So once you hit gen 2 you gotta work really hard to lvl up but it's extremely difficult to grind in the beginning. Once you are a high enough level to go to icy you'll end up spending hours and hours grinding in the same spot, not to mention icy plains gives the most useless evs since to grind fast you need to use high sp attack and attack pokemon but end up getting defense , sp def and hp evs. I think there should be another grinding spot like grassy plains or a lake with a limit species of pokemon that can be grinder. Even a smog like town would be great with high amounts of spawns.
Once trainers are available in gen 2 leveling up should be much less painful. Also, I believe they intended gen 2 to be painfully difficult to grind through. Just so you spend more time on the server obviously.
They did it's true , this was to keep people from hitting lvl 50 so fast but when gen 3 comes it's gonna be difficult