Be honest, the fetch quests in DA:O suck too.

That's what I do with all my stuff on the off chance that I'll drop it or get pickpocketed in the city and then someone will take said object and put it in a random container, for reasons not specified, and then another someone will happen to see the container in question, decide there might be some nice junk in the container (hopefully this person isn't already wealthy because then why would they be rooting around in a decrepit barrel in the back alley of Low Town? Unless they're insane of course), find my object and then decide to take the time out of their day to return it to me instead of pawning it or just throwing it back in there.

I thought I was the only  one! Wow...

Yeah... you toss your DA2 disk into the trash bin, the next hour a bearded stranger shows up and returns it with the words "here's your garbage".

The side quests in Origins didn't bother me. Mostly because they were optional and at times I didn't do them all in every playthrough I completed.

Main difference between the Quizz and the Warden in this aspect is that with the Warden it makes more sense. In DA:I you have a growing organization at your back with noble allies, an army, and a spy network, while in DA:O you are pretty much a fugitive on the run. Sure this fact only gets you into trouble three times, the soldiers in Loathering, Zevran, and some bounty hunters waiting for you outside of Orzammar. But you still have little resources and money at the start, it makes more sense for you be doing those quests to get what money you can. DA:O you're living in a campsite, while DA:I you're living in a castle and you're still picking elf root. 

True, true.  Thankfully BioWare saw the error of their ways and rectified this injustice with our kinky hero, Iron Bull.

The problem with DAI is size. We could have 3 bilion fetch quests per inch, as long as you didn't have to walk a cm to complete each. In DAO I didn't even think about quests, I just talked to everybody and everything completed itself, because I wanted to do that, I never even needed to check quests logs (except for Summoning Sciences and some faction quests) now DAI makes me wish I died a thousand times before completing the most simple quest in a small map like Fallow Mire because it is boring, gruesome, tiresome, it is a hell.
In simple words: I never completed a side-quest in DAO because it never felt like it, it just felt like I was playing the game, that I was enjying a marvelous game, EACH INCH. Now DAI, even the main quest, makes me feel like I am working on a mine for an evil overlord, 24/7 using evill magic to keep me awake and productive.
Simples as that.
May look complex if you think about the structure of the quests, the writting and other things, however, games are about how you feel, and if they screw up and made you feel like you are doing the quest and not feel like you are enjoying yourself then all theories, rationalization and analyzis become useless shit. You can prove, academicaly, that DAI quests are like DAO's or even better and less boring but you can't convince someone to feel like DAI is enjoyable, the game is a complete failure, good luck trying to argue boredom out of people.

Waiting for something to render, so looked back at all the DAO fetch quests to make sure I didn't forget any. Really only two that I might say approach tedium, and that would just be Correspondence Interruptus and then maybe Admirable Topsider.

The former really is just an exercise in party Deft Hands Fine Tools, but if you are missing one it is annoying to figure out which one. Admirable Topsider is one of the few where you absolutely have to back track in order to finish it.

Of course some things in Lothering are pure tutorial.  Specifically Traps are a Girl's Best Friend, Poisonous Proposition, and More Than Just Plants.

This isn't to say that the rest are amazing, imaginative or anything of the sort. They are mostly just extremely simple with objects that happen to be nearly directly in your path. There isn't any chance to become weary doing them as there really isn't exertion required.

DAI probably has better non-fetch side quests (at least considering vanilla to vanilla) overall, which isn't too hard since DAO was pretty light on these. At the very least you could say DAI has more side-quests with a semblance of plot.

Haha!

It caused me to save more often, especially before clicking interactive items.

The first of DA2's fetch quests of that type I remember picking up was some bottle of wine in the Viscount's office. I clicked the bottle because I thought that maybe Hawke would read the bottle's label in case it was advantageous to know the Viscount's tastes for a possible later bribery, but no... he just swiped the bottle and the quest log told me where to drop it off. Wow, what a lack of class! But I couldn't remember when I had last saved the game, so I ran with it.