From what I have seen, they appear to have actually put significant thought into establishing consistent, balanced, and interesting design principles for the game to be based on. I am withholding final judgment until I can read the new Player's Handbook in its entirety, but I am optimistic about it. I very much doubt it will be terrible enough to overcome the bandwagon effect of official endorsement so I will probably end up playing it regardless, but I'm expecting it to turn out quite a bit better than that with a good chance of actually being a better game than 3.5.
It seems to be down at the moment, but enworld has a collection of virtually every bit of official information WotC has made available about 4e, all put on one page
here.
Re: OT-D&D 4th edition game group?
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