WotC indicated they wanted less stress on alignments, we can see the progression of this since wizards bought the rights to D&D. We saw the first examples of this making the Druid at least on aspect of a Neutral alignment character vs a TRUE neutral only class. The ranger went from must be good to no alignment restrictions. The rogue could be any alignment because they expanded the rogue from just a thief, a broad type of different characters ranging from diplomates to 2nd story thief, from assassin to traveling merchant. All of those archetypes can be made with the rogue class, thus alignment needed to be broader for the rogue class. By the time we get to 5e we see evil paladins. That's really not that far out there given that the paladin got its mirror in the anti paladins in 2e, but i have seem more than one player "lose their shit" over the change.
Also alignment has always been a divisive aspect in the player base since the 1970's so I am not surprised to see wizards slowly change the rules to dilute the importance of alignment over the last 20 years.
