I find the article "Grinding Doesn't have to Be" absolutely misguided. That is rather blunt, so there is an obligatory explanation coming... But I want to reiterate: absolutely misguided. The article is based upon the assumption that it is a well understood, documented and relevant that "grinding," as it were, is a "problem." I should be more methodical and break that into its constituent assumptions... That there is an understood problem, a documented problem and a relevant problem, and these problems are all grinding. I do not agree that the people to whom Jagex owes its fame find grinding to be a problem. I think the people that denounce the "grind" are the people with the most exposure to it, and that is by ratio almost certainly the people who possess reams of money, and those people are, by vast majority, people who acquired their fortune through illicit means: dice, horses, flowers, scamming, merching etc. I do not agree that there is any compelling statistical information that leads to a conclusion on whether or not RuneScape is full of grinding. I nitpick on this level because, and please bear with me, because I completely disagree that a RuneScape player is required to do one bit of grinding except in rare cases, such as acquiring a completionist cape or the Slayer skill. I never grind, because grinding is garbage (with the exclusion of Slayer). If you raise every skill with an understanding that your total level is a cohesive accumulation of one skill, you realize that your character is comprised of integral units, namely skills, that work together in order to support one another. For example, I mine rocks, then runecraft natures, then superheat ores, then make bolts, then kill chickens, then fletch bolts, then mine gems, then craft gems, then fletch gems, then fletch gem tipped bolts, then runecraft for cosmics, then use magic to make powerful bolts, which can then be sold for profit or used for slayer, which would be by vehicle of ranged, which would raise hp, which would raise combat in conjunction with ranged, and even defence. I have hundreds of correlations like what I just said, and they provide a vehicle by which one can level much, much faster than the "pick one skill and do it until you suffocate" method. I do not agree that the existence of grinding is relevant. I say this because, with the aforementioned disagreement over the "need" for grinding, I conclude that the existence of grinding is voluntary. Completely ignoring the fact that Dungeoneering is a terribly implemented concept that could have been the source of much glory and eventually RuneScape's fulcrum, completely ignoring the fact that attempting to raise it for its own sake makes my eyes bleed and my soul weep, completely ignoring my bitter lamentations over the existence of quests and items which have Dungeoneering as a requirement, that I raised it entirely with penguins and tears and lamps; completely ignoring my bias, I must declare that a call for RuneScape to have full dungeoneering-style integration can and will, upon institution, the real death of RuneScape. If anything like that happened I would most likely quit or withdraw into Classic. I am not being dramatic. In fact, I am in the camp Crocefisso described, the nostalgia wherein one holds on because he likes what hasn't changed but intends to dismiss the thing entirely when what he likes vanishes. That is, I would dismiss RS entirely if the fundamental elements that built RS ceased to exist: free-roaming, free-will, free-market, conversation, humans with which I can interact, etc. By changing RS into a dungeoneering-styled game you would socialize the core nature of it. Being a British game I must acknowledge that at substantial portion of its clientele will react favorably to socialism. I am not talking about the political structure of socialism but the fundamental ideology of socialism. The existence of a commune, or a ubiquitous mode of achievement by which all people garner accolade and material, is ugly, small, pathetic, and would infringe on the majesty of RS. tl;dr, I utterly detest Alg's article with all due respect. I do not agree that grinding is an inevitability, but rather it is a choice borne of laziness and the GE. I do not agree that grinding must go. -Adam Renzema, King of the Gielinor Agora P.S., I am having an off-kilter day. Don't take me too terribly seriously.