At the risk of derailing the thread a bit and sounding like an old fart...
I don't think that lowering standards of quality are limited to tabletop RPG products. Most facets of American culture are losing overall quality and a critical polish, even our basic discourse and communication. I personally believe that much of this has to do with technology.
When I was a teenager and cellphones were just becoming available (in the mid-1990's), people used to be good with directions and keeping appointments. For my 2E games circa 1995 or so, you could tell everyone a location, give them directions, and have them all show up within ten minutes of each other a week later. These days... People expect an email or meetup update for games, and furthermore, many people feel that it's totally acceptable to bail out on any form of social obligation (whether gaming, drinks, or even formal functions) on the basis that they have cellular phones and can call you to cancel right at the time that they are supposed to be there. Work or family emergencies are one thing... But it seems to me that people generally feel less obligated to keep appointments than they used to because it's easier to communicate.
I've also noticed that many people don't bother to improve grammar and vocabulary because word processing programs have spell-checking software. The continuing phenomena of misusing apostrophes and homonyms (such as their, there, and they're) demonstrates basic ignorance to me. Not all of it can be lain at the feet of technology... But I think it certainly enables it.
Perhaps I'm a little sensitive to it because it's particularly frustrating in my line of work. As a script supervisor, I cringe every time I see scripts laden with basic spelling errors. I'm not talking about technical details unique to screenwriting, I'm talking about things such as a character that "glands" at his watch, "stairs" at a bloody murder scene, or "pores hot saws on his chicken." Technology is only as good as the person using it, unfortunately.
The advent of cheap digital video has also made people less critical of getting takes. When you're shooting on film (which costs literally thousands of dollars per unit more than high-quality digital video), people rehearse everything two or three times, then shoot it. You get two good takes from perhaps five or six and move on. Because excellent digital video is now so cheap, it's common to not rehearse and shoot everything--you still get two good takes, but that might be out of fifteen to twenty takes. To me, shooting that many takes that are not going to be used is a waste of time (not to mention the editors, who will have even more options to pore over, increasing the time required to edit the picture).
Sorry for the bit of derailing... My major point is that I've seen technology empower people to be wasteful and lax in many areas of life, not just tabletop gaming.