I started playing WoW from Day 1. I leveled, the old-fashioned way, a Warrior from 1-60 (and with the original Hit% bug with Warriors, I can not exaggerate how painful that was), then over the next several months, a Rogue, a Druid, and a Shaman, all the 'intended' way.
By then I was *so*sick* of doing the same quests over and over, I decided to start dual boxing.
Lo and behold, the game was new again.
Used my 60 Warrior, who was very well geared by this point (BWL gear) and used him to level up a Mage, Priest and Warlock through instance grinding.
FAR more fun than mindless quest grinding.
Then TBC hits. I role a Paladin and get him to 55 with my Warrior leading the way.
I then realize I can 'solo' most TBC instances if I triple box with 1 Tank (my Warrior), a healer and an AoE class. So I start triple-boxing.
Game is new yet again!
Use this arrangement to get all my toons to 70. Did every quest in Hellfire and Zangarmarsh, then all the rest of the XP came from instance grinding. I left the remaining quests from higher lvl zones for gold because by this time the XP -> gold from quests implementation was in the game.
So now there is Refer-a-Friend triple XP, the 10% XP shoulders, zone buffs when towers are captured for more XP, festival buffs, etc. etc. etc.
Blizzard knows how much leveling sucks, and they are giving people many ways to make it less painful, but even with all this, IT STILL SUCKS.
I don't play anymore, but I never saw any problem with giving people who obviously know the game and their class a huge break when it comes to leveling. Say 10 free levels for every 60 toon you have on your account, or something along those lines.
I do not need, nor want to do any more Azeroth or TBC quests again, ever.
As for the "original vision" of the game, the original vision, as with every single video game produced by large companies, is to make money, and WoW did that incredibly well. It's a business. Period. Their customers are the players. If the players want 55 free levels, faction changes, name changes, welfare epics, and on and on and on, and are willing to pay for it, either through a direct fee (name changes, faction changes) or by virtue of continuing to pay their monthly fee, they will keep getting it because at the end of the day, Blizzard, and every other major game manufacturer cares about one thing and one thing only: MONEY.