Of course fighters have always been there to take the brunt of the attack, but they USED to be the ones that also dealt the damage with weapons as well as they took it. I never said that fighters were not considered meat shields until recently.
The newer implementation has them still taking the damage with a decreased ratio of ability to return the favor. THAT is the MMO part, and what makes them more meat shield and less capable offensively.
1e fighters rarely dealt bucketloads of damage compared to, say, a 1e fireball, nor do I believe they need to be the primary damage dealers to be effective. Again, combat is a heavy part of D&D. You have a character who is tough AND a damage engine, and you obsolete several other classes. 4e fighters also have the chance to whack at those who ignore them. They pin people down, which was something they could never do too well in previous editions, despite the fact that their role was often to hold enemies away from the squishier targets. Damage is not the be all end all of a character's effectiveness, but you seem to insist that it is. In many actual fights, its the one who lasts longest that wins. Some do so through sheer durability. Some do so through damage output. In 4e the rogue and ranger are the damage output machines now, but go down easy if they're pinned. Its a fair tradeoff. My 4e fighter, despite his reportedly gimped status, deals out quite a bit of pain. So what if the rogue can deal a bit more? he's made of paper for the love!
True. But, they were also damage dealers. As they got higher level, Fighters started dishing our real damage due to multiple attacks per round in earlier versions.
Although there are stronger higher level attacks for Fighters in 4E, they get nowhere near the damage of a Rogue. Most attacks are similar in power at most levels for the two classes except for Sneak Attack damage which occurs nearly every round for higher level Rogues.
The Rogue can take feats to significantly improve his AC so he can survive. There are no feats that allow a Fighter to concentrate on serious damage like Sneak Attack.
They dealt damage because they were in your face, but in any group I was in it was the casters who really dealt out pain. Save or die, and even save or "might as well die" is effectively removing all your hp at once. Shapechanging druids maul enemies with damage out puts that are insane. Only very select fighter builds in 3e actually come close to this. Even with multiple attacks in 1e, the fighters were not laying down the pain like their wizard friend was. They were primarily keeping enemies away from their nuker, and chopping at those who came to close.
So what I say, if rogues do more damage? Martial ability does not necessarily = damage output. I've seen the fighter in action in 4e and he does his job admirably. In their previous incarnations as skill monkeys, rogues, were often outshined by everyone else except in select situations or the occasional sneak attack situation. The casters could easily outdo them in skills if they wanted, or even fighting if they wanted in cases like the cleric or druid. The rogue needed to be made more useful, so they gave them the damage schtick. You may not like it, and obviously don't, but I find it much more equitable in the larger scheme of things. Also, as indicated in an above post, a fighter can indeed do some pretty good damage with the right focus. Of course, if he could do it better than the rogue or ranger, then you just obsoleted two classes. Previous editions pretty much obsoleted half the classes by mid to high levels. This is not even slightly enjoyable for, what is, a game.