There were two ways to grind sensibly, in John's opinion.
One could either find trivial content, that was repeatable extremely quickly and that gave a moderate amount of experience and gear, or beat content of high difficulty, that rewarded the effort greatly, and just concentrate on getting that done without dying. The former was easier, but the latter was the usually intended experience by game developers and was, thusly, heavily encouraged or downright mandatory to get some of the better stuff.
If one were to ask which content John preferred, he would have had to go with the harder content in general. It was simply a more rewarding feeling, to get levels after beating a series of challenges, instead of just grinding down on mobs for a few hours. Or picking herbs… or something else stupid.
Then again, in some games, Diablo 3 for example, endlessly grinding was stupid fun, and the Instant Dungeons were conceptually close to the portals of the hack and slash game.
