I'll take a bite.
"As an elitist", I think this problem is similar to the conflict of the definition of literally. There's a group of people who are adamant about keeping the definition to mean "literally", while the other side has started to use the word to mean "exaggeratedly". But language can evolve and hold both definitions. Similarly, "trance" has started to label songs that are more house, prog, drum & bass, etc. instead of "actual trance". So the conflict exists because we cannot agree on the definition, and one side will always think the other is using the wrong definition. Unfortunately, I don't think this problem will be settled because Trance as a genre is so inclusive, and the elements that make a song a trance song are (to me) impossible to describe. Another problem is that while we have a ton of words that we can use to mean "exaggeratedly", there only seems to be one word that we can use to describe Trance.
And of course, as an elitist, I wish some of the older sounds would come back. I made a post asking about older style trance tracks and it didn't seem to get much traction which is disappointing.
To me, beyond the 4x4 beat and 125-145 BPM standards that trance "requires", trance songs have an element similar to movies that you can watch a hundred times and still find something new. The soundscapes are extremely deep and full of little subtle noises that add so much to the overall dynamic of the song and it's such a joy to finally discover them on your 50th listen, and you can never get the "full story" on your first few listens. Many of these newer productions just don't have that factor anymore. It feels like I've essentially "heard it all" after only 1-2 listens. It's extremely boring, to say the least.
The popular argument of "well if you don't like what XYZ is producing nowadays, you don't have to listen to it!" just doesn't address the issue. Let's take this to a hypothetical extreme for the sake of argument. If Above & Beyond was still hosting "Trance Around The World" and decided to host a special episode of TATW that featured all the songs from their Acoustic album on it, would that make me elitist to say that it isn't trance? And let's say someone starts listening to TATW on that very day, and starts calling those songs trance, would I be elitist to say that they're wrong?
Personally, and this is said with extreme amounts of respect for Armin and what he has done for us all, but Armin is a big part of why there is an elitist culture to begin with. Analogous to the hypothetical situation above, Armin has played songs such as Deadmau5 - Strobe on his radio show, titled a state of TRANCE. And in the past few years he's even produced some of these (imo) non trance tunes himself, such as This Is What It Feels Like. This song sounds like something Calvin Harris would make. I'm not dissing Calvin Harris or the song itself, but when you're trying to classify it as TRANCE, can you really say that it qualifies? What would your opinion be if /r/trance was flooded with deadmau5 and Calvin Harris songs? What if we started posting house, calling it Trance 3.0?
And his "Who's Afraid of 138?" thing certainly isn't helping either. If anything it's creating a bigger divide. I respect A&B for moving on from their TATW name and starting Group Therapy, and I think it would have done a lot of good for Armin to have done something similar. These giants in the trance world have a big influence, and I feel when non-trance is played on A State of Trance, it just further degrades the genre's name. If Armin wants to produce and play prog house, there's nothing wrong with that, but I just wish he'd present it in a way that new listeners of EDM know that it's prog house and not trance.
I absolutely love trance. I've been listening since ~2001. There used to be a huge joy when the new ASOT released every week, but I haven't had that feeling since 2011 or so. Don't get me wrong, there are still good trance tunes, but they're a lot harder to find. And a lot of potentially very good songs are ruined by these Trance 2.0 elements. One of the biggest offenders off the top of my head is A&B's remix of Zero Gravity. The song starts out fine, transitions smoothly into the nice melodic breakdown at 2:37, provides an absolutely beautiful and haunting sequence until we hit 3:52 where it's just...what the fuck is going on, am I even listening to trance anymore?