I agree, to an extent. I would love to see an extremely long quest chain, that requires both skill and a grind. When people hear that a weapon will take 6 months to get, they automatically assume it's going to be a grind and that no skill will be involved at all. This is not true.
I want an epic quest chain that requires an absurd amount of grinding, and skill based pieces. Why can't we have to collect 99 of x-resource and get a crafting component drop from say Twintania? You can incorporate both, and something that is extremely powerful should require both, skill and perseverance (Grind).