Grinding
It is in my opinion easy to grind, maybe too easy. It is making you feel as if you completed the game rather quickly.
That's strange to hear. I thought grinding was universally derided because it's just a filler for novel gameplay or content. I don't like it when a game feels like it's just making you work (very tedious, and ultimately useless work) instead of being fun.
I might got a bit too overboard with this statement since I rushed everything and went in powergamer mode. I mean, I got to lvl 110 skinning and lvl 31 in just three days. The cap is at 60, and I believe trade skills are capped at 175. At that rate, I could most probably cap Tracking & Skinning in less than a week that gave me access to end-game materials.
But I must say that it does seem a bit unbalanced. For example, leveling up the trade skills: While it requires 1 or 2 skinnings to level up "Tracking and Skinning", it would require 10-20 herb harvests to level up "Harvesting".
I do see some market/auction hall benefits and opportunities to run an economy with this since there would be fewer people taking the "long road" to get to the end-game level to harvest those materials required. So, that alone might be rewarding and fun for those who take that approach.
In the end, it is rewarding nonetheless, as you get level experience for leveling up trade skills, and you unlock more content by doing so.
At Lvl 35 killing a Lvl 4 beast gave 1 Exp, but the skinning still 10 Exp. So resource gathering is still helpful later in the game - every Exp counts!
And there are incentives to level the crafting skills with the keys needed for expeditions: one you can get as a quest reward, afterwards you need to craft the key yourself. With being "Bind on Pickup" (the material for it is BoP, too), players are either dependent on having a crafter in their team or they have to craft the key themselves. No players that only log in to run the dungeons/missions ;)
On what server did you play? Because I experienced it totally differently.
For example, this is a material required to make the orb you need to enter an expedition. I can sell/buy it in the Auction Hall. It's not BoP.
Skinning itself gives you not as much XP, but leveling up Tracking & Skinning gives you a lot more. Check out these screenshots...
Killing: 118xp
Skinning: 22xp
Leveling up Tracking & Skinning: 466xp
606 xp in 2 minutes.
I think it was for the lvl 35 expedition - some item "Stone ?? Orb", to craft it at the stonecutter a number of the shards that drop when you close a portal are needed, and something called "? Heart", which must be crafted, too.
Sorry, I didn't see the English terms, only the German (where a lot of items aren't translated yet, but have names like masterpiece_40_armor) and can't look it up, since it doesn't run on my computer.
The Orb and fragments are BoP, but not all materials that you need to make it are.