Item finding isn't even one of the major categories of play in an RPG. There are three types of players: Dice Rollers, Problem Solvers, and Role Players. A good DM knows his players and can juggle the desires of everyone in a group. When someone looks bored, the DM can throw in a challenge suited to that player.
Dice Rollers are numbers wranglers who want a good game of chance. The most common sub-species is the Hack-n-Slasher, but that's just because most rule sets lend themselves to that kind of dice rolling. In games that have skill rolls, you'll find these guys rolling for damn near every feat up to and including getting up in the morning. "An 18?!? I spring from my bed and land in my shoes in one smooth motion! Hurrah!"
Problem Solvers like puzzles and planning. These are the guys who calculate exactly how many miles your party will average per day trekking across the Great Arid Waste and know exactly how much food and water to pack. When the party stumbles across a series of levers and switches in the dungeon, these are the guys to call. "Gruntmore the Dwarf pulls the red lever, goes through the blue door, pushes the star shaped switch, coems back out, pushes the green lever to a 45 degree angle disabling the secret blade trap and we all go merrily on our way!"
Role Players like to have long, drawn out in-character conversations with every shopkeeper and passing peasant they encounter. Whereas Dice Rollers will do whatever it takes to win, and Problem Solvers playing stupid characters will still come up with genius plans, these guys are apt to do utterly stupid things if they think that's what their character would do. They also tend to talk about their characters in the first person. "I leap from behind the tree and run screaming at the horde of orcs- What? Yes, I know the plan was to sneak up on them, but I'm overconfident with anger management issues. But you should really say that in character..."
But perhaps I missed your point, were you saying RPGs are about item finding or RTSs are? In any case, I think the real trick to either is actually basing it on a good simulation of some sort, but having story telling hooks that can effect the sim in the scripting interface, and have those hooks have flexible triggers and random details so that the same basic plotline can be activated from many different starting points using characters and locations tailored to the individual players. But I understand how hard it would be to scale a system like that up to WoW levels.
The real problem with WoW is that it isn't an RPG and it isn't for people who traditionally like RPGs so the players who would bring real quality to the game are driven away by all the Azkiker4921s and l33tWariers in the game.
[slashdot] The lameness of Warcraft
