Grinding

I will try like hell not to make this a rant and more importantly not degenerate to my opinion on specific games or players. For the uninitiated, some history for you. Grinding by definition is the slaughter of mob after mob for either xp or drops, basically not for quests or other similar rewards. The definition has been applied to quests as in "go grinds quests in x location" or "grind y repeatable quest." For me and here I'd like to talk about it as just killing mobs over and over. There is also the perception that eastern games are more grind oriented while in the 2nd half of the last decade western games have moved away from this progression model or tried to.
I have always enjoyed grinding. I like the predictably and the planning associated with consistent mob grinding. I can find a type mob or an area where I know I can kill x per hour to gain y. It wasn't till L2 that Damijin pointed out to me the greatest attribute to grinding, it can be very social. I don't want to touch instancing in this post but let's imagine a static spawn world for grinding. When you get a group together and hunker down in a location to either pull mobs to or work around for hours it gives you a chance to be social. Damijin and I, along with our friends would often talk about the most ridiculous and fun things spurred on by the repetitive nature of the task of progression. Where is the skill in grinding? Well its not each mob or each pull or even each encounter. The skill is setting up the grind and more importantly and fun dealing with mishaps.
There are other means of progression, questing of course comes to mind. Often questing can tell a story but many times it is grinding in disguise. I will admit, go grind 100 mobs or x mob to collect y items makes grinding go faster in my head but I think it often can remove the social aspect. This of course is all just my opinion. I do think an MMO is and should be a huge time investment. Without commenting on progression, I think there are many people who enjoy sitting back either alone or with friends and grinding interesting mobs, in interesting virtual locations in different ways. I for one will be sad if the majority of MMOs either remove grinding or relegate it to end game (another topic).