I promise once you hit level 160 it is not so fast and ridiculous. (It also is painfully slow from levels 75-90 when you can't quite enter ultimate yet.) If you aren't running RT and other high-experience quests, you still will be excited to level. Actually, even then it can sometimes take 2-3 runs of RT between levels. But by that point, you'll be able to equip things that aren't just for very low level characters.
But yes, I know what you mean about wanting to keep things unmodified... Nostalgia for the old days of PSO.