I believe the issue is what we designers call 'conveyor-belt gameplay' or that tendency for games to give you quest A which leads to quest B which leads to quest C and you effectively have a choice maybe once every ten levels regarding the next conveyor-belt to jump on.
Modern players (the mass market) like to know what they are doing next. Give them a choice between A and B, two dialogue options in a conversation they cannot easily avoid having, and they feel comfortable / confident. Give them a sandbox and they will run to a wiki to find out what to do next, to see what someone else thinks they should do next.
The epitome of this trend is the Let's Play video, where you watch someone else play the game so you don't have to.
Publisher wisdom says that when 90% of your market want to be led by the hand, the other 10% (which include the P1999 players) are the anomaly to be ignored. Experienced designers just point to Star Wars Galaxies, which died when it tried catering to the mass market...
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Mentathiel Rogue and haunter of level-inappropriate dungeons
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