In just another month or two, we’re coming up on MOP’s independence day, marking 10 years since we went indie, and nowhere is that more numerically obvious than in our ongoing count of Daily Grinds – our morning “icebreaker” question about MMORPGs, posed to warm up our readers for the MMO day ahead.
Fun fact: The very first Daily Grind on Old Massively was issued on November 3rd, 2007, which means that our staff has written exactly 6272Â Daily Grinds to date, if our math is right (and also if we never missed a day – don’t think so!). That’s a lotta questions, and yeah, sometimes we accidentally repeat one… but actually, not as many as you’d think.
Per tradition, I’ve picked out what I think were our best Daily Grinds from the past year, one from each month!
January: How much do you think the whales of your top MMO spend in a year?
We’ll kick it off with this MapleStory-inspired question, provoked by Korean regulators’ report that in 2021 alone, a single person spent over $200,000 on microtransactions in the game. Our readers had a hard time picking one MMO – besides maybe Star Citizen – where this is even possible, let alone feasible. There’s just not that much to buy in most MMORPGs, even the bad ones. Fortunately, our readers are generally smart enough not to do this!
February: Would you be interested in a Guild Wars 3?
This Daily Grind was written well before we knew for sure that NCsoft via ArenaNet is most definitely working on Guild Wars 3, but it’s worth highlighting just how many people really, really want a third installment.
March: Do you experience social anxiety in MMOs?
MMORPGs are practically notorious for being a social experience that nevertheless attracts people with social anxieties in real life, surely owing to the fact that it’s easier to be social when you’re an anonymous cute character. Among our readers, we have a good mix of extroverts, introverts, and people who openly say they have social-related stress – we even had a few people say they experience more social stress in-game than in real life! Also, MOP’s Chris coined the term “tanxiety” for in-game stress relating to tanking. Been there!
April: Transform an MMO into a better game by changing one letter in its title
We deviated from our question format for this amusing Daily Grind, and you all rose to the occasion with ridiculous submissions. My favorites? City of Herpes, Mobsters & Memories, Blank Desert Online, Pew World, Realm of the Dad God, Ale of Conan, Tax Dei. This is honestly one of my favorite articles we did all year.
May: Is there a popular MMORPG you’ve still never played?
This Daily Grind was inspired by people who pop up every once in a while and admit they’ve never played something like World of Warcraft, not even once. I’m fascinated at how people do it! Among the games you told us you’ve never played? New World, LOTRO, EverQuest, Ultima Online, EVE Online, Black Desert, RuneScape, and Neverwinter. Even Elder Scrolls Online and Guild Wars 2 made the list, somehow!
June: What’s the fastest you’ve ever noped out of an MMO?
Should we be making snap judgments about MMORPGs that are meant to develop and mature over years of time? Perhaps not, but we – and you, apparently – do it anyway. An hour seems pretty average, but some of you admitted to logging out and deleting games after 5-10 minutes. Harsh!
July: If you could banish one piece of gear from MMOs, what would it be?
I actually felt a little bad about this Daily Grind because I don’t really truly want to delete even the things I hate from MMOs, not when they might be something someone else lives for. But y’all were absolutely ecstatic at the idea of pointing your banishing wand at the worst stuff in the genre, from minipets and perishable consumables to meme cosmetics and legendaries. My favorite example came from Laelgon, who opined that super juvenile horny stuff – “things where I’d be embarrassed to be seen playing the game if they appeared on the screen” – have got to go!
August: Would you play an MMORPG that limited you to just one character?
‘Twas Stars Reach that prompted this question, owing to the fact that Playable Worlds is apparently still debating whether or not to follow in classic Star Wars Galaxies’ footsteps to limit characters to just one per account. My money’s on “not gonna happen,” just based on discussions Raph Koster has aired about the challenges of enforcing it, but it still makes for a fun thought exercise. While a lot of our readers – especially themepark players – said no, a surprising chunk of you were open to it, at least if the sandbox mechanics supported it properly.
September: What’s the dumbest MMO character name you’ve ever played seriously?
I swear, my old Torchlight 2 test character ZERKIN will surely go down in history as the most-mocked toon on our pages, and Eliot resurrected my shame for this Daily Grind about the absurd character names we’ve used over the years. I love some of the ones you folks admitted to: Froglegolas, Splashlog, Loose Knee (the undead monk), Dredskull, Braundo Hornswoggle, Borick Ascid, Disco Dan, StabbyCarl, Cowbelle, Catcophony, Attorneyatlawl, and – wait for it – OwlMyNeck (the templar). Honestly, these aren’t really bad. Or maybe they are so bad they’re good?
October: Should MMORPGs be blocking election content from chat?
Chalk this Daily Grind up to my intense frustration with New World on console and the fact that chat was just a total wall of election-related nonsense in the weeks before the 2024 US election. I’m not usually the kind of person who thinks it’s really possible to block “politics” from chat (everything is politics, y’all), but hot damn I was really, really over the noise. To my surprise, a lot of you were just as annoyed and ready to go nuclear over the problem as I was, to the point where some of you don’t just hide chat – you just log out entirely. Clearly it’s something studios need to work on in the interest of both their community and their bottom line.
November: Have you or would you buy an album of MMORPG music?
I’m a musician and still didn’t think this Daily Grind would take off, but I’m happy to be wrong: It actually had a nice run in our comments and on social media. Turns out kind of a lot of you are heavily into MMO music, way beyond just pirating it through unofficial YouTube channels (ahem). I’m actually astonished at how many people buy so many soundtracks. Good for MMO composers! Pro tip, the comments in this thread would make a great starting point for people curious about the best soundtracks to start with!
December: If you had a free week, would you rather travel or play MMOs?
The best part of the comments on this TDG was that most people took it very seriously, largely because this isn’t just a “desert island” kind of question – and most people really do make this choice over and over and have thought about these calculations quite a bit. So the answers were all over the map, and the people who would stay home and game seemed just as aghast at the people who were like “I would drop video games like a hot potato to go on vacay” as the opposite. People with kids have different variables from retired folks and students and people on budgets and people who already live in vacation destinations. Even the types of games you like to play (and whether they are accessible on the go) had an impact here. It just goes to show how wildly different MMO gamers are, and it’s precisely why the genre is so strong.
Don’t miss our faves from 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023!
