Well I am going to have to add Anarchy Online to the list. Lvl 1-200 isn't that bad, it was before shadowlands, took about 6 months for the first people to hit 200. After Shadowlands it takes probably just about 1-2 months.
200-220 when Shadowlands first came out took about 6 months of VERY HEAVY GRINDING to do thouse 20 lvls. I have played a lot of games, and anyone who has done thouse 20 lvls can confirm they have never seen a grind as hard. 20 lvls same mob non-stop, with only about 5 places to lvl total for a teams of 6, so any given time there are only 30 people who can lvl. So half the time is waitting just for a spot to open in a team.
Not only was lvling a grind, but getting gear was near as grindy as that. When people in wow complain how hard it is to get gear, I think back to "The Beast" in AO, hours to get to, only mob that dropped gear unlike wow raids with bosses the whole way, every guild on the server fighting you to get there, it being a open pvp zone. And it only dropping two peices of gear every 18hrs.
I wouldnt put WoW on the list myself, Getting rank 14 was a grind, getting full netherwind was a grind. But really they didn't feel even that bad, seemed more of a balanced grind. Lvling in wow is like eh, I dont even consider that when playing, takes like 10days to get lvl 60, and if you get guildmates to help its even faster. So I wouldnt call it a pure grind, I would call it a blanced grind. And I actully hope they make 60-70 more grindy, just so it cuts back on the ammount of nubs that make max lvl, ok I am evil ;P
Silkroad, Lvling is a grind, but I only going to really consider silkroad on my list because of the SP grind I had to do. So I grind all my SP at 16 only took a month of killing archers, but still it did feel quite grindy. But the time doing that definitly saved on lvling speed, which still with zero skill gap is very slow, but would definitly be worst if I didnt already SP farm.
Just so many of the asian MMO's out there I have played, but really can't comment much on them, as after a few lvls into the exp wall I usally move on to another one. As really I think I have grind enough to just enjoy the lvls without a grind for a change
