Actually a lot of people, including myself, were excited about the new changes back in 1997. While I knew even then they were unnecessary and ultimately didn't integrate that well with films shot 14-20 years before, I nevertheless enjoyed many of them. Greedo firing first, Luke screaming and Vader's "bring my shuttle" being replaced and the obvious outtake from ROTJ were the only changes I didn't like.

But at the time, DVD was just being introduced into the North American market, Laserdisc was still going strong, and I had the 1995 THX LDs, which, as far a I could tell, looked great on my 20 inch TV, so not having the OUT on a state-of-the-art format wasn't an issue. And I certainly didn't think even then about Lucas being such a stubborn prick that he wouldn't release the originals on DVD, or whatever other superior home video formats would come down the line. There just simply wasn't the feeling the the "special editions" were meant to replace the originals back then.

While I do remember Cinefantisque and Sci-Fi Universe criticizing Lucas for making the changes, I think much of the press was reasonably positive for what Lucas was doing, though I didn't have consistent access to the web at that time so I don't know how the online community reacted to it.