Actually, my biggest name objection is that "Warlord" is more of a rank than a profession.
It's less a rank than alternatives like the Marshal or SWSE Noble, which connote more legitimate positions of power, as well.
"Novice warlord"? I think not.
A number of classes connote a high level of accomplishment or respect. Bard, Druid, and Wizard, for instance, Paladin, too if you're familiar with it's original meaning. 'Novice' does sound silly, but 'upstart' fits for an inexperienced Warlord. Warlords tend to emerge rather suddenly, too, and have meteoric careers, which fits the typical D&D character story arc better than the decades of seclusion of study suggested by Wizard or Monk.
My second biggest objection is that "warlord" suggests having command over others, which is of course my biggest objection to the class itself (as described/fluffed by most of its proponents).
That was a problem with 'Leader' as the label for the support role, too. I suppose they felt a need to puff it up a little to make up for the long-held negative stereotype of the 'band-aid' cleric as needed only for that role. I think it's just important to be clear what even a warlord who's concept /is/ a commander of some sort will actually be doing for the party, and that it needn't imply party leadership, and would never amount to telling other players what to do or how to play their characters.
"Warlord"...as a base class with that name that includes a list of non-negotiable features...
I feel like the name was negotiable, in the playtest: If there'd been a decent full class Warlord under the name 'Marshal' or something in the 5e PH, it'd've been seen as a compromise, and a largely symbolic one, really, between the 4vengers and h4ters.
There were clear compromises in the PH. Take Feats & 3e-style MCing. They were a similar point of contention, and they were made optional, but put in the PH. That's two sides meeting half way.
More generally, a compromise between, wanting something to be made universally available, and wanting to deprive everyone of that same something forever, may sounds hard, but, really, the half-way meeting point is kinda obvious: you make it an option, open to everyone, but which no one need use if they don't want to.
If the Warlord had gone into an optional-class appendix of the PH, and every been as optional as feats (maybe because it was designed to make heavy use of them or something?), that'd've been a compromise, too. But those are off the table. Over 2 years in and the Warlord's not even in the pipeline, that's not meeting half-way, even if an eventual Warlord is everything the fans want (or, worse, the horrific nightmare-vision you articulated of it), out-years-into-the-run is meeting you more than half way.
Accepting an optional Warlord class in a still-hypothetical mid-edition supplement of some kind, that's Warlord fans meeting you 75% of the way.
I suspect, if by some miracle it happens, few detractors would nerd-rage-quit over it, and most would reluctantly go the 25% or less asked of them.
I think maybe I should add one theory to that list: that it has become the symbol for whether or not WotC was serious about trying to bring together fans of all editions.
That's certainly one of my reasons, and you needn't call it a theory, I've come right out and said it. The Warlord has become
a symbol, that way. Also why I'm supportive of the Mystic (and critical of certain thing's it's not doing), even though through most of my history with D&D I actively disliked psionics.
... But it's also more than merely symbolic (important as symbolism may when healing a rift in a community), there's also the closely related goal of supporting playstyles. 4e opened up fairly seamlessly some styles of campaign (and even just party compositions) that were impractical and/or required extensive house-ruling/DM-intervention to do in the past, and the diversity of classes in each Role, and the Warlord, in particular, was an important part of that. The traditionally vital, long niche-protected, cleric 'healer' role was expanded on as the formal Leader Role, and each Source could fill it adequately, so no one was obliged to play a 'Divine' PC if they didn't want to, for instance. 5e has actually kept several different casters as strong 'support' classes (and just added a psionic sub-class), it's only neglected viable non-magical support options.
...
More personally, I was also just really pleased with the character concepts that you could do, well and fully-contributing to the success of the party, with the Warlord that you could barely even suggest in prior editions, and would like to be able to do similar concepts at least as well in 5e - and hope to see the breadth of viable concepts continue to expand with new/unique stuff, as well. I've also felt that same way about the concepts that were enabled by 3.x fighter & sorcerer, and been vocal about that not just in 5e, but, in the case of the fighter, all through 4e, which never delivered on that score. I'd also, from the other side of the screen, like to see PrCs become available again in 5e, because they were a major 3e innovation that 4e did in an anemic way (Paragon Paths), and they have a lot of potential as a DM tool for world-building and getting player buy-in/PC-connection to the imagined world. I could go on...
