They could indeed have done a much, much, much better job... While the new book could count as servicable (which is high praise coming from me as I actually think the new book is utter $#@*& and the previous book was a lot better) there were so many great rumours which turned out to be, well, just rumours... There was talk about Imperial Dwarfs, Ogres and Halflings, the inclusion of a true War Wagon, Knights on foot and even a Siege Cannon. And what do we get? A couple of utterly lame Wizard Mobiles and a book to match.
If you judge a book by it's cover, this is one fine book... If you look any further than it's cover you'll be very disapointed: a lot of recycled artwork, little to no new fluff (a lot is just copy-paste from the previous one), a lot of flavourful options, magic items and rules scrapped for the sake of 8th ed. uniformity, an overall 20-25% increase in points and the general decrease of effectiveness... No ammount of new Witch Hunters or Demi Gryphs (about the only good new things to be found in the new book) will make up for all the stuff they screwed up (and that's before you get me started on the obvious nerfs, which are plenty)...
Heck, even Hold The Line is not in our favour (sure it can be, but to me it's not all good)... It just prevents your guys to run away so they can be slaughtered where they stand, saving your opponent the bother of running after them... And they even charge you extra points for that!
It all leads me to believe that the book was written by someone who has no love/understanding for The Empire whatsoever. Someone who's Grey Seer has been on the receiving end of an Hochlander Longrifle headshot from an Outrider Champion one too many times and decided our guys needed to be thouroughly screwed over...
At the time the book was released I seriously considered shelving my entire army and dusting off my Dwarfs... I curse myself for liking my army too much to be able to do just that. During the last couple of months I've played numerous games (both large and small) and I have found most changes made were for the worse while the improvements are few and far between. You can't kill as many enemies at range and there are fewer men awaiting when they reach your lines... Still, some of the new mini's are actually quite nice...