If a game wants me to grind, it's going to have to trick me by actually making it fun so I don't realize i'm grinding, it then becomes merely "playing", i might be wrong on this but for me grinding has the connotations of a boring, repetitive task which you don't find fun but need to do in order to progress.
This is probably my biggest turnoff in games and one of the major reasons i avoid mmos when possible:
grinding is nothing more then direct time investment without the fun that is meant to come with playing games, there is no challenge involved since grinding usually means you're killing the same exact enemy for x times to be able to progress and have some fun, if the game had an option to automate fights by repeating the same command you used to kill the previous 120 identical enemies then your presence wouldn't even be required.
Fuck no, if i wanted to do a boring repetitive task i'd like go get a job, do something, anything with my life. But really i'll just change game and play something that i find fun.