The Lantern Hall
Painting: an ancient lexicon open on a carved lectern in a dark chapel of books, glowing runes and symbols lifting off its pages like fireflies.
TermDigital term

Grinding

Repeating the same fights or tasks to accumulate Experience points, gold or items. Sometimes a design choice and sometimes a flaw, grinding was notorious in early JRPGs and MMORPGs, and it gave rise to paid services and Gold farming.

Repeating the same fights or tasks to accumulate Experience points, gold or items. Sometimes a design choice and sometimes a flaw, grinding was notorious in early JRPGs and MMORPGs, and it gave rise to paid services and Gold farming.

Quick answers

What does "Grinding" mean?
Repeating the same fights or tasks to accumulate Experience points, gold or items. Sometimes a design choice and sometimes a flaw, grinding was notorious in early JRPGs and MMORPGs, and it gave rise to paid services and Gold farming.

Nearby in the archive

Experience points

Tabletop term1974

Points awarded for defeating foes, finding treasure or achieving goals, which accumulate until a character gains a level and becomes more powerful. In original D&D much of a character's experience came from treasure recovered, rewarding cunning over combat; later games shifted rewards toward fights, quests and story milestones.

Level up

General term1974

Gaining a level once enough Experience points accumulate, improving a character's abilities in a single jump. The satisfying moment of leveling up, inherited from D&D, is one of the most widely copied mechanics in all of gaming.

Gold farming

Digital term

Playing an online game to collect in-game currency for sale to other players for real money. It became an industry in the 2000s, often in workshops employing low-paid players, and game operators generally ban it.

Virtual Economies, Gold Farming & the GDP of Norrath

Phenomenon2001

When an economist calculated in 2001 that EverQuest's Norrath had a per-capita GNP between Russia's and Bulgaria's, he revealed that fantasy worlds had grown real economies, with labor, inflation and sweatshops.

Painting: a huge raid of adventurers assembling at dawn at the edge of a vast continent, spell-lights and torches.

EverQuest

MMORPG1999

Sony's 3D world of Norrath turned the text MUD into a nightly obsession: camped spawns, corpse runs, forty-player raids, and a player base so hooked it nicknamed the game EverCrack.

Painting: a young hero with a sword and shield on an overworld path, a small cute blue slime blocking the way, a castle and a dragon-shaped mountain far away.

Dragon Quest

Japanese RPG1986

A lone descendant of the hero Erdrick sets out from Tantegel Castle to face the Dragonlord: Yuji Horii's streamlined Famicom RPG, drawn by Akira Toriyama and scored by Koichi Sugiyama, that made the role-playing game a Japanese national pastime.

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