I strongly disagree with that categorization. "Grinding and collecting" has been the entire gameplay loop, since the beginning of WoW. Grind quests, so you ca

I strongly disagree with that categorization. "Grinding and collecting" has been the entire gameplay loop, since the beginning of WoW. Grind quests, so you can level up. Then grind dungeons to get some gear. Then grind Heroic dungeons to get better gear. Then grind raids to get better gear. Then grind Heroic raids to get even better gear. These days, you then grind Mythic raids to get the best gear. Then you find out it's not actually the best gear, and grind some random dungeon or PvP to get a trinket with a weird effect on it. And then by that time, the expansion is usually over, and the new one has a new set of more powerful gear, so you're back to square 1. The phases change based on the expansion, but the core gameplay loop has always been "grind to get better gear, so you have to access to harder content that drops even better gear". There's precious little to do on a character that is max level and has cleared the highest tier of raid (kudos to those who pull it off, they aren't easy). The monetization thing is largely Activision, or at least the degree of it is. Iirc, Blizzard dipped their toes into that water first by offering pets that you could buy or were rewards for buying Overwatch, etc. Activision did crank that knob up to 11 though.