Grind

Grinding in the context of MMORPGs most oftenly refers the act of killing a large amount of mobs (often the same types and by using the same tactics) for the sole purpose of gaining experience points and levels, to eventually have access to more difficult quests and more powerful equipment and skills. In most MMORPGs, maximum levels are set very high, so there is often a lot of grinding necessary to reach the top. Grinding can also be used to mean when the player is forced to engage in monotonous and/or non-entertaining gameplay in order to progress or unlock features.

Guild Wars is different; the maximum level attainable is level 20, which is easily reached by doing some quests and naturally progressing through missions and the game's storyline. However since the introdction of Factions some have noticed strong parallels between aspects of the game to grinding.

As all the mobs on the main land in Cantha are designed for a party of eight level 20 characters, low level players are unlikely to be invited into human parties, forcing them to either play the game with henchmen, which is possible but detracts from the game experience, or grind to level 20.

The quests Befriending the Kurzicks and Luxons can also be compared with grinding, one can think of the 10,000 faction points required to continue the storyline as similar to experience point grinding.