Why should I be excited for Grind Parties?

[Charismatic]

I liked FFXI for what it was (a lot of what nasomi wants in a game to be honest) but I didn't bother with more than half of the quests in the game because the rewards weren't worthwhile. I didn't like the extreme grind the game had at the onset, luckily it was toned down.

Honestly, if FFXIV were to take exp away from all quests aside from the main story quests, class quests and company quests and replace the SP rewards from the other quests with items/money worth the time of doing the quests... I'd have no issues with that sort of system.
However, I do believe that there should be many more story and company quests than there currently are. Far more.
Just as is the case with offline Final Fantasy games, you should be able to progress to the appropriate level to do story content simply by going through said story content. I can't remember ever having to stop and kill random minions to level up to beat any offline FF game. There's always enough baddies to fight going from point A to point B. All these MMOs need is an incentive to fight them rather than to just rush right past em straight to point B and an incentive to group up with your fellow players when doing the story quests. Maybe even a public party option like Rift has. There's a lot about Rift I didn't like, but what I did like was the ease of grouping up with folks who had the same objective as you and not having to worry about competing for quest mobs and the like!
FF offline games only really have any notable sort of grinding at the endgame... why can't the online games be the same way?

[nasomi]

I liked FFXI for what it was (a lot of what nasomi wants in a game to be honest) but I didn't bother with more than half of the quests in the game because the rewards weren't worthwhile. I didn't like the extreme grind the game had at the onset, luckily it was toned down.

But that's the thing, there was ALWAYS something to do if you weren't grinding. Even people that never played blm did sleepga2 quest, aspire, and countless more. Hell I did the adventurer's coupon for 50gil for every single time i made a new character, mules, etc. I had 3 accounts and 4 characters total, 2 mules and 2 mains. SE got a pile of money from me every month... People would make new characters just to do quests. And not just for money, but fun, too.

[Wolfie]

But that's the thing, there was ALWAYS something to do if you weren't grinding. Even people that never played blm did sleepga2 quest, aspire, and countless more. Hell I did the adventurer's coupon for 50gil for every single time i made a new character, mules, etc. I had 3 accounts and 4 characters total, 2 mules and 2 mains. SE got a pile of money from me every month... People would make new characters just to do quests. And not just for money, but fun, too.

And why wouldn't SE want to fold that "grinding" experience in with the fun stuff, so that people didn't have to spend any time doing something boring just so they could get to the fun stuff?