1. What if (hypothetically) I don't want to going through objectives? What if I want to improve myself (my character) by overcoming challenges of combat, getting harder from fight to fight, grow over myself in mastery and prowes? Shall I be forced to do "quests" and "objectives"? Isn't it a needless limitation of gameplay possibilities?
2. It's much harder to disigning and balancing a game around "objective only" character advancement, since it's not an Action/RPG like a Deus Ex or VtM: Bloodlines (last one is more of RPG of course, but poorly designed one). Having a lot of successfull RPGs based on "experience for kill" concept and few very arguably fine games based on "objective only", bringing up a question: is it worth a risk of basing entire gameplay on doubtful idea instead of a concept well proven by time? If we talking about an old school hardcore RPG why don't make it old school indeed?
P.S. sorry for my english, obviously not my native language