind for you on your one cherished character. I have 3 PvE characters that I wish to actively play with. From all the people I know in this game, 3 is a low number. I am also somewhat perfectionist and like to complete everything rather than rush through. The Kurzick and Luxon quests, including the repeatable ones (doing them 1x each) do not give you 10K faction, I have recorded this. So you need to re-do things (or play forced AB, which I do not care for) even on a single character. On both sides if you want to do everything in Cantha. Times the number of chars you are taking through.
I don't mind doing quests. I don't mind having to do them 3x, because I chose to play with 3 chars. I DO mind having to re-do things on every one of them. I do mind having to go out and kill random bugs in Kourna to level 3 sets of heroes... yes I got 3 copies of Level 2 Koss. Playing quests will not get your heroes to a level decent enough to support you in the missions there. I haven't even mentioned upgrading the 2-3 dmg machete or adding runes and such. I guess I am lucky with having everything relevant unlocked skill-wise through pvp, otherwise there'd be more work there as well.
Some of the quests in Elona are disturbingly grind-based as well. There is one where you need to collect 10 shards that randomly drop from Craven Monoliths. I have killed over a 100 of them and ended up having 5 shards and being uttely bored. That's on one char.

In sum, there is grind and it sucks. Anet should add actual new content rather than forcing players to work their way through the same old mobs in repetition.

Eli Rela · Jan 09, 2007, 03:36 PM // 15:36

What I want to emphasize that why are we discussing the way people are playing this game, they bought it with real money, and they want to play it the way they want. Not YOUR way, THEIR way, and no one should have a last say in how people should spend their time in front of their PC! Whole discussion on farming is just whining of lazy people who choose to stay poor, or casual players who have no time to farm. This game allows more then enough ways to make money. Unfortunately there is a majority of whiners and ANet gives to them. ANet should be neutral to all players.

Bottom line: want to farm, be may guest, want to play your way, please do.
Remember: anything ANet does hurts all of us, but not e-bayers

birdfoot · Jan 09, 2007, 03:49 PM // 15:49

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Luxon faction and Sunspear/Lightbringer requirements (though the latter have been dropped recently I think) are perhaps not a grind for you on your one cherished character. I have 3 PvE characters that I wish to actively play with. From all the people I know in this game, 3 is a low number. I am also somewhat perfectionist and like to complete everything rather than rush through. The Kurzick and Luxon quests, including the repeatable ones (doing them 1x each) do not give you 10K faction, I have recorded this. So you need to re-do things (or play forced AB, which I do not care for) even on a single character. On both sides if you want to do everything in Cantha. Times the number of chars you are taking through.
I don't mind doing quests. I don't mind having to do them 3x, because I chose to play with 3 chars. I DO mind having to re-do things on every one of them. I do mind having to go out and kill random bugs in Kourna to level 3 sets of heroes... yes I got 3 copies of Level 2 Koss. Playing quests will not get your heroes to a level decent enough to support you in the missions there. I haven't even mentioned upgrading the 2-3 dmg machete or adding runes and such. I guess I am lucky with having everything relevant unlocked skill-wise through pvp, otherwise there'd be more work there as well.
Some of the quests in Elona are disturbingly grind-based as well. There is one where you need to collect 10 shards that randomly drop from Craven Monoliths. I have killed over a 100 of them and ended up having 5 shards and being uttely bored. That's on one char.

For Luxon/Kurzick factions, I tend to be okay with it although I have (stupidly) redone alot of the quests myself to get my Luxon/Kurzick faction points (when I wasn't aware). Reason being, Luxon/Kurzick factions is account-wide. As long as a player does not spend those points, the "Befriending the XXX" quests are basically not a problem since they can be completed immediately (for a new character) if a player has both 10,000 Luxon and Kurzick factions. The only downside to this is that the player can't use the points as much as he/she likes to; but I come to think of it as a compromise and that at least, the player has the option to grind for the points later on or not. A more hardworking player who is willing to re-do the quests to get factions will be able to use those points for better rewards and I think that's fair to me.

I mentioned in another thread that players who have not been aware of bounties or were not interested in side quests will ultimately come to a point where they lack enough Sunspear points to progress. This is where I feel is quite valid as a case of having to grind for points to proceed the storyline since there's no option at all. Personally, I didn't have such an issue when I played with my Dervish (1st NF attempt), but it did happen for some of my friends.

I reckon grinding Sunspear points isn't half as bad as grinding for Luxon/Kurzick points starting from 0 but that's besides the point. I do agree that the grind exist (albeit not too much) and that it didn't need to be there in the first place.