Most of 5e's player base sure has.
In the March 7th, 2019 episode of Dragon Talk, Shelly Mazzanoble & Greg Tito rolled up a random character - a Tortle Warlock - using D&D Beyond's random PC generator tool. It was a great episode that introduced me to how great a designer Kate Welch was (they also talked about Ghosts of Saltmarsh), but I was so annoyed that they had no idea what the Undying was and were treating it as if it was a particular entity that could be a Fiend Patron (like how the Prince of Frost is an Archfey Patron but so is Queen Titania), rather than its own category of Patrons.
They later apologized for not remembering about the subclass from SCAG (I think on Twitter? or in a show notes comment?) but if your own staff can't remember a subclass, no matter how cool the concept is… ugh.
I also know that those early books were codesigned with contracted partner teams that made choices that WotC would not make today (this is part of why Elemental Evil Player's Companion was downgraded from a full expansion book release to a DMs Guild PDF).
That said, it REALLY urks me the wrong way when WotC publish two subclasses for the same class that are essentially identical in narrative function. I don't mind if we have Bladesingers and Eldritch Knights and Arcane Tricksters and Battle Smiths and Hexblades and Blade Bards - these are all different iterations on the Arcane Gish, but live within their own classes that feel thematically distinct from one another otherwise.
But when we have to pick between The Undying and the Undead for Warlocks, it's like… this feels like I'm digging through DMs Guild content that are mutually exclusive. It's like WotC decided that even within their own books, there's tiers of canonical subclasses, and we should all replace the Undying with the Undead and pretend the Undead never existed.
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As for the Bard - love the Ouiji-board flavour. If we're not getting Psionic Mystics, but instead sharing the wealth of those archetypes, I like this one settling here. We already have Spiritualist/Exorcist concepts for other classes: Arcana & Grave Domain Clerics, Divination/Necromancy Wizards, Paladins in general, Celestial Warlocks (we still REALLY need a Primal Spirit Warlock, though), Ancestral Guardian & Totem Warrior Barbarians…
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On a final note, how swift is the turn around for UA to published books? I thought the planar options book was set for November, but it's getting awfully close to be still giving us UA for a book that I thought would be going to the printers by now.
