Great, so why have any specific species in the Player Handbook if you can just do that? I don't need an elf or dwarf species as a mechanical concept, I can just write "elf" on the sheet after all.
Come on, do you even see what you the objection is at all? Handwaving a loosey-goosey "you can...
Exactly, people aren't annoyed that a specific mechanical representation of half-elves and half-orcs were removed, they're annoyed that it was removed as a character concept entirely. "Just play an orc like any other orc"
Well if they actually planned these things they could go like Paizo. When Paizo stop using a D&D-ism they already have another term ready to go. But WoTC are by nature reactionary, not really forward-thinking. Half the time they don't even understand why they stop using a term beyond "the...
So weird, since posters here were saying half-orcs and half-elves still existed in FR, it was just that they would now be mechanically represented with the full-blooded ancestor's stats, but now it's all gone Damnatio memoriae.
They didn't leave twice. They stopped listening to prayers once (but were still there) and the second time Krynn was the thing that was removed. The gods stayed where they were.
I never understood the "Dark Sun is future Dragonlance" angle. There's literally no common touch points at all, the maps share nothing in common. Dark Sun has halflings as a big part of its setting, whereas Dragonlance bans them.
The only commonality seems to be no orcs.
The biggest issue I see is that all 2E settings share a single unifying aspect: they broke the rules of 2E to deliver a truly different experience. 5E designers don't want to do that, cf Crawford's maxim of "D&D is D&D".
ASI should have been removed entirely. "Here's a few extra points...because."
You have stat buy points. Just raise them if you think its not high enough. The way it is done now is silly.