Thank you for agreeing with me, but I am at a loss as to why you think I haven't had wide exposure.
Because you appeared to be claiming that the experience of play in 3e and 4e was consistent across tables.
I apologize, it was not my intention to claim all games were the same, but that the mechanics were more consistent across tables, as the system was designed to be.
That's a lesser and more defensible claim than the one I thought you were making, but again, I assure you that is not the case. Even if we just confined the discussion to RAW tables, I think we'd find major differences in how the game played on the basis of system mastery, aesthetics of play, which material was incorporated into the game officially or in practice, which material was considered hard and fast rules and which mere guidelines, rules interpretation, and whether they had skewed from RAW without considering it a major departure on the assumption 'everyone does it' ("we ignore encumbrance", "we ignore the favored class rules and never apply a penalty for multiclassing", "we don't track ammunition", "we ignore the cross class rules for skills", etc.)
And that's not even to get into things like the fungibility of wealth - "Can you turn all gold found into magic items freely?" - or the theories of scenario design employed by the DM or how heavily they relied on 'Rule Zero'. One of the biggest differences you'll find on the boards concerning 3e DMs is whether they took the approach, "Everything is forbidden except what is explicitly permitted." or "Everything is permissible except what is explicitly forbidden." That has huge implications for how a game plays because it determines what a valid proposition is in the proposition-fortune-resolution cycle. Two tables could be playing COMPLETELY different games just by adopting different stances on that unconsciously, while both think that they are playing RAW. Or speaking of validating proposition, two different tables could be playing COMPLETELY different games depending on whether, "I try to convince the Squire to let us enter the family tomb.", is accepted as a valid proposition by the GM. The D&D rules themselves do not actually tell you how to validate propositions (there are some games that do, but D&D generally isn't one of them). Don't get me started on the divergence you find in groups over valid search propositions. We've had threads going 100's of posts over whether or not, "I search the room", should be taken as a valid proposition in the 3e rules.
And then there is a question of 'no myth' versus 'heavy prep'. Those games in practice won't play remotely the same even nominally using the same rules.
I fully agree with this sentiment. However, I felt 3.5 and 4e to be restrictive for me as a DM. There was always a sense, for me, that I was required to explain situations mechanically.
This is how you are thinking about playing the game, and not how the rules actually tell you to play the game. There were (and are) 3e and 4e DMs who would disagree with that assessment. Indeed, as mechanistic as I find 4e, there are DMs on the boards that played it as a largely freefom Indy style game simply by thinking about the rules in a different way. Meanwhile, I play 3e in many ways very much like a 1e style game by thinking about it differently.
3e era, I'd ask what things he was allowing, and be a little surprised if he had anything too original, rather than just a list of books that were OK or banned. 
