As far as my relationship with World of Warcraft is concerned, archaeology was the final nail in the coffin. It was by no means the only nail - daily quests, faction rep and the truly malicious badges/emblems/points system were hammered with just as little enthusiasm. But it was between these things, while surveying dig sites in Kalimdor, that I suddenly appreciated the absolute absurdity of what I was doing.

NO+GRINDING

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NO+DEDICATED+ROLES

Guild+Wars+2+opens+class+roles+up+significantly.

NO+QUESTS

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I was going up and down (and up and down) the bloody continent in the hopes that a site would present itself in Uldum. Why? So that I might have the slightest chance of uncovering an enormous ultramarine dung beetle, which I could then ride majestically through the streets of Stormwind to advertise to other players my superhuman capacity to perform repetitive tasks.I only wish I'd encapsulated the entire experience in a single paragraph like that sooner, as it's not hard to see just how farcical my relationship with this game had become.In fairness, WoW is not the only MMO to habitually treat its players like hamsters on a wheel. It merely exemplifies a genre that has well and truly stagnated, that builds time and time again upon the same tired assumptions and principles of design, whether purely out of complacency or for fear of upsetting its own profit margin. And given that MMORPGs, more than any other genre, rely desperately on the currency of longevity, is it any wonder that new titles seem content to peddle the same tried and tested formula in progressively prettier packaging?But for those of you like myself, ready to get off this joyless carousel of ennui, a new era of MMO gaming may fast be approaching - titles such as Guild Wars 2 (GW2) and The Secret World have already unveiled several new gameplay features that defy some of the most fundamentally accepted mechanics of the genre. Here's but a few to set your rebel hearts ablaze.'Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results,' American novelist Rita Mae Brown once wrote. What she was really describing, however, was 'grinding', one of the most unbearable symptoms of persistent online gaming. Vanilla WoW was a notorious grinding treadmill, and time has done little to discourage the practice; the aforementioned daily quests, justice points and faction rep rewards of Cataclysm are still designed to squeeze that last drop of humanity from players with equal sadism. It's an ugly word for an ugly device, creating the illusion of replayability through sheer mindless repetition, and it's bitter on the tongue of developers like ArenaNet and Funcom , who have both proposed their own radical alternatives to the 'grind to level' model.ArenaNet has removed the bell-curve traditionally applied to leveling, so that gaining levels from 40 to 50, for example, isn't any more laborious than leveling from 1 to 10. The upshot is that you won't be forced to remain in an environment long after you've worn out its content just to accumulate enough experience to move forward.Funcom has decided to bypass such a dreary numbers game entirely - The Secret World has no leveling system at all; players simply unlock new abilities and weapons through exploration and achievement and use these to outfit their character. There's a certain elegance to it, especially since character customisation in titles like WoW is now so powerfully determined by the phatness of one's lewt that levels are themselves redundant. Let's face it: when you wield a sword that can cut through the spacetime continuum, a crossbow made of dragons that fires more dragons and a suit of armour forged in the phlegm of a thousand gods, it doesn't really matter whether your baseline agility is 212 or 214.Grinding is the product of badly structured character progression, where there isn't enough genuinely interesting content to carry players smoothly into the endgame at whatever pace they choose. I for one won't mourn its passing.I once played a prot warrior for nine months simply to demonstrate that one could do so without becoming a raving egomaniac. The experiment was largely unsuccessful - I had dreams of stripping off my armour, riding into Stormwind cathedral on the back of an enormous ultramarine dung beetle and declaring myself emperor of mankind, and the rest you already know - but at the very least it reaffirmed the fact that the tank/heal/dps triangle is not an equilateral one.Picking a class (or, in the case of Rift, patching one together like a quilt) has always meant committing yourself to particular roles at the exclusion of others, and in group situations some roles have always enjoyed greater indispensability. A good tank is just plain better than the rest of us, according to popular myth. It's hardly surprising, then, that dedicated classes have brought about a class system, and it's a hierarchy that ArenaNet is only too eager to topple in Guild Wars 2 In GW2, every class can heal, but they can also do so much more. They can control the battlefield to lock down enemies ('tanking' without the vulgarity of being a meat shield), throw up barriers to protect others or duck and roll and use cover to protect themselves. It's called 'active combat' (or in other genres, just 'combat'), and it means that a group can effectively take on a dungeon or boss without hiding behind someone dressed like a human battering ram. It means that you can play the class you want without worrying about your potential usefulness to a group. It also encourages a great deal more environmental awareness than WoW's 'don't stand in the fire' approach to raiding - although, admittedly, Blizzard has evolved such mechanics significantly in recent months.The Secret World, as stated, has no preset classes; everything is customisable. Imagine the Rift-quilt, except there's a lot more fabric and colour choices to work with. Then again, you're gamers. Handicraft metaphors mean nothing to you.Here's a frightening concept. How the hell are we supposed to know where to go unless someone with the necessary qualifications (ie. an exclamation mark) shoves us in the right direction? 'Explore,' whispers the new-wave MMO developer exotically. 'In the persistent worlds of tomorrow, crazy stuff is out there happening every second - villages being razed, armies being amassed, pub brawls being started - and you're just going to have to go out there and see it for yourself.' That's exactly what he says.GW2 calls this crazy stuff 'dynamic events,' and they're a helluva lot more dynamic than most of the bilge that we've become accustomed to. Dynamic events will unfold tangibly in front of you, and your intervention will change the outcome and create a domino effect with other events across the landscape. Static quests, where an NPC will tell you to murder fifteen trolls standing idly in a paddock because they clearly pose an imminent threat to the entire region, just aren't going to cut it anymore. I'm not going to lift a finger to kill trolls unless I actually see them doing something I object to, like slaughtering the townsfolk or trying to vote.There's more that could be said, of course. GW2, for example, forgoes the age-old tradition of contorting its races into two neatly divided factions, and The Secret World has selected modern-day Earth as its refreshingly original fantasy setting. It's clear that the bedrock of game design on which the MMORPG has until now remained firmly planted, for better or worse, is about to crumble. Whether either of these intrepid pioneers will actually live up to the exceptional promises they've made to the gaming community remains to be seen but, in any case, an entire genre is being redefined; these are exciting times indeed.If you haven't been following the development of Guild Wars 2 or The Secret World, either because you hadn't previously heard of them, or because a Blizzard representative has quite literally injected you with a psychoactive chemical or sentient parasite to enforce your submission on a molecular level, now is a good time to educate yourself - or seek restorative medication.

Hugh Milligan is a freelance games journalist based in Australia, and is - we presume - the grandson of Spike.

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