Ignoring the obnoxious, entitled, whiny tone for a moment....
Obnoxious? Intentional.
Entitled? 'Oh you, telling grognards that their constant need to say everyone else's fun is bad and wrong and dumb is annoying... how
entitled.' If it's something else, please, explain. I'm all ears.
Whiny? Nah.
Why does a restriction of options have to mean Tolkien? Or "middle-ages pseudo-Europe" for that matter? I can easily imagine (and have played in) game worlds where it would be jarring for a Tolkien-esque character to show up.
Because the grogs that complain the loudest almost always want the game to return to the racial stereotypes and roles defined by Tolkein and codified into the rules of AD&D.
There's an analogue to cooking here: you don't put every ingredient into the pot; you pick a few complementary ones. But you also need to try different recipes that use different ingredients to avoid getting bored.
Then we absolutely agree in principle.
Nobody's forcing a table to put every ingredient in; they're making the game a malleable, open sandbox where they can define for themselves what kind of world to live in, party to have, and game to play.
To use your own cooking analogy, the game now has a fully-stocked larder, that doesn't bias a certain cuisine like before. And, the books are FULL of optional rules that allow you to make it anything from an old-school harsh logistical challenge (with hard-mode encumbrance, slower healing, fewer long rests), to tactical combat (detailed grid combat, 'speed factor' alternate initiative, flanking) to a swashbuckling cinematic story (with fail-forward mechanics, theater of the mind combat, hand-waving long travel).
Now the races have the same flexibility, players are now taking advantage of that...and some people hate it. Hence this thread.
I'm not telling the grogs how to play their game; I'm giving the ones whiny enough to start threads like this - complaining about how others play - well-deserved feedback.
