"The game will remain the same" is from the French guy/Afro wig video teaser for 4e. I didn't pay much attention to previews etc. before the release, so I don't know where else they may have said this.
Here's another item for consideration:
They had at least two stated major goals for what they wanted 4e to do. A) Modify the character classes so that everyone always has something significant to do in combat. B) Get rid of Vancian spellcasting. This becomes a 'broken promise' in the sense that their solution to A borked their solution to B. They apparently felt that the best way to make all the classes 'more interesting' was to port the existing 3e spellcasting system over to non-casters. This is fine in itself, but for whatever reason they also felt obligated to keep the notion of per-day limits on powers. So even though it's impossible for an individual character to completely blow her wad, you still have the fundamental issue of the party 'going nova' and using all/most of their dailies in their first fight of the day, then being left with the choice of sleeping to refresh dailies or continuing on at reduced potency. They didn't fix Vancian magic in the most obvious way (by getting rid of daily power limits entirely), so someone who had a problem with the 3e 15-minute workday is still going to have a problem with 4e (and I'm pretty sure I've seen this complaint made elsewhere).
