for me the attraction to the setting can be summed up in only a few words. characters, villians and feel.
some see them as cliche but the characters pretty much set the pattern for all the "group of adventurers" fantasy fiction that has come since. the character of raistlin, once you really get to know him, can be identified with by anyone who has more mental endowments then physical, the resentment a smaller sibling can feel toward the larger, athletic, popular sibling that is praised by all is pretty much the basis for the raistlin character in the end. those of us who are often assumed stupid because of our size and lack of true confidence can identify with caramon in the early books. and anyone who never really feels like they belong when they're around their family can't help but identify with tanis half elven. all of these are reasons to like the novels. and i think that the world is fairly novel driven.
the villians actually give you reasons to hate them in the books. players actually hate the forces of the dragonarmies so when they are fighting them, they really get into it and want to succeed. this is just one example. also because the major high level people are somewhat few and far between (unlike FR, this is not a FR flame) when someone like dalamar is used in a campaign, you can bet that everyone at the table knows what to expect, and not to just attack elven black robed mages.
i like the organisations, the nations, i know more about the history of ansalon then i do about earth and i am not lacking in knowledge about world history. this is the only campaign setting that i know well enough to DM with total authority that i did not create.
also 5th age saga rules left such a bad taste in the mouth of so many DL fans that we really want to wash the taste out all these years later. no other setting has been so horribly butchered and we really are still bitter that TSR destroyed dragonlance for a few years. you probably never had to watch your favorite setting go down slowly, like someone shot it in the stomach once and left it to die.
That it was fantasy, and had something to do with D&D was a big added bonus.
). It was just a real big change..and I loved it...and love it still 
I read lots of book, and due to my mother being from a Celtic cultural backround and speaking a Celtic langage (breton), I read lots of stories involving dragons, elves, goblins, gnome, and fey alongside french classic litterature, so Tolkien appeared to me as the worst of both: cliché and "baroque" writing.
