It wasn't widely reviled at the time- at least not in the mainstream forums. The flavor was that VFP was technically excellent but unmarketed. Some of us expected that MS was going to match the technical investment with marketing. The day that Sigler openly stated that VFP was going to be damned with faint praise in the MS camp is burned into my memory. People have said subsequently that VFP3 was flaky so we were lucky that MS didn't market it(!) but I suspect that much of that related to Win32s. We had good customer acceptance on 32bit OS.
"... They ne'er cared for us
yet: suffer us to famish, and their store-houses
crammed with grain; make edicts for usury, to
support usurers; repeal daily any wholesome act
established against the rich, and provide more
piercing statutes daily, to chain up and restrain
the poor. If the wars eat us not up, they will; and
there's all the love they bear us."
-- Shakespeare: Coriolanus, Act 1, scene 1
