Players: “we don’t want to be forced to do content we don’t like in order to get relics.”
Devs: “ok, do content that gives tomes for your relic. We are giving you the freedom to choose.”
Players: “You devs are lazy for giving me the freedom to choose what I want. Never give me freedom again. Making me run old content or farm fates is less lazy because you added quest text and extra items to clog up my inventory.”

It’s been known since the first mention of relics that they were tied to Hildibrand stuff and that we weren’t getting a new area to explore this expansion. I personally like areas like Eureka and Bozja/Zadnor, but a significant number of people said, whether they meant it or not, that they hated that content.