Lanefan
Victoria Rules
Firelance, wonderful rewording, even though I don't entirely agree with it. Well done! 
Dungeondelver, you've about got it right with the "now now now" idea.
One other big difference is in how the party is "supposed" to be built. Older editions didn't seem to care if you had 4 or 14 characters in the party, or if each player played 1, 2, or 5 PC's at a time; there seemed to be more of a drop-the-puck and go to it mentality and the DM could figure out the rest. Now, the game is designed around a group of 4 players running a party of 4 characters, preferably one of each main class (Fi,Wi,Cl,Ro), having 4 or 5 encounters a day before resting...feels much more like prepackaged engineered fun.
Lanefan

Dungeondelver, you've about got it right with the "now now now" idea.
One other big difference is in how the party is "supposed" to be built. Older editions didn't seem to care if you had 4 or 14 characters in the party, or if each player played 1, 2, or 5 PC's at a time; there seemed to be more of a drop-the-puck and go to it mentality and the DM could figure out the rest. Now, the game is designed around a group of 4 players running a party of 4 characters, preferably one of each main class (Fi,Wi,Cl,Ro), having 4 or 5 encounters a day before resting...feels much more like prepackaged engineered fun.
Lanefan