In most games I've mostly ignored alignment in general, and found the rigid definitions annoying. 3E was the first time that I really used it because it became so much more tied to the rules than it ever had before, with all of the alignment based spells and effects. Otherwise I just used it as a shorthand role-playing guideline for npcs.
I'm not exactly thrilled with the new system, but at least I can mostly ignore it again (because it has less mechanical impact on the game), and as far as I've seen, I don't have to worry about paladins walking around town detecting evil to get a short list of suspects in a mystery.
However, I would like to mention that for a long time now, I've viewed the alignment grid as a diamond rather than a square, with LG at the top and CE at the bottom, and LE-N-CG on a shorter almost horizontal axis. Why? Because even though I get the differences between LE, N and CG, I believe that they have more in common in many ways than other alignments. At the very least, I would call those the alignments with the most grey.
It looks to me like 4E took my version of the grid and flattened it into a line. Of course, that interpretation works for me, because I was already thinking in that direction anyways.
I'm basically in the same boat as you. In older editions I ignored Alignment after I read the first few books of The Black Company since it became clear that these characters are to complicated to fit into the D&D alignment system since most of those characters show aspects of nearly every single alignment depending on the circumstances. If the system could not handle complex personalities I was not keen on it. I started using Alignment again in 3rd since the game just broke if you did not use it - to many mechanics tied up in alignment (though I respected Monte's Unearthed Arcana in part because he did away with alignment). I'll be happy to see it scaled back once again.
Somewhere around here is a great thread arguing about Drow and their alignment. Generally we consider Drow CE but, as the poster pointed out, their are strong lawful themes in Drow society (obvious and clearly defined hierarchy for example). and it soon became clear that no one really agreed what exactly it mean to be CE or LE or how one could easily pin the label CE on Drow when they'd work just as well if we pinned the label LE on them. In both cases one could easily point to aspects of their culture and say they are XX because they...
The reality was that they had become to complicated within D&D mythology to actually fit the mold for CE. One of the great weaknesses of the alignment system was that you really should choose an alignment first and then build the strange fantasy culture of that society based upon the alignment descriptions in the book. If you did this the other way around and created a unique and complex society it soon became clear that it was very difficult to slot alignment onto it afterward.
(I'd link the thread with the Drow debate but our search function currently seems to be crippled).
I think some of the confusion/controversy would have been avoided had they used different names for LG/CE. For example: Celestial and Demonic.
Yep - or just law and chaos. The idea is that one is all about order and the other is about uncontrolled destruction.
Law & Chaos would have caused more confusion -- it would be at odds with 30 years of usage in D&D. But the point is still good.
I would prefer alignment to disappear altogether.
Me too.
The only value I see in alignment is that it allows the inclusion of spells like protection from good/evil or detect evil, concepts well-established in fantasy literature.
On the other hand, they could likely be changed to protection from Outsider, or similar solutions.
