I really don't understand the claims that 4e leaves roleplaying behind in favor of all combat. I suspect this is mostly a claim made by folks who are upset about the direction 4e took, and are looking to believe/manufacture an excuse to dislike 4e beyond "4e isn't my style of game, but apparently other people like it."
My experience with 4e (having played in 10 six hour sessions, and DMed 12 eight hour sessions) is that if anything, the roleplaying is MORE rewarding and emphasized than in previous versions of D&D. Now hear me out.
Yes, I've heard the screaming and ranting of taking out the profession and craft skills, but thats not what I'm taking about. What I have found in practice is that because tactics and teamwork are the focus of 4e rather than rules mastery, that the players tend to work better together as a team and come up with ideas as a group. In practice, this pulls people more into their roles as their characters and thinking as their characters, rather than distancing themselves from their roles and seeing their characters as simply numerical representations to milk every possible bonus out of their stats for optimal success. Its a subtle distinction to be sure, but its something I've noticed becoming more and more pronounced the more I've played and run 4e. And yes, I added back in profession and craft skills- I let every character take two trained skills not on the list in the PHB at character creation, but they are free to come up with some suitably narrow skill, such as cartography, carpentry, armorsmith, jeweler, etc.
I grew up playing 1e AD&D, and to me and almost everyone I've gamed with who has tried it, 4e feels a lot like 1e in play. 4e is more freeform and unrestricted feeling to me- if I want to make up an adventure or monster, I don't have to worry about building the effect or beastie from scratch using convoluted and overly complicated rules. I just make something fun and run with it- and I'm encouraged to do it that way! Because 4e's mechanics are more transparent and character builds and number crunching are less important than in the last edition, people have flat out told me that 4e helps them to put themselves in their character's place more easily. Plus with the excellent advice in the PHB and especially DMG for roleplaying and running a game for new players, I've seen 4 people who have never roleplayed before "get it" right off the bat after a quick perusal of the PHB, compared with 0 people who "got it" from the 3e books. Thats not an edition war statement, just that the designers in 4e were aware that making the game rewarding for existing players as well as being easy to comprehend for new players was important, and they succeeded in that goal admirably.
Now, as for where D&D will go from here, I'd imagine we'll probably see a continuation of 4e's design philosophy. Games that are easy to prep and run, better game balance between classes, and games that provide options to players that don't require extensive study of the rules for mastery. I also think D&D will probably become more gamist in nature, which I have mixed feelings about. On one hand, I'm a fan of simulationist games, and I loved 1e for all its weird little quirks and details. On the other hand, I am also really enjoying 4e for being the best designed and most logical D&D that has ever been in existence, and it runs like a dream. Yep, I miss random encounter tables, random treasure tables, and some of the monster fluff and weird options they had in previous editions, but then you gotta also realize, NOTHING is preventing you from reinstating those aspects or giving those abilities back to the monsters in whatever way you see fit (powers, rituals, innate abilities, etc). 4e is simple enough to design for that you can have the best of both worlds with hardly any difficulties.
And hey, if 4e isn't to your tastes, you've got literally tons of material to use for any verison of D&D do you enjoy, so everybody wins!