That is exactly why I lost all interest in Guild Wars after playing it for many years. I was among those who played the early beta of the thing. In the beginning, there was many items, and although you didn't gain too much "stat wise" with better looking items, you still had a sense of accomplishment. I know I did. Also, in the beginning, "purples" were actually worth something. Just about ALL purples.
But then Anet became overzealous in their drive to "equalize" everyone. Make the same more about "fun and teamwork" and less about item grinding. (exactly why communism failed)
It is in peoples nature to always fight, compete, and try to rip a better piece from another, even if it means from their cold dead hands. And even the so called "pacifists" cant resist their evil greedy human nature, when their pacifist ideals clash with their personal needs or interests. Therefore, we NEED to grind for items, at least to some extent. We NEED something to strive for in MMORPGS. Where is the perfect balance between too much grinding, and just the right amount? I'll let Anet worry about that. But they clearly screwed up. What basically happened in the end is that items became a little too accessible to everyone, and the only thing left to strive for was that "perfect stat with just 1 percent difference or slightly better looking "skin".
Farming with Monk AOE spells was fun for a while, but Anet killed that... So then we adapted and overcame and we kept farming with Ritualists and Assasins... But then Anet went and made the very act of farming a waste of time in itself.
Game seized to be fun at all. As far as teaming up with people went that was great in theory but didn't work in practice. Finding reliable, dedicated people to play with was impossible.
Quests became lame, and the more of them Anet added the lamer they got...
And what about those f-ing gay minipets?!??!?!
well, if you must have grinding, then there will likely be plenty of opportunities to do it in GW2, just as such as always remained in GW1. Not sure where you get that, maybe you just got all bitchpants when they gimp one popular farming and so you just stop playing, but that never stops other builds from showing up and dominating the farming/grinding world.
55 monks are still useful in certain situations, it's just that there are actually much better builds and diverse uses of 55 monk than the original.
The value of purples and golds in the early releases dropped, essentially, because much of that gear dropped with wonky that stat and attribute combos that were generally useless for any sort of build. Ele staffs with Nec Soul Reaping attributes and Mesmer skill boosts. Weird stuff like that.
Yeah, it maybe became too standardized in the end, with basically one type of shield stat generally accepted by the community, 2 or 3 types of swords, and only 1 of 2 type of stat combos for wand/focus or staff.
The grinding incentive was and is still there, but the need for those weapons is almost purely cosmetic, since ANet long-ago introduced plenty of paid packages and end-game "elite" items that have max stats of any category. I can see complaining about this, as it's something of a Pay2Play addition to GW (with the $10 quest pack they added shortly after GWEN) and levels the playing field in terms of item quality.
But again--the game is about individual build quality--properly using and exploiting skills. As such, item quality should have an early and set shelf, so as to have minimal impact for end game. This leaves the desire for items based on cosmetics and rarity (economy value). Prices plummeted, of course, with NF when you could then attach any mods you wanted to any item skin, but I still managed to sell some sweet Colossal Scimitars and other rare skins for 100-200k a pop.
PvP in GW has always been different than PvE--certain skills change from PvE to PvP, or are unavailable; the preferred item sets and skill builds are quite different from what works in PvP.