Oh, by Hextor, I make my yearly visit to the Frat, and it's --- right into the drama.
Me, I'm super-happy that RL is making a comeback. For me personally, this means that I can be optimistic about me keeping an understanding of what D&D is all about beyond my own gaming table, in the years to come.
And beautiful reprints, and the like, which I hope will accompany the new edition, never a bad idea.
The PC-related changes are likely a move to keep the setting "insurable", and presentable for convention play, which is at the core of these things: Evading bad press, and evading possible lawsuits. And, however silly that might be, that's okay in my book. There are several generations of people in the RPG hobby now, from grandpas to teenagers: That's "Christopher Lee is Dracula" sitting with "Gary Oldman is Dracula", potentially sitting with "Hotel Transylvania". To make something like that work, in practice, you need a lot of restraint as a DM. Offering help from the company's side with that might seem a tad bit patronizing, but is not a bad thing per se. That's a gaming company doing its job, really - teaching people new to the hobby how they are recommended to deal with certain meta-situations that might come up at any gaming table. No shame in that.
As to the actual in-game content, I think, yeah, they're royally messing up Falkovnia. As to the rest, well, there is some general wisdom in creating a setting that is probably more dependent on recent TV-show scenarios ("Shadow and Bone", "Kingdom", "The Walking Dead") than on the movies and books that inspired classic Ravenloft. Now, to create 30-something domains/scenarios for players is certainly a remarkable move: DMsGuild is going to run hot, I assume. Now, will I DM this new Ravenloft? - Naaah. My Vlad Drakov is a dude, and from Thenol. But would I play it? - Sure. The stage is there to tell some cool stories, about that I'm sure.
Likewise, I'm pretty sure 5e Ravenloft will do what 2e Ravenloft did: Start relatively tame, and then, over the years, if there will be any life to it, evolve into a beast of its own. The game itself is an introduction to the horror genre as a whole, that's why its pull has always been so strong. In actual practice, it's hard to imagine that the same generation that made hits out of "American Horror Story", "The Haunting of Bly Manor", and "Penny Dreadful" (or, concerning books, of "Those Across the River", "The Troop", or of "The Ritual") will be accepting of some vanilla, Scooby-Do-ish cringefest. To those who simply want to emulate ideas from their favorite novel or TV show for their Sunday evening game, it won't matter what sensibilities Wizbro tells them to respect. And that's fine, too, and not necessarily in opposition to WotC policing official content more strongly than they used to do. ...Always within measure and reason, of course.
(Antunia Papiecù, from QtR18) ? 
