I mainly play WoW right now. Tried Tabula Rasa. Will try Age of Conan. And yeah, I can see it being a chore more times than not. I mean look at how the game (granted its one game) is structured right now:
You want the uber PvP gear, you gotta grind/farm honor or arena points.
You want the uber PvE gear, you gotta grind/farm instances.
You want the the semi-uber crafted gear, you gotta grind/farm the mats.
None of that is new, WoW's been that since day one mostly. But what is new is:
You wanna get gold, you gotta grind/farm the quests.
Blizzard managed to turn questing into nothing more than a grind and farm session. Repeating daily quests. Yes. My dream come true. Lets do the same quests day after day and get the exact same reward every single day. Woot.
Not saying its all a chore, or pointless. I still play. But it seems like imagination is a rapidly diminishing commodity with MMO devs.