I'll admit to a bit of being biased against the factionalism among the D&D fanbase, which I find incredibly silly. I generally think people should just go with the flow a little more, try it out and shrug if they don't like it. I mean, Lore Sjorberg's article on "what if D&D players were fans of the Joy of Cooking
http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/commentary/alttext/2008/06/alttext_0618 pretty much comes into my head whenever I read playtest threads for 3e, 4e and 5e.
But I take the criticism to heart and I'll strive to be more neutral if a do a poll like this again.
As for not allowing people to select multiple options, I didn't want the sizeable amount of people who like playing all editions to skew it against 4e (since 4e players are usually the ones that kept playing all versions of D&D rather than stopping at their favourite). So I figured people would select their favourite edition. I should have put a "I love all editions like my children, equally" and "I like another RPG better than D&D" and I'll do that with the next poll.
As for being self-selecting towards people interested in 5e, I'll agree with that. But I think that is also their customer base. If people can't be stirred enough to even show an interest in doing the playtest, then they aren't customers for the next edition no matter what WotC does.
Finally, saying that WotC is doomed in their effort to make a version of D&D that will appeal to the fanbase is possible. But this poll perhaps suggests that gamers won't be so neurotic and petty as Lore Sjorberg says, and that's a good sign of optimism.
