Hi. I'm Nemesis Destiny. Some of you may remember me from such threads as Pemertonian Scene Framing and its continuation, as well as Nemesis Destiny's Houserules Thread. I have also participated in my share of 4dvocating for my edition of choice when I see it baselessly attacked as being unworthy of the D&D name, which is sadly oftener than it should be.
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Unfortunately, the 4e-bashing started almost right away, and from the designers to boot! Elation turned to disappointment, and my hopes crashed as interview after interview, Mike Mearls and his staff continued throwing 4e and its design assumptions under the bus, in order to curry favour with lapsed players. On the one hand, I understood why they were doing it, but I resented it all the same. I had never failed to have sympathy for the folks that felt betrayed by WotC in the leadup to 4e, but I couldn't understand their anger. I still don't. Resentment and disappointment, sure, but not the anger.
What I'm getting out of your that paragraph is: "4th edition is obviously superior, so anything relating to editions prior to 4th edition must be "Sucking up" to some group of people". It strongly indicates to me that you do not accept that for a very substantial number of people 4th edition is not better than the pre-existing systems.
The anger is very easy to understand. For 35 years D&D played a certain way, because WOTC wanted to force people to increase their average expenses and kill the OGL, they abandoned 35 years of precedent. Then the "4vengers" made matters exponentially worse by relentlessly insulting anyone who dared criticize 4th edition for years, basically making it personal. Generally, abandoning a 35 year invested customer base and letting a small group of individuals taunt and belittle them for 4 years is going to generate some pretty strong feelings.