Now this is what I'm talking about.
To me, that was a perfect game. Especially the first 3 years of it's release.
There was a grind and repetitive element to go 1-75, but the team work involved and the dynamics (picking camp spots, dealing with pulled links, an assortment of jobs that were all different, fighting for claim on notorious monsters, etc.) made the fights seem so much fun. You'd spend hours with a group of 5 other cats and the mass majority of the time it didn't seem like a drag at all.
I mean come on, the game had a 2 hour cool down on abilities meaning you had to pick your spots at the right time to use it. If that's not strategy, I don't know what is.
That's what made the grind so much more satisfying. The learning curve was always constant since your job was always picking up new abilities. Haven't found another game like it.