I caught what you mean on Everquest and honestly, I had forgotten about all of that. I had played EQ from Velious all the way to The Serpents Spine. After I leveled my first character it was nothing but super fast PLs on all of my following characters.

We have different views on what constitutes grinding. I guess the reason I consider questing as grinding is because I find it to be as tedious as killing thousands of creatures, although much more productive.

In WoW's case, Faction grinding is extremely tedious. I'll give you that! I can't think of any alternative though. If you take it away, all of the gear and bonuses become trivial.