Hussar
Legend
/snip
Shortly after, a cacophony of players were aghast that he only had a +1 weapon at 7th level, because that's in CLEAR violation of the expected power level, and he should have a long talk with that mean old DM.
But no, there's no such thing as player entitlement.
In any edition of D&D, if someone told you that his 7th level character only had a +1 weapon, would you be at all surprised? I mean, by 7th level in AD&D, at least in modules, it wasn't unusual to find +2 and even +3 weapons. An 8 HD monster in AD&D was considered equivalent of +2 weapons.
So, yeah, it's not unreasonable to think that a 7th level character would likely have something better than a plain +1 weapon.
But, yeah, player entitlement is something totally new...
I'd also point out that the idea of rebuilding your character was absent from old school gaming because there were no mechanics for doing so in D&D until about 2006 with the PHB 2. Partially it was a lack of mechanics, and mostly, IMO, it was because your character after 1st level had pretty much zero options for players. You got whatever you got at level up and that was it.