The friend I ran the playtest for has written it up and I tend to agree with his conclusion:

QuoteIt's obviously early days, but based on my experience with the starter kit, D&D Next seems to consist of 2nd Edition gameplay assumptions mixed with 4th edition mechanical rigour.

I didn't care much for the way 4E deployed its mechanical rigour, but now that I think about it that's almost entirely because that rigour was deployed in support of gameplay assumptions which a) I don't really associate with D&D and b) I wouldn't be enormously interested in if it weren't D&D. In addition, precisely because of those gameplay assumptions almost all of 4E's rigour was applied to combat, with non-combat stuff being a botch-riddled afterthought. (See the skill challenge fiasco, for instance.)

Applying the same rigour to gameplay assumptions I'm happier to buy into - including the assumption that errata should be a rare and infrequent thing and only apply to stuff which is genuinely causing a problem rather than being a "some people like it, some people hate it" sort of deal - is much more likely to result in a game I dig, and that seems to have happened here.