2.) Story line progression sucks. There I said it. I know everyone likes it and points to it as a great part of the game. Think about it. How many time have you gone to a new area, collected your quest and run off to pick up 3-5 things along some linear pathway with 2 or 3 mobs popping up on the way. Then return to the new city and talk to 3-4 npcs in random locations, fetch something somewhere, a mob pops up again somewhere else and then return to the original npc and now we are off to another new city to start all over again. This is batch questing pure and simple, someone recycled the same stuff repeatedly with a new skin and some new text but ultimately its the same set of 3-5 quest in each area that we are all repeating.
2a.) To fix: You cant, this game was built as a wow clone with much better graphics and as such its a grind fest of fetching things and going to kill mobs thinly disguised.