Casiella at The Eclipse Rift is wondering about the grind in Eve. The first thing that came to my mind was YES, the grind for isk, so you can do other stuff ! When you start out you grind for standings to get better agents and more isk, so you can do higher level missions. Especially from level 3 to 4 was quite a long tedious run from what I can remember. This can be made more bearable if you can join other people’s missions in your corporation so you can standings faster.
These standings are also a requirement for miners, so you can get the best yield when refining. AFAIK these can’t be bought as suggested in the above mentioned blogpost (only corp standings can be boosted for a while, using such a service). And of course you can (legally !) buy isk in Eve using timecards, but I don’t really consider that a fun way to play as it doesn’t give much of a feeling of accomplishment. But it’s a way to get things done.
Any other grinds in Eve ? Well I guess shooting rats in belts can be considered a grind, though when there can be danger lurking in losec or 0.0, it probably doesn’t feel too grindy.
I agree, there is definitely grinding in Eve Online.
As a ex-nullsec dweller, I can tell you ratting is one of the most horrible things ever to do for ISK. I can’t do it for more than an hour. However I was scanning for DED complexes everyday and this turned into a grind for me, its easier than ratting but the end result is the same, hours and hours of either searching for a plex, or running the same 2 plexes over and over (we only had 3 that spawns – Guristas Troop Reinvigoration Camp – Pith Penal Complex – The Maze).
Same can be said for sov wars, grinding in the form of reinforcing sov structures and POSs everyday for weeks.
So ya, even in nullsec, the grind exist and its rough.