Well swtor had a time gate in the form of chapters but those chapters actually had a full on story which kept the grindy parts important.
And runescape is 100% grind but now has raids and esport style dungeons which is pretty much what blizz has tried to do and has announced for shadowlands.
But even still the grind in runescape has value in the end where as blizz grind is so they dont have to do anything more than the bare minimum to make it to the next release.