I never saw the older MLP I just assume it was like carebear which was uninteresting. G4 is a huge leap forward compare to that imo. Is it better than game of throne, or breaking bad? Heck no, but it's interesting enough to watch. Bronies make it sounds like more than what it is, but in reality, it is not that deep. It's a show with good action, interesting plot (sometimes) and good characters. Make it what you will.
The problem is, for people who don't like the show, the treatment toward people who like the show is even worse than toward people who like regular bad shows, because the subculture of my little pony is outside of society's norm of appropriate age and often gender, "normal" people need to hate it in order to present him/herself as outside of the subculture.