For the record: I love lore, I love exploring, I love watching cut-scenes, I love chatting ... I also know that the majority of the players i run into do not give a pheonix-down about that stuff. I just accept it and move on.

People will always take the path of least resistance, why do Fates when you have PotD? Why run the same FATEs when others offer bigger an better rewards? You do have incentives to go explore, from logs to hunts... but the majority of the player base does not care about that, otherwise you would see them there. However they would be the first to trash the game into the ground if it was just a bunch of instanced areas. People do like exploration, but only on "their time" and when you are on the quest to get epic loot, that time does not involve sight seeing. There is another game out there that encourages world exploration and revisiting old areas, however I feel their incentives are clear, concise and appeal to loot/leveling greed; which is what this all boils down to.