Most of my stories have simple worlds that I don't really spend much time describing or explaining because they don't matter much to the story. I found something I wrote a few years ago and I'd nearly forgotten about set in my Dungeons and Dragons world. That world was extremely complicated, I have detailed maps, hundreds of characters, and a detailed mythology and history of events going back thousands of years. The story I wrote based on that world was so descriptive I was amazed because that's not my usual writing style. For example, while characters are traveling along the road I name the villages they travel through, the bridges they cross and things they see along the way like an inn and a battlefield. And while I'm doing that, the characters are thoroughly described as well, such as their background story, the clothes they wear and the gear they're carrying. The only reason I mention all this is because I was amazed at what I'd written because my usual style is heavy on dialogue with minimum description. This was one of the first stories I ever wrote but I like it more than the stories I'm writing now. Perhaps, I'm thinking, I should go back to the way I was writing when I first started. But to write this way requires a lot of work. I spent countless hours building this world and the characters who live in it because I used it in a Dungeons and Dragons game and I wanted my players to enjoy the incredible detail I put into it. Also, the story is fantasy and detail of the world is more important than in science fiction, where the point is the idea you're trying to get across. If you're wondering what my point is I'm not sure I have one. I just wanted to share my thoughts when I read an old story of mine.
Too much dialogue is, itself, boring unless there's enough description to set the scene and allow the reader to "see" the action and location surrounding the dialogue. I think it's instructive that you like this earlier work better than what you are writing now. I would take that as a hint. Perhaps there's a happy medium to be found?
The world-building being "complicated" is beside the point. The important thing is that the setting is consistent, that the readers understand it, and that it seems real. Detail isn't the same thing as scope, and complexity isn't the same thing as depth. If I write a short story about, say, a farm boy rescuing his sister from an evil wizard, I don't need to establish the entire history, economic system and geography of the kingdom they live in. I do, however, need to devote a lot of detail to describing the siblings, their family situation, the village they live in, the wizard, whatever dark lair he resides in, and why all of this is happening. Because that's what matters. Whatever the story is actually about is what what you should focus on, and you need to make that stuff as real as you can.
A D&D game is its unwritten dialogue. The DM might have a full-on Michelin atlas behind the table, but it's unusual for the player characters to take any more interest in it than book readers do. A good guide might be for the OP to remember what the players of that campaign said they enjoyed about it. D&D players can be dreadful though, perhaps worse than book-readers, I guess because often some of them are there to spend time with each other - and they put up with the DM's writing for social reasons. Still, if someone said they really liked the villages, or the player characters often left the quest trail to go sightseeing, maybe the OP made a virtue of world-building. We must ask ourselves difficult questions: do we worldbuild because character conflict is traumatic for us? Do we role-play to escape from, or recover from, real-life conflicts? The focus on "building" characters based on (and I quote) what clothes and gear they wear, and their backstories, I think is detrimental to fantasy. This fantasy trap is why the genre punches above its weight in the charity shops and landfill. Nobody cares what happened in elfland, or what the name of the cow was who supplied Anduril's pommel-wrap. But the Michelin road atlas, that sells millions of copies. All credit to its world-builder.
An acute sense of what depth is needed is vital. The author needs to be able to dip in and pull back. Overall I think 'worldbuilder's disease' is a misnomer for 'procrastination disease' (or they just enjoy worldbuilding to its own end, which is fine). A hefty portion of fantasy appeal is elements that are there solely to be fantastical. The author has Brakbar the Barbarian mount a terror bird instead of a horse because it's interesting. It's going to be even more interesting if the author made considerations for how the terror bird's diet needs are met. The superficial elements we expect from fantasy need a degree of subcutaneous tissue, and in the best cases it has scaffolding derived from real world research. That's going to require some worldbuilding. I think of your example as more of 'cluttered' or 'superfluous' than complicated. Some readers live for tightly-woven royal court drama and espionage, detailed military logistics, and... pains me: elaborate magical systems. When you get to market, there's always room for another stock fantasy story, but the ones that bring something special (with quality execution) end up being your trend-setters or at least niche dominators.
I like a lot of names (grouped in trails for instance) if I have a way to remember them, like on a map attached to the story, because I easily forget names and then waste time searching what is where. What maps generally lack are clear and visual references that are quick to individuate on the map. At least to me most maps look "flat", I like maps that are fun to look at.
