Oh, absolutely, there's a point at which you need options. But your example is actually another perfect example of low engagement vs high engagement: longtime RPG players were already familiar with the conventions and already had a high level of engagement in the game before they even started, simply by virtue of it being an RPG that they had chosen to play, so they were used to the process of having to make all those decisions up front. Someone new wouldn't be.

Basically, any service has to make decisions about how much they want to court new people vs people who are already experienced in the conventions of the genre of the (site, game, service, etc). The signup process is one of the easiest places to lose people due to decision fatigue, too: new people aren't invested yet, so if you give them too much to think about, they'll just throw up their hands and say "eh, screw it, I'm gonna go play Farmville instead".