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I've got the MM 2014 and MM 2025 Azer sections side by side to compare layout and lore. It's frankly a bit shocking to see the difference in the amount of words spent on lore, and I'm concerned that three sentences aren't enough to give new DMs an idea of what to do with azers or how to fit them...

I will say that the unique features make me more likely to use an Arcanaloth. The 2014 version just feels like an unusual-looking wizard to me.

It looks like it's been redesigned to focus on eliminating single targets via its banishment and high damage.

Actually, Avernus is also the only one with Mishaps, too, which does a lot to make vehicle combat more interesting.

There's also a Mishap Threshold! Take more damage than the Mishap Threshold and something randomly goes wrong with the vehicle. I've applied it to ships already.

I'm happy to hear that the Eberron book is drawing inspiration from Descent into Avernus' Infernal War Machines for airships (something I'd already been doing for my Spelljammer campaign). It's also nice to hear Crawford speak positively about Fourth Edition.

The 2014 version was able to summon an air elemental, so I guess they decided to just make the aarakocra the air elementals themselves and cut out the middle man.

Me personally, I'm struggling to think of anything in the revised books that I don't like. All three books seem to have been improved in terms of mechanics, presentation, art direction, layout, etc. The reduction in lore in the new Monster Manual is a bit of a bummer, but that's about it for me...

I'm not wanting 5E to suddenly introduce dozens of new classes, but it has been quite a while since the artificer was released so something new would be appreciated. Maybe an official gunslinger class now that firearms are in the PHB, or a psion, or even something completely out of left field?

I wish there were more weirdo elementals like the Xorn, but what we're getting here looks neat! I'm curious to see the Elemental Cataclysm's statblock to see if it could serve as a good stand-in for the 4E primordials.

The explanation I've seen is that supposedly more content was being released in the pre-5E days than there was actual demand for, which seems wild to me.

"4E was partially meant to appeal to video gamers" is a fair statement by me. Just don't start calling it "tabletop World of Warcraft" and I'm mostly good.

I think it's early to be doomsaying when the new revision's third and final book just came out yesterday at certain retailers. I also think it's not a good look for a designer on the 2014 rules to be suggesting that the people who made the 2024 revision should shut up about it and sweep it under...

4E did roll them into the demon family, which IMO they might as well be.

I don't find it terribly surprising that the 2024 revisions haven't caused a lot of increase in interest. After all, they are pretty much reorganized, prettier, and slightly tweaked versions of decade old books. I appreciate them and think nearly all of the mechanical changes are for the better...

I just looked it up and the Mario movie was the second highest grossing movie of 2023 after Barbie. The Mario movie came out the week after D&D: HAT, and a lot of people go to the movies infrequently so that definitely had an impact.

Well, just recently Disney had their newest live action Lion King movie soundly trounced by a Sonic the Hedgehog movie for over a month, so a Mario movie stealing all the attention from a D&D movie isn't surprising to me at all. From Deadline:

It could be something along the lines of how some spells like True Strike and Booming Blade use a weapon as part of the spell. Maybe a lot of creatures just have signature spells along those lines? Of course it wouldn't apply to PC aarakocra, so IDK, but I just prefer monsters using special...

I know there was a good number of Spelljammer products made for DMsGuild when I looked on there for my own campaign. Not certain about Planescape.

As for how well or not the new books are selling, I do know that the local used book store went from having a couple 2014 PHBs at any one time to a couple dozen since the 2024 PHB came out.