The Daily Grind: What big reward was a big disappointment?

I've got a few:

1. Following Mortal Online so closely. Huge waste of my time.
2. Following Warhammer so closely. Same as above.
3. Even bothering to play Aion.
4. Grinding for hours and hour when Darkfall launched to get to 25 lesser magic.
5. Any number of free MMOs I wasted my time downloading and trying.

Lot of MMO regrets here.

Everything after MoM in LotRO.

My biggest gripe I think would be grinding dailies to get Rep/faction for gear and mounts. Just don't have the time or patience for that anymore. Dailies in any game really bore me, and then by the time you get to where you have the Rep or Faction to obtain said mount or gear, I found myself saying "Why did I bother?"

I understand why the grind is there, I just question why so few varied quests to get there, and the reward system at the end.

Buying a lifetime to Champions....hahahahahahaha.....*looks down at the ground*. I will just pretend I was hitting the sauce when I did it.

The spellcrafted set of equipment in Dark Age of Camelot. It was a massive meh.

On the surface, it seems like a grand idea: crafters making end-game weapons/armor, whose stats can be customized. It was so easy to get, since the crafting materials can be purchased right off the NPC vendor and money is so easy to get in the game. It was so easy to max out all the stats and resistances. Basically, everyone has a set.

It made drops from boss mobs and everything else redundant (until the next expansion, in which Mythic swung to the other extreme). Basically, it was boring as can be, though players who simply want to rush to max level in a few days and assemble end-game gear without any effort love it.

Having enough Coins to barter for a First Age Weapon in LOTRO just to be ID with horrible legacies... over and over again.

Finishing HardMode on LOTRO raids and getting loot thats worst than what you can get in Instances 5 to 10 levels lower.

- Huge number of free MMOs I wasted my time downloading and trying.
-WoW Dailies/Rep Grind
-Age of Conan (waste of hard drive space and download time)
-WAR renown rank grind.

Leggings of Woven Death...

I actually enjoyed mucking around with the economy a lot and was making significant progress. Then I spent 25k on those at the beginning of ICC and pretty much took myself out of the game. And all for what? Some i264 pants that we're only slightly better than the 10 or so other pairs of cloth pants we we're DE'ing after the first 2 weeks.

Much like the above posters,
-Aion which turned out to be quite a dissapointment despite my initial excitement to try it out.
-WoW dailies and rep grinds which really didn't net me anything other than cheevo points.
-Runes of Magic for a month.
-Fallen Earth, just not enough to do there once I maxed out.
-LotRO, loved it at the start, couldn't stand it after 6 months.
-Rift will be the next one, enjoying it so far, lets see the staying power!

Most of the weapon tokens you get at the end of Guild Wars campaigns. Most dungeon chests, locked chests, the zaishen chest, FoW chest... All massive letdowns.

And congrats, you logged into WoW on its 6th anniversary, here's an achievement for you!

Isn't that so annoying? "FINALLY! After grinding this content for months, I've got the BiS gear possible in this game! ..." And then you realize that all you can do with that BiS gear is sit there admiring your gear... while running the exact same content you just ran to get it.

This was the issue that saw many lost subscriptions (including mine) on CoH during its first year. People hit 50 and then had nothing to do other than stand in front of Portal. Wow, fun stuff. CoH was one of the best examples of an mmo that's underwhelming after reaching top level.

1. spending as much time beta testing and providing feedback to Champions Online to have them not change a thing before launch
2. purchasing STO despite the awful ground game (which I had plenty of knowledge of due to the beta testing there as well)

The incarnate system in CoH could be good if they'd tied it more closely to the lore from 'The Web of Arachnos', the Isle of Praxidae and the Furies... as things stand they just have you grinding the same old TFs (with a new one thrown in) for insane amounts of rares. I really wish it had been designed with more imagination and variety.

So yes, I'm finding grinding the Incarnate system uninspiring, so much so that I haven't re-subbed. :'(

- Huge number of free MMOs i wasted my time downloading and trying

But if we're talking actual in-game rewards that didnt live up to expectations, probably the fabled version of the coercer mythical in EQ2's RoK, I was so happy to get it and then realised its actually not *that* good.

Of course the Mythical version more than made up for it so maybe that doesn't count.

I farmed up Obsidian Armor in Guild Wars.

....

Then preferred to run around in pink Deldrimor Armor

Unlocking a Jedi waaaaay back in Galaxies. I left the game shortly after.

I had a full set of BiS warlock gear at the end of Wrath of the Lich King. Figured, it would at least be useful for leveling. Nope, stat deflation took me from 50% haste down to 10% in a few levels, and the majority of my gear had been replaced by quest rewards before I ever set foot in a dungeon.

Without any meaningful advancement other than useless gear, I realized how useless WoW is, even for an MMO.

For me it was getting the best rogue chest piece available in EverQuest during Velious era for my raiding dwarf rogue, after raiding Temple of Veeshan every evening for about 3 months to gear up our guild for the next expansion's raids. Everyone in my guild was so happy for me, I was getting congrats messages from friends in other guilds too, and all I could think was "is a few more points of DEX and AC really going to make much difference to my gameplay experience?"

I was more relieved than happy or satisfied, because it just meant that our guild was a step closer to being able to get the hell out of boring repetitive ToV. Even so, asking myself that question was the beginning of the end of my time in EQ.

A few weeks later a friend and I started playing new characters on a different server (i.e. with no cash/loot/powerlevelling assistance from our level-capped characters) to see if a fresh experience would re-awaken our love for EQ (which it didn't - we quit not long after) - and I remarked to my friend that I actually had a greater sense of excitement and satisfaction looting a cracked staff (a fairly common low level trash drop) for my newbie magician than I had felt looting that pinnacle chestpiece for my level-capped rogue - why? - because that cracked staff would sell to a vendor for 1 plat, which was a lot of money to a low level character in early EQ, and it would let me buy the rest of his spells and thus greatly improve my enjoyment of the character - while the rogue chestpiece had just been a few more statistic points that wouldn't even have a noticeable effect on gameplay without me using a parser.

I don't do gear grinds anymore - ultimately they're unfulfilling for me, because you reach a point where the extra stat points are not even having a noticeable effect apart from changing a few numbers on your character page. I think that's why I like CoH, Rift and GW - because how you set up your character's skills/abilities has a much greater effect on your power/performance than any drops ever will - being able to evolve your character through your own choices is ultimately far more satisfying than improving your character mainly through dependence on a random number generator giving you the drops you need.