I've been thinking a lot in the last couple of weeks that many of the objections raised to 4e can be similarly raised for various previous editions of the game. I don't know if familiarity has blinded some people, or if they've forgotten the rules they ignore in 3.x exist, or what, but I do find it all heartily amusing.
4E carries to an extreme a number of trends in the development of D&D that can be seen happening even in the transition from OD&D's little brown books to AD&D. (I've cribbed this analysis from folks that can see them happening even in the OD&D supplements, which is beyond my own powers).
- Increased power levels of characters. In OD&D you went into the dungeon with as many henchmen as you could, because any given figure on the battlefield could be taken out pretty easily, and even a hireling could contribute the same d6 for damage as the Fighting Man you'd carefully leveled up. Power creep happens within the history of any given edition, as well as steadily ramping up between iterations of the rules.
- Increased mechanical options for characters. AD&D gives you more spells and classes to choose from, mechanically differentiates different weapons to create options, provides rules for two-weapon fighting, etc. My personal opinion is that this, more than simply power levels, is what Gygax meant when he sniffed at 3E as a game of superheroes. The old Rogue's Gallery makes it clear that Gygax's campaign had plenty of statistically-unlikely 18/00 bad-asses; with Erol Otus drawing them, many even wore capes and could find Captain America's shield in a treasure hoard! But these uber-PCs were still built from the essence of "race, class, and level," not the micro-managed selection of abilities and gadgets that has been the hallmark of superhero RPGs. That approach starts making inroads into D&D beginning with later 2nd edition kits, and has taken over 4E to the extent that it's no longer possible to make "just a fighter"; the selection of powers is now as mandatory as it was in Villains & Vigilantes, without even a random table to make it easy for folks who just want to start playing right away.
- Increased mechanics in general. AD&D provides rules for about a zillion more things than OD&D. The emphasis on which things need rules has changed over time (weapon speed factors -> concealment), but the general trend is always towards pinning down all the elements that are considered core to the D&D mission. This goes hand in hand with...
- Decreased role of DM adjucation. OD&D very explicitly suggests that the DM is going to need to be the arbiter of everything interesting you can do with the game. With AD&D, Gygax started talking about standardization - a "Hoyle's rules" that could be played in tournaments by any DM and still be comparable. 3E pushes this further with things like CR, making explicit mechanics out of the guidelines that were present in other iterations (like the RC). Gygax's vision of cross-DM-compatible campaigns is taken to the max in 3E RPGA, which creates weird demands & expectations among a player base that has an inordinately close feedback relationship with WotC. 4E is the result - almost everything interesting you can do requires no arbitration at all, or even consulting a rulebook, since all the mechanics you need are printed on the PC's or monster's paragraphs-long power cards. With the limited exception of rituals and skill challenges, the DM has no input into 4E at the mechanical level, quite unlike OD&D where the DM's judgement is the single most important game mechanic.
- Increasing self-referentiality. The OD&D rules are clearly designed to emulate a kitchen-sink worth of literary precedents, from Middle Earth to Barsoom. In the AD&D days, the reverse becomes true as RPG settings like Dragonlance spin off novel series that become best-sellers in part because playing D&D, rather than reading SF (everything you could get your hands on) and sword & sorcery (harder to find and much of which is still SF at heart), has become the initial experience of heroic fantasy for millions of people. In 4E, the tail entirely wags the dog to the point where changes in the design of roleplaying game rules can force sweeping changes in the substantial novel lines built around them (which is puzzling since the novels probably generate orders of magnitude more revenue).