Sure WoW have its grind but its all hidden behind Quest, and made to simplified for my taste.
a MMORPG needs a grind but also need to hide it at times, its need to give you goals but the grind must be a mix of camps, quest and dungeon crawls. when you only focus on on of em its get boring in the long run, but doing quest for a lvl or two, then being strong enough to do the "uber" camp whit fast response and a chance for a boss, then a lvl or two after you ready for this tier Dungeon. and so on. and probably have quest leading to this various zones as well.
The point is the Grind isn't the evil its how you hide it. many Wester MMORPG has lately focus them all in Solo quest something if you ask me take away the MM. but then asian has a rep of having it all on Group mobs farm spots and so on. hopefully Aion mange to created the perfect Mix where it ain't for hard and far from easy on a Normal player (10-20 hours
pr week)