I think the main problem is that somehow 10 or 20 items on a page got to be standard and that is just annoying. 200 items on a page seems like a good number to me. Scrolling is often easier, but I want it to stop.
OTOH, there are many, many ways to mess up pagination UI as well. Not showing how many pages there are is one that often annoys me, because one time I will go through a bunch of pages of stuff is if I am quickly visually scanning to find something I saw before but couldn't track down with search or bookmarks all that quickly for some reason. If I know what I am looking for is on one of 15 pages then there is a good chance I can find it quickly, but with 50 pages it might be more effective to keep trying my luck at search (or just give up).
OTOH, there are many, many ways to mess up pagination UI as well. Not showing how many pages there are is one that often annoys me, because one time I will go through a bunch of pages of stuff is if I am quickly visually scanning to find something I saw before but couldn't track down with search or bookmarks all that quickly for some reason. If I know what I am looking for is on one of 15 pages then there is a good chance I can find it quickly, but with 50 pages it might be more effective to keep trying my luck at search (or just give up).