I do not think anyone was complaining about Str D melee weapons. I am pretty sure people were (and are) complaining about Str D ranged weapons.
Str D melee will rip apart any daemon or tyranid monsterous creature , so you might be the minority on that one. But hey, as long as it doesn't effect marines then who cares, right?
*Shrug* I play Orks, so I really never thought about how StrD Melee interacted with MCs...especially since Orks do not have an MC. I remember alot of the heartache was around the 900 pt uncatchable Eldar thing that threw out 2 str D blasts a turn and the cheap Necron that did Str D flame templates. I do not remember any heartburn over, say a Stompa, with a StrD melee weapon.
You are probably right that since it is imperial no body really cares.
And I still think GW is confused about what kind of game there are making models for. I personally do not think that SuperHeavies and StrD have a place in such a small scale game. Epic 40k is where all this stuff belongs...and the more I read about the old Epic system, the cooler it is. Too bad they killed it off.