[QUOTE=smiling bandit]
Because it ain’t getting them any money, and they have no interest in the settings anyway. Sure, they weren’t big sellers solo, but add them up and you have a lot of players. Plus, TSR itself wasn’t making much $$ towards the end, and WotC might have been able to do better.
They COULD have sold off those properties, or even offered them as OGL. Or even split the difference and gotten free fan writers. By offering some support, theyd have had more variety and more defined settings to sell to. And while you say those setting books didn’t make any cash for TSR, I haven’t heard that a lot of WotC later material did either. D20 virtually stopped selling after a while.
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WotC licensed several of their old settings – Ravenloft, Dragonlance, and gave “official” status to websites for others such as Dark Sun.
Their goal, in so doing, was to make . Plus, fans would have been able to enjoy new products in those settings. Their plan was to make by selling more core books – PHB, DMG, MMs.
Although WotC has been very tight-lipped about the results, it apparently did not work for them. They do not appear to have made any from licensing out those settings -- or, at least, not enough for them to justify giving away control of their intellectual property.
See, that’s the thing they think is valuable – their intellectual property. It’s the reason why IP is excluded from the SRD – no mention of mind flayers, beholders, etc., and spells and such that reference IP are name-changed (e.g., all the Bigby’s Hand spells are no longer hands of Bigby, since he’s IP).
Even if their IP is idle – as with, say, Birthright – it is still valuable as an asset to WotC. And quite a few of their IP aren’t idle – Dragonlance, for example, makes $ hand over fist for its novellizations. Licensing that out weakens their control over the IP, and threatens that cash flow or asset value. Not worth it.
There’s also the suspicion that by licensing out their old settings, WotC only created competition for the setting books they were trying to sell. That’s something that did in TSR – they kept making new settings (which don’t make as much money, anyway, in comparison to core books), and those setting books competed with each other and further diluted their sales. They fragmented their own market!
Additionally, the licenses just haven’t seen much success. Ravensloft licensed products sort of petered out. Dragonlance soldiered on, but with complaints that it did or did not follow whatever novel canon fans liked or despised. The web stuff like Dark Sun was embroiled in criticisms of their updated rules.
I can’t imagine, were I a WotC staffer, ever wanting to license out old properties – the only result seems to be more fan whinging and complaints, more work and hassle for not so much $, and potential detriment to the IP value which WotC holds.
Thank you very much for the kind words. I’m glad to hear it, and I apologize for presuming to speak for you earlier. I will definitely try to work the phrase “Swamp Hobbits” into my conversations more often.