I am what you call a Class 7 pattern with black hair. I am 55 years old and I dye my hair black. I know that if I came to see you, you would want to do thousands of grafts, but I am a bus driver and just would not be able to afford a large transplant. I might save up enough for a second surgery, but I would want to enjoy the hair while I am still young. I just got a divorce and want to start dating so my bald head really bothers me.
I am going to show you a Class 7 patient who is about your age with just about the same problem you had. Although I would have recommended 3,000 grafts because of the large balding area, I gave this man 1677 grafts instead. Here are photos of his before and after (1 year) results. Click to enlarge.
He has a frame for his face and uses a ‘comb-back’ to cover the area which was not transplanted. After a year, it almost covers the entire bald area. Many doctors are reluctant to perform smaller sessions on people like you, but with a good artistic feel, the doctor should and can produce an acceptable result in one session (in most circumstances) with a thin look (as if he is losing his hair). It is important for prospective patients to be aware of these results. They can help by not dying the hair black and keeping it either salt and pepper or white, or even go sandy blonde, as it will always look fuller.
Please also note the scar on this man. We used a trichophytic closure of his wound with exceptional results, but as I have said before, the wounds are a reflection of not just the surgeon’s skills and the techniques used, but also the healing ability of the patient. Scar photo below. Click to enlarge.
The direction is controlled by the person who puts in the ‘holes’. The grafts, once placed in the recipient site, will follow the direction of the hole. It seems simple enough, but the recipient sites must be placed at a horizon angle that is correct and in a direction pointing forward between the ‘parts’. See 
They didn’t know any better back in those days. I know we’re only talking about 20-25 years ago, but technology is an interesting thing. One might say that there was so much excitement to get hair on a bald head, that men did not use their brains. Or that doctors were so trusted in those days, that when a doctor recommended hair plugs, everything was followed like the sheep to the slaughter. It may seen archaic now, but it was the state of the art back then and most men had plugs put into thinning hair so that they only saw more fullness — that is, until the hair all fell out around the plugs. There was a logic put together by the doctor that one could put the hair back in quarter sections, like a checkerboard with four squares. First you transplanted one square than the second, then the third, and then the last. In theory, the doctors and the patients wanted to believe that when all four squares were filled in, the hair was full. But reality took on another face, and the doctors started to push ‘touch-ups’ to fix the pluggy appearance of the rows of corn that grew on the head. It was not unusual for a patient to have 10 surgeries to get their hair back, but that was never a real possibility. I don’t know where common sense played a role and the men walking around with ‘doll’s hair’ were becoming more and more prevalent. Celebrities were leading the way and people like Frank Sinatra became the model that everyone wanted to follow (he had a pluggy transplant), but he really looked awful so he wore a wig and people thought that was his hair transplant, an illusion that doctors profited from and patients wanted to believe. It was an embarrassing con game perpetrated by the medical profession. 
Thanks for asking this great, insightful question.