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).