The grind

[Mael-bess]

There are no 'poor design choices', ...

I don't think it's a poor design choice in the need to follow a story so you reach the expansion, almost every game does this and for the sake of story telling it makes sense and it's quite pleasing. What i do think is bad design is locking a class behind it, new players that come in will/may (the OP is a perfect example of this) want to play the new class right away and not "waste" time in others.