Everquest 2: Moorgard on "Level Grind"

I'd define "grinding" as doing repetitive things over and over because
you feel you have to, rather than because it gives you pleasure to do so.
Please note the distinction. I spent many levels of my young monkly life in
Highkeep, killing the same mobs over and over. And despite the fact that I
hated waiting on a spot in the guard room, I never felt like I was in a rut
that wasn't fun. The same thing happened to me in SolB; I loved pulling
those silly kobold rooms and never saw it as something boring. Of course,
another player might have hated those zones and would see any time spent
there as mindless grinding.

The only true way to avoid any potential grind is to make so much content
that the player never has to do the same thing twice. That's basically the
model console games use, at least to the extent that they try to give you a
constant stream of variations on their main type of content. Of course, most
console games aren't trying to keep players interested for months and years
at a time.