The argument that 4e has an unfair player bias is rather weak.
4e is clearly designed so that, in combat, the PCs will start out threatened (monsters of a given level have more hit points, and more powerful basic attacks) but will rebound by drawing on their superior depth of resources (healing surges, action points, non-basic attacks etc). In that sense, then, there is a "player bias". I don't know what it would even mean, though, to describe that bias as "unfair". Unfair to whom? The GM? The imaginary NPCs? The game is what it is. I like it, because the "player bias" means that combats play out in a fashion that is both tactically and thematically engaging. (The dynamics are, for example, the very opposite of buff-teleport-ambush play.) Others don't, whether because it offends their simulationist sensibilities or because they want combat for their PCs to be a crapshoot.
When we begin a campaign it is essentially anything could happen. You are not guaranteed to make it level 30, 20 or whatever. I have noticed that 4th edition is more about the player's winning than anything else and we don't really care for that.
Someone has already mentioned death but there is also, player wish lists
I think that the 4e rules and guidelines, as written, do tend to assume that the PCs will progress through the levels. What I think we should infer from this is that levelling is not, in itself, the main reward from 4e play. The reward is to be found somewhere else. It can be found in clever tactical play - in which case, level growth is a way of changing the tactical mix and gradually increasing its complexity - or (in my preferred approach to the game) in the thematic content of the unfolding story, to which the level growth provides a backdrop.
Likewise with respect to wishlists. At least pre-Essentials, 4e seems to approach magic items as just another aspect of PC build. So, again, finding the items on one's wishlist isn't a reward. It's just part of the ongoing game of building one's PC. The real reward has to come from
playing that PC.
Because of these features of 4e - that steady level growth is the backdrop for the game, and that magic items are an assumed part of PC building - I think it is inevitable that PCs will become superior to typical world inhabitants fairly quickly. Of course, the same thing is true of AD&D as well - levels will be gained by the PCs, fairly quickly at least until about level 5, and magic items found.
4th edition D&D does cater to the player's a bit more than other editions.
I'm not sure what to make of this. Presumably all RPGs cater to their players, in the sense of being fun games to play - otherwise why would people play them?
Here is a quote from Man, Myth and Magic Book III (an RPG published in 1982):
Making the transition from Lore Master [= GM] to great Lore Master involves getting your head together about a Lore Master's function in Man, Myth and Magic.
His function, his basic prime function, is that of a good host: to make sure that his guests/players have the best time possible.
That's it and no more: the very best time possible. Not to win, not to compete, not to slaughter, but to make sure your playrs have the very best time possible.
The rest of this book is about how you can make sure your players have the very best time possible.
(And know what? That means you're going to have the best time possible yourself.)
As to more detailed advice, in my view the book is a bit mixed. It has some useful suggestions on how to reintegrate a player who's PC dies back into the game in fairly quick order. But it also assumes that one thing that will help your players have the best time possible is really detailed descriptions - in my experience, at least, this is not always true.
But the basic sentiments that I've quoted strike me as pretty uncontroversial, and wouldn't strike me as being at all out of place if I came across them in a 4e book.
