Thomas Shey
Legend
It's telling there that you used the word "heroes" where bolded, rather than "characters"; as if it's a baseline assumption that the PCs are always going to be heroes.
Yes. I'm remarkably uninterested in running a villains game, especially of the degree that doing an authentic version of this requires. If that's what someone wants, they can do it somewhere else. Shades-of-grey protagonists? Sure. Blackhearted scoundrels? Absolutely uninterested.
WotC (and before them, later-era TSR) market the game as "people playing heroes" because they have to, in order to avoid backlash from the ignorant public (cf Satanic panic, 1980s). That doesn't mean we who play the game have to pay any attention whatsoever to that marketing.
I wouldn't have cared how they marketed it. I have no interest in engaging, either as a GM or a player with genuine hardcore bad guys. Not in the least.