Thoughts on MMOs having a focused main story quest/campaign

I am curious to get people's thoughts on having a centralized story campaign in MMOs. I grew up on OSRS and vanillia WoW, where there wasn't really a "main campaign". Instead you mostly wandered around and found towns/places with side quests, completed them (or didn't, it was your choice) then moved on to another place. It was free form in that you really weren't guided to any one location and the "story" (if you could call it that) was more episodic in nature: helping random NPCs around the world with their localized problems and then likely never seeing them again.

I've played a lot of FFXIV in the past few years, which is the poster child for main story quest, and figured the main story quest (MSQ) was just a FFXIV thing. But recently I've played GW2 and current WoW and was surprised to find that both games also had focused main story quests. In all these games you have a main story/campaign with recurring characters as companions (Scions, Dragon's Watch, Jaina/Liadrin/Arator/Aleria) who travel with you from zone to zone, strong narrative importance on your player character and their reputation (WoL, Commander, Champion), and a big bad villain who is a reoccurring threat along you main quest and who you ultimately confront at the end of an expansion. The story quests are usually required to unlock certain features (raids, world events, traversal options, new zones, etc.) so it is usually recommended that players complete the main campaign.

I don't think having a main story is bad, it's obviously really popular with some people because it remains a feature in big MMOs, and I enjoy a good story. I'm just wondering if anyone else prefers the more open style MMOs without a main story. Where you choose to go to a new place on the map because it looks cool and aren't driven there by the narrative as a stepping stone to stop some big villain. Where killing a big dragon is part of a side quest chain from a random village and not part of a larger narrative built up over multiple patch cycles with plot repercussions spanning several expacs later. And your character is just some no-name adventurer, not a hero of renown who has prevented several world ending threats and is personally best friends with several famous NPCs.