Yeah, grinding is just the result of lazy lazy lazy design.
MMORPGs are relatively young for a genre of game. Also, their goal makes this type of design to be appealing, since it makes the main content of the game take a long time to finish, which equates to people being subscribed for longer periods of time, and thus paying more in subscription fees.
As for MMOs any of us have played, I've only done one firsthand, because I usually don't play games on computers. Final Fantasy XI is the only one I've dealt with since it's available on consoles, and I've had it since just after Japanese launch in 2002. There's also Nobunaga's Ambition Online, but my Japanese isn't good enough for that and I'm not familiar with the rest of the series it ties in with. I just don't play enough to be considered addicted, and I go through at my own pace without pressure to reach a certain level or rank by a certain time. It's just annoying that there's no means to input Japanese text on the American client, so I can't use what Japanese I know to practice unless I switch back to the full Japanese client. My waking hours also line up with Japanese peak hours.
It does something I've never seen in any other MMORPG that any of my friends or roommates have played when I was watching, storyline and in-game cutscenes to progress the story. Each expansion has its own story thread, and most (not Rise of the Zilart) can be started without progress in any of the other story threads. The past two expansions have also added more activites you can do to earn experience points instead of just forming a party and going through the leveling zones, though it's not as fast as actually battling in a party.
The main appeals to me are that I'm familiar with the terms in the series and the jobs system, I don't have to keep multiple characters to try all the jobs (since you can change jobs at just about every town, though each of the 20 jobs has their own experience level), I can play on a stable and inexpensive console, and it has a lot of storyline.