Does anyone else have dwindling hope for the future of D&D and WoTC in general? I want to believe.

Quote from Perringaiden >>

Quote from Frachese >>

And the Forgotten Realms book did contain some information on the setting, though it wasn't very comprehensive.

 The modern Adventures in Faerun book was basically a lore gazeteer.  Not as detailed as 3.0's but far better than "The only place is the Sword Coast".  

I've been re-reading the 2e and 4e FR campaign setting books, and the Adventures in Faerun is in many respects better.  The 2e one might have more content, but it's disorganized, hard to read, and really not good content.  Teenage me didn't know better, but it's like going back and watching Voltron as an adult. 

Overall, I think it was a pretty good book. Some places it could have been improved - I think the Circle Spells could have used more time in the oven and the monsters still had the lackluster design of the Perkins and Crawford era.  Most reviews of the lore, including my own, are in line with your analysis.  In particular, the fact they made room for other regions was a huge selling point to most everyone I know.

Frankly, I think I have only seen one person really trashing the new book for their lore.  But this was the kind of person who has a history of spreading misinformation and saying the quiet part out loud, so their “they changed so much lore” complaints really felt like a dog whistle for “how dare they ask Arabic folks to rework Calimshan, which previously had been written by an all-white team based on their stereotypes.”

I also think it is worth noting that, love or hate FR, it is not actually a useful product to judge the game moving forward.  It released at a weird time for Wizards - Crawford and Perkins had just left (as they said they would years before they actually did) and the new leadership team was not yet decided.  They also had not really hired many of the truly amazing game developers they have brought on recently.  So, it was a book that still had the flaws of Perkins and Crawford (most notably terrible monster design - something that, based on some of the new hires and their backgrounds, I am optimistic will start changing) and likely suffered a bit from the transition and lack of leadership (I expect this is why the big new feature, circle spells, felt poorly balanced). 

Ravenloft is the first real book I expect we will see with the firm hand of the new leadership and new designers - and considering their strong horror background, I think it will be a great test to see how well they do at making new unique settings (it has a bunch of new domains of dread in it) and powerful, dynamic monsters (new high level threats promised in the book, and horror is historically good for monster design).

Quote from Caerwyn_Glyndwr >>

I also think it is worth noting that, love or hate FR, it is not actually a useful product to judge the game moving forward.  It released at a weird time for Wizards - Crawford and Perkins had just left (as they said they would years before they actually did) and the new leadership team was not yet decided.  They also had not really hired many of the truly amazing game developers they have brought on recently.  So, it was a book that still had the flaws of Perkins and Crawford (most notably terrible monster design - something that, based on some of the new hires and their backgrounds, I am optimistic will start changing) and likely suffered a bit from the transition and lack of leadership (I expect this is why the big new feature, circle spells, felt poorly balanced). 

Ravenloft is the first real book I expect we will see with the firm hand of the new leadership and new designers - and considering their strong horror background, I think it will be a great test to see how well they do at making new unique settings (it has a bunch of new domains of dread in it) and powerful, dynamic monsters (new high level threats promised in the book, and horror is historically good for monster design).

 
This is my thinking as well.  Whatever D&D has been up to this point is the result of the same people who brought us most of the late-era 5e nonsense. We are yet to see what this new team can do.

I don't think the reviews of the FR books where nescessarily bad, but they are mostly isolated to sponsored reviews, which carry a lot of bias.  Regardless my assessment is less based on what they said and more about what they showed.  It had that later era 5e book stank on it.

The last decent setting book on the Forgotten Realms was the 3e era book.

I think my main issue with the way setting source books have been written latetly is that they are not a GM source for running campaigns in the setting; they are source books for a DM to run adventures.  The focus is to zoom'ed in.  I want a setting sourcebook to describe the setting to me, give me the lore, history and bring me up to speed on current events, give me some specific bad guys in the world (both factions and people), and what is motivating them.  Design it around the idea that I, as the DM, will create a campaign in the setting.  What these books mostly do is say "here are mini-adventures you can run in the Forgotten Realms", which mind you I don't think is a bad concept for a book, but it's not what I'm looking for in a setting book.   That a setting book does not make.

For example, I want to know what the Thay are up to, what plots are going down, who are the major players in that conflict, on both sides, and how/why other factions would get involved, and how can we get the players involved in the plots.  Give me the timeline, the major events that have transpired, things I can actually use as a basis for a campaign.  I don't need a "here is a Thay Wizard adventure scenario balanced for 3rd level".  That is not something for a campaign; that is something for an evening one-shot.

Now, mind you I haven't read the books so I could be wrong, but that is the impression I got from the reviews about it.

Its been 2 years and we seem to be doing ok...