I can't imagine it would be even remotely "safe" to go back to 1e/2e. WotC is talking a good game at the moment about an edition everyone can feel a part of, but the market realities underlying their actions stem from one specific edition -- 3e/Pathfinder -- being so much bigger than all other fanbases combined that it is supplanting D&D as the default option around the gaming table. I grew up on Chainmail and very much enjoy 1e/2e/BECMI/Bluebox/Redbox, but let's not kid ourselves here and say that any of those fanbases are even 1/10 the size of 3e/Pathfinder.
WotC's main concern here is to recapture the single largest RPG fanbase at the moment, that being the 3e/Pathfinder crowd. Their next priority is to retain enough fundamental 4e features that the somewhat smaller but still numerically important 4e fanbase will feel sufficiently respected to stick with the new edition rather than abandoning D&D entirely. I'm sure they wouldn't mind reeling in some of the people still playing 1e, 2e, etc, but WotC would never risk driving away both 3e *and* 4e players to attract the numerically small groups of D&D players who don't like either one.
It's never easy to accept that one's favored edition isn't seen by a majority of the gaming community as being better than what came before. I see this around my 4e gaming table, whose members run the gamut of the "stages of grief" -- from disbelief ("4e must be selling better than they say!") to anger ("those 3e grognards sabotaged 4e!") to depression ("no edition could ever be as good as 4e"). So I can understand people not wanting to believe that The Rouse, the various market surveys published at ENWorld and elsewhere, and WotC's own actions indicate a sales problem so severe that D&D simply could not continue in its present 4e form. What I can't understand is the impulse to label WotC as the bad guy and Monte as the embodiment of everything that's wrong with WotC. If 4e were selling well, WotC's usual bureaucratic inertia coupled with their huge investment in 4e would guarantee it a substantially longer production run. The fact that this didn't happen doesn't make WotC "bad" -- it just means WotC is responding to a desperate situation as best it can.
I can understand why some 4e fans feel like the current environment isn't providing much in the way of validation, but it's important not to take these things personally. High-selling products aren't always "good," nor are low-selling products always "bad". The many sound innovations 4e contributed to D&D as a whole don't become unsound simply because the ruleset turned in a subpar performance in the marketplace. At the same time, though, we can't put ourselves in a situation where we feel compelled to insist 4e is selling well -- or at least would be if the dastardly WotC hadn't pulled the plug on it -- in order to self-validate our feelings about 4e. The best thing we can do is accept that 4e wasn't as popular as we'd hoped, recognize that this market judgment in no way invalidates our personal beliefs regarding 4e, and then do what we can to ensure its strongest features are represented in a new edition that will hopefully have something for everyone.
I love anchovies and meant in no way to compare them to 4E.
