El Mahdi
Muad'Dib of the Anauroch
Do they lead like they did in 2000-2003. No. But that was sort of an anomaly. ...
I respectfully disagree with this.
I feel that their leading at that time was a direct result of a top down attitude of customers and gaming first. Definitely not an anomaly. It was a very specific result due to a purposeful and specific mentality and actions.
There's a common saying in the military: Take care of your people, and your people will take care of the mission.
In this situation I think you can correlate "customers" with "your people" (along with the workers at WotC). If you take care of your customers, your customers will take care of you. In a small niche industry like hobby gaming, it's even more true. A company that forgets this, or acts contrary to this, will eventually find itself without customers. Also, if you don't listen to your workers (people), you will also find yourself in this boat.