Jaykob

Any person that genuinely looks at 2e as a game, "entirely focused on combat, with no consideration for other types of challenges or fantasy storytelling..." and 3e as somehow an antithesis to this, has no idea what they're talking about.

You're talking about an era of DnD that had detailed rules and procedures for dungeon delving, wilderness survival/exploration, mass combat, strongholds, and domain play, is only concerned with Combat? You've got it backwards. WOTC specifically cut out everything but combat. TSR DnD is a game primarily concerned with exploration, WOTC DnD are games primarily concerned with Combat.