Hehe, I actually came in quite late, after one of the biggest updates that the game has ever seen. While I agree with the fact that Aigrind got too hungry for money, I understand it as well. They need that money to develop the game further, as well as keeping the servers up. The Runes update kind of ruined the game for me. They were just not worth spending over 25000 gold to get a tiny chance for a chance bonus.
As for the grind part... I know worse games. Trust me, you haven't seen sh*t if you think that Warspear is really grindy