Speculation: I think maybe what's going on is that nerds are very comfortable pushing back even about design changes they're not especially sensitive about.What interests me in this topic is the language we use to talk about it. There's a lot of manifestos going around, lots of imperative language, declaring what's acceptable play and what's not (on both sides of the issue). There's a resistance to interogating why we feel so strongly about this stuff and, to openly examine differing perspectives. What about the nerd makes them so sensitive to the things they like being challenged? Why do we feel the need to police the way others play the game (on both sides of the issue).
Like, if WotC mandates that all D&D 6E PCs are inherently ambidextrous (no right- or left-handed PCs), or that all PCs must have names with at least three vowels, you'll see pushback against WotC for that even from people who never spent a moment before today worrying about the vowel density distribution of fantasy names. It won't be universal pushback (some will be fine with it) but it will generate emotions and conflict.
And of course there are real underlying issues about which strong feelings do exist as well, such as "do fantasy names need to be plausible and sound familiar to Earthlings? Does fantasy realism matter?"