Doesn't that depend, more or less completely, on the specific group of player's specific set of expectations?
I agree with your statement, in theory. But it doesn't jive with what I've experienced in practice. People find ways to make a of wide variety of worlds work for D&D. Attribute that to whatever you will; gamer creativity, ignorance, pure mule stubborness.
Take a look at some of campaign worlds described in the Story Hours, created with D&D 3.x. SepII's Wyre, Destan's Valus, my own beloved CITY.
I can see how extrapolating a world out of the ruleset can be enjoyable (thought its not my thing). But you shouldn't overstate the case regarding the difficulty of "shoehorning" all manner of wildly different campaign worlds into some reasonable facsimile of the current D&D rules.