I wonder how many people who are hating on the grind have played it recently? Blizzard made some radical changes in the past month that, among other things make it a lot easier to level, particularly at the lower levels.
The main innovation is the cross-realm Random Dungeon feature. Rather like the battlegrounds, you put yourself in the queue and when a slot opens up, da-DAAA! A window pops up, you enter the dungeon to find yourself with four other people of varying levels of skills, both game and social. If you complete the dungeon, you are guaranteed money, XP, and something to help you gear up to advance. You are also guaranteed satisfying rants about incompetent shithead assholes, the pleasure of clicking with a group and executing a near-perfect run, and the challenge of adapting on the fly to that most chaotic of game elements, other players.
The starting area difficulty appears to have dropped quite a bit, so clearing the early levels is a breeze. A few months back, they lowered the level requirements and cost for mounts by a huge degree, which makes travel less onerous, and yes, there is a lot of lore and story to be had out of the game if you actually bother to read the quests and NPC interactions, which most people who gripe about grind and absence of story have probably never bothered to do. I know I didn't, because the font makes my eyes bleed.
And then of course, if PvP is your thing, there are the battlegrounds, where you can garner XP and gear as well.
So the key is to break it up. Sick of questing? Hop in a dungeon queue. Filled with rage at the complete fuckwit in the dungeon group who was more deadly to the group then any monster in the joint? Take in out on someone in the battlegrounds. Feel like something low stress? Go level your professions for a bit. You have alternatives. To grind or not to grind is up to you.
Nevertheless, there WILL be parts of the game that will just leave you clawing at your face, and where those parts of the game hit will depend in large part on what class you play. My shadow priest was agony up to level 20, got very fun at level 40, had me face-clawing again between 50 and 60, and is now a tremendous amount of very challenging pleasure to play well. I don't know where the doldrums hit on warlocks, but you will get them, and that's were you will feel The Grind. Break through that, though, and there is usually a delightfully powerful new ability waiting for you on the other side.
All this is aimed at making the game easier for "casual" players, something that has the self-described hardcores quite butthurt and resentful. QQ. It's a good thing, IMO.
Oh, and remember the multi-player aspect of this. If you are playing it as though it is a single-player game with other people wandering around the background, of course you will be bored, because you are not playing the game as designed. Play with friends, make some friends, realize that you've been standing in the bank for 30 minutes doing nothing but joking with guild members.
Ultrajoe started a WoW group, Azeroth Escapists, if you have questions, and there are a lot of other web communities related to WoW to help you get the game figured out. If you want to play well, there is so much to learn.
