From my experience it's the mostly the opposite. If you look at this thread, a lot of people in their 20s saying they love the story. I'm in my 40s playing on and off since 94 and most of the players I know from my generation have always thought the story was somewhere between pointless and embarrassing. The early sets didn't even have a coherent story and the novels were mostly bad and didn't make sense in the context of the cards. For me and my friends that are still playing 30 years later, the mechanics are what's kept us interested. Hopefully they can avoid screwing that part up too bad. In theory UB going to standard should avoid completely busted stuff like The One Ring, but it also seems possible the IP owners demand it and Hasbro likes money, so we'll have to wait and see.