More Words, Deeper Hole

I like how you were able to post that with a straight face. Of course every generation of fan thinks its better than the one before, so....

I've honestly seen no improvement in plotting and characterization, much less world building in the last twenty-five years; I have however seen a great increase in the baroqueness of same. That is, instead of doing the job in a hundred words, authors have learned to do the same thing in five hundred. Likewise, if three main characters is good, eighteen must be even better!

Take "A Song of Ice and Fire": the world building is no better then that of say "The Broken Sword": in fact the world Martin comes up with is nonsensical. But Martin surrounds that nonsensical world with so much verbiage that readers tend to miss the flaws in the worldbuilding. Likewise, take the characterization of someone like Cersei; Martin surrounds her with so much extraneous detail that it takes a while before one realizes that she's the same stereotypical "bitch queen-mother" that we've seen in the literature for decades.

So largely I'd say it's a matter of authors shovelling a crapload of words to try to hide the flaws in their work, rather than an improvement on the part of the readers.