I too like the ranger as written. But I'm just a big sucker for such things.
And, at the risk of being insulting, I have no problems fitting them into my campaign as written. All it takes is a bit of imagination.
However, my feeling is that if the Ranger was just named something other than Ranger there wouldn't be a problem in other people's minds either. But what to name them? I really have no clue what name would fit them perfectly.