I never bothered actually completing Dungeon Seige (and my other half hated it) but I quite enjoyed the realtime tactical elements it introduced to dungeon crawling. I will never call it a great game, not even a particually good game, but nor would I put it on the same level of awful as somthing like Dungeon Lords. I'm not making any kind of argument here, i'm just suprised at the level of hate it's getting.
As for streamlining, using films as an analogy, a good example of such would be the recent Iron Man. That is to say, we're not talking about a deep meaningful film, we're talking about a comic hero who builds a super suit, but the script is edited and cut togeather in such a way that no line is wasted. Sure, we're not talking about somthing that's going to inspire generations to come, but on the other hand it's not a pile of Hades like the average Boll film, it's (effectively) streamlined casual entertainment.
Yet, all the hardcore comic fans probably hated it for the same steamlining that made it watchable to the rest of the world.