I'll start by saying that I didn't mind when I heard the Great Wheel would be no more in 4e. I often consider Planescape to be a different setting altogether. To me the Great Wheel and the Planescape view on the Great Wheel are not necessarily the same thing. Planescape is my favorite rpg setting. I didn't care that much for the 3e version of the Great Wheel.
So I was actually excited about the new 4e cosmology and the info tidbits I kept reading about it. It felt like a fresh change of pace. I was particularly excited about the lack of focus on alignment and how it seemed like that would be no more than an optional rule. Even though many Planescape fans considered that a bad thing, I was curious to see how that would affect the planes.
I was actually disappointed to see that in the end it didn't. They say alignment no longer plays such a key role on the planes as it used to, but I disagree. The whole deities versus primordials theme just seems to boil down to the same old law versus chaos cliche. I tried really hard to get into it and find elements of differentiation, but to no avail. And what's worse, the way the motives of the deities and primordials are laid out, it becomes very difficult to even view it as morally ambiguous. It's between keeping the universe and all its races alive or destroying all life to favor a soup of raw chaos. Not many choices there.
I don't mind that the blood war is gone at all. I do mind that nothing was offered to take its place. And I don't mean another fiend war, but any sort of political element to the planes. As it is, I see very little of interest in the new cosmology, with the possible exception of the new take on elves and the feywild. I don't expect the release of the MotP will radically change my opinion either.
Anyone else had similar opinions? Disagreements?
I'm a sort of DIY guy when it comes to Planescape. When I was a kid and Planescape was new, I devoured it, memorized a good deal, and then never got to play because my group was pretty standard fantasy D&D. Occasionally I could bring in a PC with a PS background, but that was all it was, background. So when 3e came out in its' various iterations, I was a little disappointed that the Planes had been changed, and I never got a chance to play in the old setting, so I ignored it. I found ways of fitting in old Spelljammer, and Planescape, and others of my favorite 2e material, with 3e rules. Now that 4e is out, and they've basically exploded the Planes, I plan on continuing to ignore most of the 4e cosmology and using 2e again. Throw the wonderful 2e fluff, on 4e rules, edit and change some creatures to fit, and work on doing the planar races in 4e rules. Right now I'm working on the Barriur's for 4e, and trying to decide to do 2e or 3e specs. Basically, do I differentiate male and female bonuses, or just give all barriurs an across the board stat boost and racial features.
I guess what I'm saying is GM's caveat. Use what you liked, discard everything else. I'm tempted to do a game where the nature of belief has changed to planes drastically, but that many planar denizens are unaware, or a great deal of time has passed since the old cosmology and the new. Letting the PCs investigate the loss of a fiendish race (the 'loths) and the shattering of the Great Wheel. You could even start a new Blood War, or your own political situations. Consider it a clean slate, and enjoy.
Is this where I'm supposed to write something clever?