How To Build Interest With Players (Sorry for how long it is, the most important parts are the first paragraph and then from paragraph 5 and beyond)

So this is gonna require a lot of precursor text okay:
- I have been part of one consistent group for about 3, nearly 4 years.
- We've played a lot of campaigns together, some more memorable than others, and we play on multiple nights every week in different people's campaigns, though it's not always guaranteed to run especially since people have become increasingly busy as we move away from being 14-17 in the pandemic and closer to being adults.
- We have multiple people running their own campaigns. I share Saturdays (So I run once every other Saturday) with another DM.

A big thing my group has always enjoyed is knowing what to do next, and I mean exactly what to do next. If there's a choice to be made on what to do, they prefer for one option to be clearly better than the other. But it got boring to run, and also boring to play. So we've been moving to proper D&D where there's less railroading. Now this was something that specifically me and the other DM started. We finished both of our campaigns at relatively similar times and before that were deciding what to do next. We were both in a VC talking about our ideas and stuff, we like to work together because our group often compares how much they like the campaigns and it's a mentality we've been trying to get them to stop. It's not D&D related, but basically, there is a long history with other people in our group and obsessions over him and such if you get what I mean, and it still leads some people in my group to being sort of biased towards everything he does and then it gets compared to me because we share a slot.

Anyways, I started making my first fully fleshed out world and started preparing our campaigns as we did so. What I wanted to do was fairly simple. It's cliché, but in the mortal realm of the world, magic is illegal in a lot of places and heavily controlled or scrutinised in others. I created a whole world and am still writing out some parts of it today, nearly a full year later. So my players refused to do a session 0 with at least 2 of them saying "You can do one, I just won't attend it." So I figured, that if they weren't going to give themselves the opportunity to make reasons for their group to be together, I would. So I told them they could make characters however they'd like as long as they were level 3, and were fey. Because I had decided that they were the descendants of Archfey and I wrote out the whole lore of my version of the Feywild called Wildlight. So they did, now I did say that they could make backstories but I didn't want anything too crazy because it didn't make sense for nobility or anything and besides, I'm sick of the edgy characters who treat everyone like shit and then don't have any redeeming qualities when it comes to this group.

I gave them a few sessions to try and build connections and then threw a curveball at them which I won't get too much into the details but it left the party in a situation of "We need to get out of here and figure out what to do about this, we can't come back until we do." I had planted 2 seeds before this being that they knew the location of a tree that could send them to the mortal realm (was my personal favourite but I was really growing to love Wildlight and the plans I had for it), and that there were parts of the Feywild untouched by the Seelie Courts across the seas. I then asked them to come up with a plan and they decided on going to the mortal world until they figured everything out. It's also important to mention that atp I had set up the BBEG as a major threat to their home.

So the main issue made itself apparent very quickly, players were waiting for me to tell them what to do. But I had told them I'm not doing that anymore. I said "Come on guys, put in some effort. I know it's new, but this is going to be a much more fun way to play D&D for all of us if you just give it some effort." to which one of the players had a fit at me saying "Okay, but this is new to us, it's gonna take some time to get used to." so I gave them time to get used to it, I tried to make choices easier for them, I would give them written lists of their options and then slowly encourage them to do other things and ask questions and be involved. Nothing. just "Uhh... I dunno."

So I ask players what can I do about this using a google form so I have written confirmation of what they want, I propose a few solutions and give them a space to write their own. Most of them didn't even respond. Players mention feeling like they don't know what their goal is because the summer solstice has passed so they can't go home now until next summer. I gave them hints that there is another way and had an NPC give a player information that tied both into their backstory and the hints that were given that this would be helpful. Another player even has a quest to go find his long lost sister out in the mortal realm that was set up in like the second session. So then some more time passes and I get complaints from a player with a legitimate backstory that they "struggle with the campaign because they don't have a backstory." What they meant by that is that they weren't so traumatised it made them barely functional, wasn't severely physically scarred and injured and didn't have a stereotypical "Evil guy who is evil and the cause of all the bad things in my life." those characters are fine, but they are all this player plays. And, their character does have some trauma, they never met their mother because their mother was brutally murdered taking them to see the mortal world when they were a baby and I described how they had memories of laying down, crying, in a pool of a warm liquid that was their own mother's blood. They mention other issues like still not knowing where to go. This is also the same player who I outright told "Go here and find this guy at this place, who can tell you where to find this other guy who you need to talk to. This other guy has connections to your goals and motives as an individual AND as a group."

Every time I run session it's "I'm not sure..." or just "No." from like all but one of my players. I know some of it is my fault, I could have done a better job at connecting them to this world beforehand but so many of them before the human realm was mentioned were like "I think my character really wants to go to the mortal world and explore it and stuff." and they just haven't tried at all. They barely speak to anyone, they barely look around, they're always waiting for someone else to take charge. Meanwhile, everyone is fighting for attention in the other Saturday DM's campaign, and putting in all of their effort. Which would be fine if it weren't for the fact that he started with little to no information about anything or anywhere, everyone already had character ideas, he hadn't given us anywhere to go, we found our own things to go and do. Maybe it's because I'm a player in that campaign and I've taken charge of a lot of situations to keep it going whenever there's a lull, but that's because me and him don't really compare ourselves or our campaigns and prefer to work together when it comes to D&D as he also hates the amount of boot licking he gets from some people in this group.