Are reputation systems passé?

Last week I got into a long discussion with a friend about MMO reputation systems. I think we both realized just how much we hadn't thought about them for some time now, and that led us to speculating if the whole kit and kaboodle is not long for this industry.

In limited quantities, reputation systems can be special and intriguing. They offer horizontal progression in the game, usually by keeping some juicy rewards behind a gate. The thought is that while 90% of the players may never put in the effort to max out a faction's reputation, the 10% that do will have something special to show off.

But developers have never seen a good idea that they haven't run into the ground and then tunneled through to China. So it is with reputation grinds, which are as plentiful in number as they are annoying pests. Is it time to just chuck the whole idea or perhaps transform it into a less grindy and more approachable system?

TH

when it comes to the repuation system, mostly is super grindy, kill these X amount per day, which is a pain in the ass, but i remember in wow where there was the Netherwing dailies (The Burning Crusade), which i actually liked in some way, because you'd first come into these normal quests that would chain up to you flying indisguise to the netherwind isle and do those dailies, biut when you finished the normal you would have to get max speed flying mount before being able to start the dailies which was a pain in the ass as well, but later on you would get into these Repuation stages or in its view Rank Stage , stage 1 you were at this certain rank and had few dailies to do, Later on when you did alot of those and got into friendly reputation you'd get ''promoted'' and get more daily quests and so on,

Eventually after all the grind and finding eggs (Which is the way you can gain more extra repuation if you wanted to be faster and have no limit) It feelt really grindy but in the end it seriously feelt so much worth it getting that awesome drake mount you well deserved

I think the important thing is to these reputation is to make it really worth it but also that it actually changes and you feel like you are progressing into something bigger by all the annoying work you have done.