so essentially what your saying is leveling in an mmo should be designed to be easy and not having much interaction, because a lot of interaction is tedious.
I can see your op, it is not unvalid, but i disagree.
The things i talked about in my post already occured in the game, and you were rewarded for it. This is what the game was evolving into before the sp nerf. You fought harder fights in more dangerous areas, because higher level monsters gave you better exp, you tried to avoid the aoe attacks because when a monster is high level, they do a lot of damage, and can kill you. You manage your stamina and choose between a provoke or a strike because if you choose wrong you may lose agro, and the monster may die.
You use aoe tanking abilities as a marauder because if you dont get hate, the healer will die, and you will probably be next. You offtank the other puk in the group because the marauder can keep enough hate, and tring dodge, or take two flip kicks may kill you, or the healer. All this is my adventures when the game started, its not imaginings of what could be, its really what we did, and we got exp for it.
A good system, well created has depth, you can get by at a low level, or you can take it deeper, and be a little better. while people who just want to get to work, and drive because its the easiest way want automatics, most people who actually enjoy driving, and do it in there free time, or as a hobby prefer manual, because they have more control, and its a more entertaining experience. They can get slightly better performance by involving themselves more.
So basically it comes down to a clash of what is battle in an MMO, is it a means to an ends, or a joy in and of itself. I can see why there may be opposing schools of thought on this. In honesty what they should probably have done, is created two battle systems, one which is simple, involving only minute complexity or involvement, for the people to whom battle is just a means to the end of progression and gear, and another system for those who want to get in depth and have more control over the battle, who actually want entertaining battles. Because i dont really think that more people want it one way or the other, i think its split fairly evenly.