Grinding is the "core" and culture of Ragnarok Online. To get rid of grinding is to change what Ragnarok Online is.
TI was a good step towards making "the grind" more fun and engaging.
However, I believe there can be an additional level of gameplay to make it EVEN more fun. Grind in terms of RPG means doing the same thing over and over—most of the time being killing the same mobs over and over, which is fine— but it gets boring when the only objective is not immediate but LONG TERM in leveling up.
TI makes it more fun because it gives an immediate objective—kill 400 mobs to turn in. It is a quest system explored and tested in many other MMOs many years before. It works, but like all game mechanics, it gets old and eventually...boring.
Since immediate objective is what engages user most; my suggestion would be to implement something similar to tower defense or left 4 dead zombie like gameplay. The idea is simple and yet not far from what RO already is. Bunch of players running around killing a bunch of mobs. Why not just change it a little bit and have a bunch of mobs trying to kill a bunch of players or "tower"? The players will still have to kill the bunch of mobs, the grind, but now they have a new immediate purpose—protecting something. There can be a strategic side and extra layer of challenge/difficulty that can be enticing...
I don't know, just an idea. lol
