I'm slightly surprised people want to grind so much. Aren't there lots of korean games you can happily grind in all day? Even FFXI qualifies if you want it so much: the level cap has been raised exactly for that purpose.

Everyone can grind. It's basically a synonym to "mindless". It creates so much frustration there are laws to limit it in work places, so why would anyone be against a system that does the same? I suppose grinding ranks all day is exciting as it allows your character to become stronger faster, which in turn makes you feel better than others (and better about yourself as consequence), but is it really worth it? Since this is a game and not an assembly line i'd rather see advantages being gained through skill, not grind.

Let fighting stronger monsters be even more rewarding. Make behest contain stronger "optional" monsters for ambitious people to tackle, let crafting be a simple puzzle minigame, with crafts too high in level for you being increasingly difficult levels of it (so if you try a rank 30 craft at rank 20 the puzzle will be exceedingly difficult, but not unsolvable), etc...
There are many quality ways to reward greed, ambition and desire. Games are a form of luxury, so it's obvious such dark desires should be rewarded in them and not discouraged. To do so is inherent to gaming. Grind is however the poorest, laziest and most obsolete way to do so.

In FFXI grind was a staple thing, yet people who don't play it often cite grind as the reason. It can possibly mean the particular fanbase of FFXI was of the sort that actually enjoyed the grind... and i suspect that's the biggest chunk of the fanbase that stuck with FFXIV after it's initial failure (grind was basically the only thing you could do.) I am therefore not sure that removing the system completely is a good idea for the game itself. I understand fatigue may be annoying on occasion, but a tweak still looks more desirable considering what i said above.

Don't take me wrong, i don't hate grinders. In FFXI i dreaded endgame and found low level content to be the most entertaining, so i never had any desire to have many high level classes or even crafts. Even when moved to grind i would try to get parties that actually talked while fighting and later organized static parties with my friends to dilute the mindlessness of it as much as possible.

What i'm worried about is an overall useful and innovative system being removed because of a substantially limited fanbase demanding it, and future new players being forced to grind by peer pressure, thus scaring away certain types of players in the same way FFXI did. (I thought the point of this game was to cater to a wider fanbase than FFXI)

If that's the only way to get this game going though, then so be it. I'll try to balance grind like i did in FFXI and if i can't do it i'll just quit.