I certainly don’t…
When I level an alt I just want to get the annoying renown grind, gearing grind, Torghast grind, etc etc done as quickly as possible… it’s definitely not something I “enjoy” 
All the (re)grinding is just a means to an end for me; having a somewhat competitive alt.
If you are one of these people that allegedly “enjoys the journey” with regards to re-doing all these Shadowlands grinds, please speak up or post 
Leveling gets old quickly for me as well. The problem is the repetitive nature of the ‘quests.’
Hey there, go kill 10 things then come back. Cool. Now go get 10 things from killing things, but you have to actually kill 20 things to get 10 things. Neat. Now I have another chore for you to do…
The problem is that many ‘quests’ just feel like chores, and when leveling, I personally spend too much time watching that xp bar.
If the quest was truly a journey where you didn’t worry about xp as much, and getting to max level meant doing a quest that felt like an actual adventure rather than just doing chores for people, then it might feel better.
There are people, that’s the main argument you see in regards to why Classic/older xpacs were better, that it wasn’t a mad dash to the endgame. Which I don’t really believe but I also didn’t play in 2004 and it certainly was not that way with Classic. There are absolutely people though who feel the problem with he modern game is that people are ignoring the “good” parts of the questing.
Huh… leveling has you not touch any of what you mention.
I like leveling the first time around.
There are others that infact do enjoy leveling a lot more that don’t go on these forums to whine and complain.
The point is not necessarily about enjoying the journey. The point is that alts should take effort, and the more you want from them then the more you have to do.
You can boost to 50, level for 10 levels, and not worry about legendaries or renown if you dont like grinding those things.
I’ve never considered end the “journey”. With that said, I do enjoy the journey.
It doesn’t help that the Shadowlands leveling questline is a “forced” on-the-rails experience.
Legion and BFA leveling were more enjoyable because you could “choose” the order in which you completed the zones. You could mix and match zones as you pleased.
I wasn’t playing WOW back in 2004 (SWG at the time), but questing in classic seems even more repetitive than in retail. At least in retail a lot of what you do is a part of a storyline or they connect in some way. There is also more variety with the racing or flying above and dropping bombs on your enemy. It just seems like there is more purpose. But in the end, no matter how much you dress it up, it all comes back to kill this or fetch that.
But if anyone thinks questing is boring, you should have been playing SWG pre-NGE. If you wanted to gain XP you had to group with a bunch of people and destroy lairs of animals over and over again for hours on end. That was the most efficient way of leveling. It’s no wonder SWG and other games died when WOW came out. Those quests probably seemed like a godsend after what you had to endure in other MMOs.
In retail I like to level for a bit in starting zones and I love running some vanilla dungeons but yes it gets old and end up boosting the toon, generally 
regrinding SL stuff for alts… hell nah
It’s the only reason I make alts. Well, that and RP reasons. I don’t know why I’d get bored of my main and make an alt just to blitz right back to the content that made me bored in the first place.
Heck, a few months ago I started a new alt just to level in Outland again. I’m not sure what I was thinking there. 
There were definitely people back in Ye Olde Dayes who wanted to level as fast as possible and made guides and stockpiled resources for it. And there were people who leveled at whatever the heck pace they happened to get XP. (I was one of the latter, which is why I topped out at about level 53 in vanilla…) Not too different from now, really.
Yeah the ticket costs about 15 bucks a month
I’ve run into a few yes.
Their opinions, coincidentally, were also terrible.
For most it wasn’t but for some all they could do is rush to endgame. Before anyone says , well it’s was everyone’s first MMORPG, or things were different when you were 15, I had been playing EQ since it launched (so 5 years or so BEFORE WoW started) along with many other MMORPGs at the time and I was 35 when WoW started.
The difference with older games is people saw them less as “video games” and more as tabletop RPGs that happened to be video games. I can remember worrying more about getting the drops to get my ivy etched bracer than worrying about what I would do AFTER I hit max level.
When I was leveling in Vanilla I acted the same way. The only reason I wanted to do SFK was because I had a quest to go in there for my Paladin Specific hammer. I still love that quest in Classic. It’s a rite of passage.
I feel that in the effort to be more of an E-Sport, Blizz watered down the classes to where they almost don’t matter. To me, the most important parts of my characters are race and class, followed by transmog. If the questing ties to my race or class, it brings me much more into the questing. Being called hero or maw walker does nothing for me.
The mad dash to the endgame didn’t exist until WOTLK which started the whole heirloom xp boosting and speed running dungeons which carries over to the modern game. Before that it would take 2-3 weeks to legit level a character from 1 to max. In vanilla it took me almost a month.
The quote from the Ion interview…the one you are talking about…Ion was referring to me. Thats literally me.
Since at least WoD if not before, all I tend to ever do is level up a character, get what I can from solo/que content and then start over again on another character.
We are legion.
I enjoy the journey in comparison to the end game of continued grind for little increments of upgrades. I do ignore the maw grinding on alts, and somewhat have ignored it on my main. Renown hasn’t been a grind ever especially on a new alt. My main and my first alt were limited on getting 3 renown a week like everyone else. My other alts i went through the maw but waited to hit 60 because I didn’t have time to put into anything but log in, craft stuff to sell and logout. Once I started doing their campaign, running dungeons & raids, then literally, that renown catchup is real. It’s kind of weird going from 0 to 40 in 2 weeks, but all you have to do is play the game. I am bored of the covenent go here kill this, escort that - but I’ve done all 4 storylines, so there’s nothing left to learn.
Torghast was only a grind for my first character - although I enjoyed it pre-nerf. Post-nerf it was boring. I ignored it on my alts again because they weren’t 60 for the most part and it wasn’t too long before they gave what they should have at the start of layer 8 unlocked for alts.
Gearing will always be a grind though, and I just enjoy the very start when you see that power upgrade happen. It’s the end game of 1% upgrades (if that) that I find grindy and boring.
I’m only just now unlocking the allied races and have been leveling new characters to get the heritage sets and unlock their class mounts. I have been thoroughly enjoying leveling these new characters even though I already have two or more of every class at 50+ and have done all of the leveling content dozens of times.
It’s hard to blame people for “rushing” to the endgame though… Blizzard’s model is basically:
It’s “endgame or nothing”
It’s the community and playerbase that changed. Just looking at Shadowlands it takes like a legit 6-8 hours to get lvl 50-60? Easily the shortest leveling experience in any expansion.
The whole obsession with being #1 is how they carrot you on the stick to keep playing the game because it feeds on human competitiveness. It’s not as thrilling of an experience to turn on cheat codes in a game and giving yourself everything vs having to work for it.
I am one that loves the journey. I enjoy questing and exploring and seeing the world. I still enjoy questing in the old world, and sometimes find things I haven’t noticed before. But I can’t say that I would want to quest through SL again on an alt, do the covenant campaign, or farm soul ash. Once was enough for me.