I did use real world analogies an awful lot. High Elves were based on medieval Japan with 'moon swords' rather like the Star Trek Klingon weapons, but reclusive, their Craftholds withdrawn from the world and only accessible via magical portals, whereas Wood Elves more like the native Americans of the colonial times.

Giants were like huge grizzly bears, living in wild family groups but drawn to human civilisation for the easy pickings despite the risks of retaliation (heck, they weigh as much as an elephant or more - as "heavy as five bulls" was the phrase I used, and looked like a pale skin coloured and somewhat hairy Incredible Hulk rather than the typical lanky and tall versions of children's stories).

Rules do matter if you play the game!  I played one session of 4e after buying up a bunch of materials.  As I read the rules I kept thinking...looks novel...but man, it's BLAND.  Where are the cool spells?  Is there no teleport?  Heck yeah the rules you use matter.

I bought up BECMI.  It was surely fun and quick, but we wanted more options.

I like the core 5e books...I am ok on some supplements.  But I am done with WOTC.  I do not like their politics and I sure won't submit to their "ONE."  I don't need to.  I have a stack of books.

My 1e books are worn for a reason.  If you get into the game there is always more to explore.  5e is a different experience.  Like a car with heated seats the extra features start to feel like needs.  But I have the car—-I am not going back to the shitty dealership just because I bought one there before!  It's running fine and I don't have a need to get gouged!

Since it's roughly on-topic, I'll tell an anecdote here.

Yesterday, I had lunch with an old friend of mine. Not the person that introduced me to D&D, but definitely the guy I gamed with most when we were kids. He started with AD&D in the 2e era, and we played a lot of 3.0/3.5. Like me, he bought the 5e core books when they came out, on the grounds that people were saying it was better than the previous edition, but unlike me, he kept playing it. I'm not sure why. I've tried to get him onto other games, but either he's too cheap or lazy to chance a different system, or (more likely) he just doesn't really care about rules. Anyway, turns out that he's running Adventurer's League games at our local store, but he's also heavily homebrewing the modules and ignoring half the rules, so maybe WOTC's diktats don't matter much even in that setting.

Also, I offered him my remaining 5e books on the grounds that I never intend to play the game again, and he mentioned that an acquaintance of his was collecting books for a gaming group they're trying to get together at a local school. I took the opportunity to suggest that instead of trying to scrounge up used 5e books, they could more easily just get new Basic Fantasy RPG books for a couple of dollars each. Don't know if he'll follow through on it, but I might have inadvertently struck a blow against WOTC in the battle for the next generation of role-players.

There seems to be a strong feeling among my player group that we'll actively avoid "ONE D&D"; WOTC have done pretty much everything possible to alienate us. I expect to keep playing 5e D&D, but with increasing amounts of other systems. One guy is looking at running some Runequest.

I *suspect* a lot of people (here) and elsewhere - will try OneD&D and will get hooked if they otherwise have never played a well designed Mobile game. And they will adopt this new paradigm once the meathooks set in.

The bifurcation will occur with people that expressly want to play a TTRPG with less dependency on VTT elements over traditional play. The reality is the gamble (and it is a gamble) that VTT is already pretty well established. I personally don't think WotC understands their proposition is already a bit of a strain on TTRPG GM's that don't want to wrestle with Fantasy Grounds, or Roll20 and all the rabbit holes you can go down with a primarily VTT set up. WotC in order to lock in their financial goals *will* end up competing more with video-games than they believe.

GM's that largely eschew VTT will likely be a minority by comparison. BUT I'm betting this won't matter in terms of smaller publishers. Because effectively WotC is creating a new kind of game that is largely separate form TTRPG's. Just like if there is a hot new card game, or a hot new boardgame - it's not a threat to TTRPG companies that already exist.