Meant to be??? lol. You understand that the 'Great Wheel' cosmology of pre-4e D&D was simply a random hodgepodge of ideas that were grafted together to suite the immediate needs of different authors and DMs over a period of decades. There was no 'meant' about it, it wasn't designed at all. EGG created a first sort of early prototype of it in The Dragon somewhere back a bit before AD&D 1e PHB was released (so maybe 1977). It was simply a sketch that went along with the new 'good/evil' alignment axis that also showed up in 1e (though again it had some precedent in magazine articles IIRC). There was no deep concept behind it.
In fact the Great Wheel suffers from a whole slew of serious problems. First of all it doesn't even faintly resemble any sort of cosmology from myth or religion. This makes it pretty awkward to integrate real world mythology into the game. Secondly it is a huge kitchen sink. Thirdly it lacks many interesting features, for instance where is the land of fairy? The land of the dead? What is the purpose of a division into inner and outer planes and why do their need to be 2 redundant 'glue' planes (ethereal and astral)?
Much of the pre-4e canon makes no real sense either. For instance if all the elementals have their own elemental plane then why would the fire and water elementals fight eachother? Do water elementals really want to live on the plane of fire??? The whole idea of what is going on in the inner planes just makes no sense at all.
The 4e cosmology OTOH makes tons of sense. There's a land of faerie, a land of the dead, no arbitrary divisions of planes or limits on how many outer planes can exist (now they are just domains, you can create whatever you want and they can be located wherever the story needs them). The elemental chaos makes more sense than the old inner planes and fits much more closely with traditional ideas of cosmogony. Honestly, you can tell any story you could tell using the Great Wheel and tell it using the World Axis and make it more sensible and easier to work out. The new cosmology is just outright better.
So, no I disagree that people hate 4e because somehow canon isn't 'what it is supposed to be'. 4e canon was created from the ground up to foster a good solid and easy to use cosmology that works well with almost any campaign and can do ALL of what the old one could, but better. What I would hate? Lack of progress.
