Remathilis
Legend
I think you are overestimating the dislike of either choice.I think you might be missing how much the designers desire for high-scores on their feedback. I don't know if you played the D&DNext playtest, but there were a LOT of things there that didn't make the 5e books that were great ideas that just needed a little work, but got scrapped due to low-score feedback.
From experience, I think they are more likely to go back to the 5e version (in particular in light of all the recent PR snafus) then they are to keep what they've offered in place, unless they can find a way to get the numbers up. Personally, I'd like to see a few better attempts at what they were going for before we backtrack, but I know there's quite a bit of pressure to cave. Time will tell.
Pact Magic and Wild Shape scored low on the previous class surveys. For them to go back, the playtest version would have to score A LOT lower than the previous amounts. We don't know what those numbers are, but I imagine that (for sake of argument) if the originals were at 50% and the new versions are at 60%, they aren't going to revert to the 50% version. They will find some version that eeks itself into the upper 70% and call that a win.
And I don't think the new versions are going to rank lower than the old. Vocal minorities on messageboards aside, most of the complaint on new WS was that the generic forms were bad, not that the concept of generic forms was bad. I've seen a pretty split reaction to warlock magic. Escaping the Enworld bubble, I don't think there are enough people who are going to defend the 2014 version of either enough to force them to retreat. If Enworld was at all representative of the larger D&D community, we'd be seeing spellless rangers, half-caster bards and all manner of upgrades to the fighter. We aren't.
And these books will be out in 2024. The OGL, the Pinkertons, all that stuff that seems like WotC should be apologizing for will be forgotten except by the most fervent haters. They are not going to say "We're sorry community. Here is the 2014 PHB with new art and a better index for your trouble." Not happening.