People play em, but the draw is the carrot on the stick mantra. They need that next level, or that next rare item, etc. etc.
Me, I eventually was like, this is a never ending cycle, fukk am I even doing this for?
Once the player base gets bored they will add dlc with a new level cap, or new items to get, and people will grind away to get the new stuff or hit the new level cap. For me personally, if the gameplay itself isn't gratifying, I don't have fun.
A game like Dark Souls has grinding and rare items, but the gameplay is so gratifying you can play it and have fun no matter what.
Destiny suffers from the same issues as an MMO, but the gunplay is at least fantastic. Most MMOs I've tried are, gather these items, craft this many items, kill this many monsters, level up pick an ability. Do this for 100 hours, then run raids with other players to get more rare items. Then...wait for new content. All the while you are essentially just hitting number keys watching cool downs all the time. I know there is strategy, and some fights can be quite difficult, just not compelling to me.
These MMO's remind me of Facebook and mobile games. shyt is Farmville/Candy Crush status to me. It's created as a time sink to get you addicted. They're just not fun to play to me
It's almost like how arcades used to work, designing games to get you to spend quarters.