AbdulAlhazred
Legend
I think you have to look at the role 2e played. It wasn't attempting to rewrite AD&D from the ground up. Rather, it was compiling a lot of the ideas that had appeared in print in a variety of other sources into the core. If that's the goal, who needs or wants bold changes in design?
A lot of us did. I mean I started playing OD&D in 1975. By the time it got to 1989 and the 2e core books were hitting the shelves we had had a LOT of D&D mileage on us, and the game was starting to really feel dated. While it was hard at that time to totally articulate the ways in which 2e fell short in the kind of way we can talk about agendas and types of players and meta-game constructs it was quite clear on the day 2e came out that it was far behind other systems, and was RAPIDLY eclipsed by what followed it. Ironically 2e talked the language, you could SEE that Jeff Grubb wanted to give us a game where narrative was at the heart of it, he either just lacked the knowledge of the tools to use to do that, or was handcuffed to a design that couldn't accomplish it.
I mean basically, we played 2e for several years, it was fun, but it wasn't until 2008 and I read the 4e PHB1 and DMG1 before I saw the game that did what Jeff Grubb talked about doing all those years earlier. And sure enough, people felt it. 2e wasn't a failure, at least not right away, but it was never as popular as 1e in this own time. You could see it, the release of 2e was sort of the beginning of the end, evolve or die. TSR decided to die. The past had too strong a hold on them and eventually the audience grew bored, went in search of something new.