Heh, totally opposite to me.
Your world will never matter as much to the players as it does to you. You have a choice to make. Is your world more important to you than your players or not?
For me? An engaging story trumps any amount of scenery every time. Make sure that your campaign is the most important thing you spend time on.
I don't want to put words in someone else's mouth, but when I read alms' post, I agreed because those things are story. The orc army moving out of the hills towards your village? That's a story, right there, waiting to happen.
Both as a player and as a GM, I don't really enjoy sitting down with an entire plot. I think alms is kind of saying the same thing: you sit down with some knowledge of interesting things that are happening in the world and play those our, honestly, in response to the players actions.
It's a really different approach than having an entire story waiting for them. Instead of having a series of encounters to get to the orc boss, who will then reveal the demonic influence or whatever, I just set things in motion and then play them out in response to the players.
I don't really think of that as setting building. I don't come up with a history of that orc tribe, because really, who cares? It's more like story seeding: creating interesting things that are going on that the players can interact with. In particular, setting up those interesting things so they're aimed right at what's important to the characters.
