It may well be that you are very worldy and wise. And so, all of the values presented in the works are obvious, and apparent to you. Good for you.

But I find the series thought inducing. In a fictional setting, you entertain people to get your foot in the door, and send a small message here and there. In different time periods, people's threshold for how much entertainment and preaching are allowed are very different.

I can't read the old classics, like War and Peace, as they are too boring. They no longer servers me in entertainment, and by that, they can also no longer bring their hidden messages through. The old classics can not get the foot in the door any more. So whatever themes in there are lost. Some other books, are entertaining, but I am repulsed by their themes.

The WOT series is a nice combination for me.

The name dropings are not meant to be all recognized. For people with different backgrounds, they recognize a few, miss many others, but can still get the general idea without understanding all the hints. It makes the books more approachable.

I find many of the plot puzzles too hard for my liking. But I get the idea of the futility of it in the macro sense. I see the characters react to situations, and I can't say if they are making the right or wrong decisions. But I understand that good intentions are never enough.

Even the destiny vs. freewill debate is not far from RW. Would humans die out in three thousand years? Would the Universe destory itself in 20 billion years, and can any intelligent life inside the Universe change that? The questions are the same, just a slight change in time scale.