[the8472]

> and more emphasis on rote activities for the sake of progress.

It's funny. I played a korean grinding MMO which was heavily based around this. But it was also fairly buggy and some of its mechanics poorly designed. The most fun we had was whenever new content was introduced. Figuring out how things worked and then abusing it.

Once you were near the soft cap - there was no practical exp limit, level requirements just started to increase super-exponentially at some point - you just looked for other things to do. Trying to take on bosses that were considered too hard by coordinating more players than intended by the game system or abusing their AI, using the near-invulnerability one had in lower-level dungeons to lure hundreds of monsters around you, find breaks in the invisible walls to leave the map etc.

I think the sandbox aspects of even the least sandbox-y MMOs make the most fun. Non-intervention by the devs (either by policy or by inability) also helps to provide some feeling of freedom, you just do whatever you want instead of being railroaded into some sort of "intended playstyle".