I didn't realize that the reason I didn't like some games today was because they had unrealistic aspects, I just thought it was because they were badly made and poorly designed. Thank you for opening my eyes to the fact that realism is all I really wanted in my fantasy escapist hobby. /sarcasm
In all seriousness, the reason turn based role playing started to die is the growing popularity of the action rpg & the MMORPG. Most people would blame the Diablo games, I personally blame the Infinity games. Turn based disappearing was a design level decision, because of what suits thought was popular, not because "gamers only want realism". As implied in the previous paragraph I don't care about realism because I'm wanting to play a game to get away from the real. Some people like realism, other people couldn't give two flying Damien's about it. Generalizations like "gamers these days want games to be as realistic as possible" are baseless unless backed up with data.
Were you trying to cram as much nonsense as you could in this post? If so, then I'd say you've succeeded.
I prefer turn-based to real-time combat because it gives me more control over the situations presented.
