see, your problem sprig, is that you think that terms like 'being screwed' describe how we feel.
I'm just mad that they don't want to take care of me anymore. Instead, they want me to spend another $100 for a new edition. Before you bring up the tired "you don't have to buy 4.0" again, no, i don't, but YES they DO want me to buy it. No reward for being a faithful devotee of the system.
And no, they're not obligated, and they want to make money. I just don't want to give it to them anymore. It's goign to be *very* hard to get excited about a system, no matter how cool they make stuff, if 5.0 is going to come out in 2013. And that's the precedent they're setting.
I liked it when TSR was the monster in the dungeon, but that monster was still something you could slay. TSR was like AD&D dragons. Few, if any, things were tougher, but a big bad dragon still only had 16 HD. Now that Wizards of the Coast owns D&D, and Hasbro owns Wizards, they're becoming this over-powered, hyper-massive gargantuan beast that you have to have epic levels to slay. Well, sorry, I don't have the epic levels. I'm married, have 4 kids, and Wizards won't send me review products anymore. I guess this means we're breaking up. (to mix metaphors)