I know that venting on boards tends to be full of hyperbole but I can honestly say that NONE of the guys I game with (about a dozen people) or that my brother games with (another dozen or so people) buy WotC products anymore. Sure, that's nothing in the grand scheme of things... but I'd imagine that we're not alone in our collective move away from WotC.
You make some good points, but I disagree.
Their handling of 3.5's release soon after 3rd edition's release,
To be fair, I felt that 3.5 was needed at the time it was released. I am not a game designer. I don't get any enjoyment from fiddling with the game system, and if something isn't fun and I need a house rule to fix that's a problem. 3.5 re-wrote the combat chapter so that I could understand it while I was reading it for the first time. The core books included more feats, essential for a feat based system. They included core rules like level adjustment, effective character level, and epic campaigns. Those rules had become part of the game and there continued exclusion from the core books would have been a poor idea.
their killing Paizo's good run with both Dungeon and Dragon magazines,
I submit that WotC's real problem was spinning off their magazine division into Paizo in the first place. There was a real value in keeping the magazines in-house and WotC forgot that. In my opinion, they were correcting a mistake.
their release of 4th edition soon after the release of 3.5
You call five years too soon? This is fairly normal. AEG released two Spycraft editions just three years apart (2002-2005). Mutants and Masterminds released two editions on exactly the same time frame. True20 Started off in Blue Rose in 2005, with a just a rules distillation PDF later in the year. In 2006 they released an expanded hardcover. In 2008 they release a revised softcover and combined two books. New editions every few years are hardly a bad thing. They keep people interested in the brand and show customers that the company cares about making the game more fun.
(and the dishonesty that surrounded the timing of that release),
I think this is false. IIRC a WotC rep was misquoted at the D&D experience just prior to the announcement of 4e at that year's GenCon.
their bungling of the GSL and seeming lack of respect for 3rd party publishers
For what it's worth, I saw 4e products long before the revision, so it's not like it was preclusive. I've bought 4e 3rd party products so, I have trouble believing this is as bad as it's made out to be. It is WotC's product, and they have have a right to see it treated they way they want. The GSL is still more liberal than negotiating a separate contract with every publisher.
and, now, their withdrawal of pdf products from the marketplace (much to the detriment of companues like RPGNow and Paizo) has made them a company that I CANNOT support
.
This is not the same company that once saved D&D when TSR fell into ruin, and this is not a company that shows regard for its customers or partners in the RPG market.
I think that it's a company that learned several lessons from 3e, 3.5, OGL, and d20. Lessons that, I think, are unpopular here.