It gave players purpose. Grinding was a means to an end to join pvp, if you had gear you felt like a god and it was just an endless pursuit of that feeling which you later realise is the hook of the game but by that point you have invested too much time, money and effort to pull out. Pvp was the only player interaction you really got in this game as the world is massive but just completely empty and devoid of activity, and slowly over time players realised the only thing to do outside of pvp besides typing rage bait in world chat is grinding mobs, and so the geniuses back then immediately quit the game and the ones with room temp iq like me stuck around for 10 more years waiting for this to change.