One thing that I've noticed since 4e has come out, is that it really has expanded the horizons of gamers. There are a lot more people interested in other systems besides 3.5 and 4e, where as before 4e's release d20 had pretty much conquered the market.
This is especially a good thing for the industry, as WotC broke their own semi-monopoly on role-playing - and still making a profit off of 4e. 4e is a system that lets some fresh meat into the hobby - and some of these people who start in 4e will branch out into other RPGs.
That, and Pathfinder wouldn't be what it is without 4e.
Well, I think one of the reasons that people have started branching out to other systems too, is that the shift from 3.x to 4e brought to the forefront to the "average gamer" that an RPG is a
construct. The rules are created by somebody, designed around certain mathematical formulas, with particular assumptions about how in-game resolutions should be handled. I know for me I never thought twice about the inherent math of D&D, from OD&D, to 2e, or 3e, because I was too busy wanting to play the games and develop content.
However, the "Edition Wars," if nothing else, showed us as gamers that there ARE assumptions about what goes into making and playing an RPG, and that the assumptions of the creators are not always the assumptions of the players. Thus, if a rule change doesn't seem to "work" for a particular play style, and you're now aware that there are other rule sets designed for other play styles, we'll all be more apt to check those systems out.
The thing D&D has going for it--and always has--is that Gygax based it on tropes and schemes that most of us are already familiar with--Tolkien, Greek mythology, Merlin/King Arthur legends, etc., and the rules he constructed were mostly designed to "fit" that general scheme. One of the reasons I have yet to try Exalted, or Legend of the Five Rings, or Shadowrun, is that I'm not as familiar with the tropes of those settings, and so I feel a bit like a fish out of water.
