Yeah, I would not say the problem is with the WotC people. I actually have met and talked with a great deal of them personally, and none of them seem to want to shut out the player base, and actually open up a lot of internal design things to us 'fans' to try and make the game better.
I do know that if it was not for WotC, D&D would not be here today. T$R not TSR ran the game into ground, threatening to sue anyone who had a D&D Fansite up claiming it infringed on their intelectual property. Also, because of their desire to totally flood the market and perform Brand Cannibalism* on themselves, they were losing money, and were in a very real danger of going under.
Along came Wizards of the Coast, flush with cash from Magic the Gathering (TM) and the Pokemon (TM) licenses, and they bought the game they loved (Wizards of the Coast is actually the Adventuring name of the Party from when they played D&D as teenagers).
They saved D&D, and became a powerhouse of Gaming licenses, including the license for Star Wars. Around that time they were bought by Hasbro, not for the D&D License, but for the MAGIC revenue.
So, I see what's being done as a way of HASBRO controlling what is being done, not so much what WotC is doing, as they are small part of a Whole.
That said, I will be switching to 4e, but will likely limit myself to CORE** and not get anything else.
*Brand Cannibalism: A term referring to the instance where a company puts out two very similar products targeted towards the same consumer. The company needs to spend twice the internal resources but recoups less than 50% of the revenue as the two products compete against each other. EXAMPLE: TAB cola and COCA Cola are both produced by COKE, were originally both COLAs, and were marketed to the same Consumer. COKE had two divisions COKE and TAB both competing against each other.
** CORE: the basic three rule books: Players Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, Monster Manual.
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