"Attitude" lately?
OMG like are we all back in high school or something?
Here's what we know about Ed Greenwood:
At some point he decided to sell his setting to TSR, under conditions that include what Scrivener mentioned above, as well as the condition that whatever Ed says, writes or otherwise communicates about the Realms is official (i.e. canon), unless or until a published source from TSR (later WotC) overwrites or contradicts it.
So yes, he sold the setting, but he never, ever, stopped having a voice in its creation.
And while I'm at it...
According to Ed, he sold the setting to see the Realms ascend to the next level (the stuff earlier in the thread about making a "quick buck" is a dainty bit of prevarication). That is, to see it grow and expand as other people joined Ed in the sandbox and they all worked on the Realms together.
While this was going on, Ed was the traffic cop for the Realms, coordinating and making sure Novel Author A's work didn't conflict with Designer B's work. He also continued to run Realms games in libraries, run his home game with his original players and act as freelance designer and friendly consultant for TSR employees and associated freelancers who worked on the Realms and needed world information and advice that only Ed could provide.
Over time Ed's involvement in the Realms has hit bumps in the road. TSR's code of ethics, for example, did not allow evil to win or be portrayed positively. All of the gray that Ed's initial Realms design included was set aside.
TSR's decision to focus on characters like Elminster and the Chosen of Mystra was not something Ed would have done; he'd have focused more on the likes of everyday folk like Durnan or Mirt, but TSR wanted what they wanted and Ed delivered.
Eventually the job of Realms traffic cop was handed off to someone else (Steven Schend, IIRC) and the Realms continued to grow and change as more people were brought on board to work on it and the setting itself was made (in 2nd Edition AD&D) to be the kitchen sink for D&D: literally, if it's in D&D it's in the Realms.
More than once Ed was offered assignments that, had he not written them, TSR would have found someone else to do. But Ed stayed on.
By 3rd Edition there was no longer (to my knowledge) a single Realms Traffic Cop and the Realms continued to change. And Ed stayed on, guiding, assisting, writing and designing around the work of considerable talents like Eric Boyd and Richard Baker.
When 4E came around, it's clear now that Ed was not happy with the changes. What he didn't do, however, was publicly bitch and moan that he was the boss and WotC were screwing up.
On the contrary, Ed was front and center at GenCon 2007 at the Realms seminar. He was on hand to introduce what would become the post-Spellplague Realms and after, online, he strongly encouraged people to wait and see what WotC did with the Realms before they decided whether or not to write the Realms off.
He saw his view as a much diminished one and even said so online, but still worked on projects like Returned Abeir and the Waterdeep Bible, the later used by the authors participating in the Ed Greenwood Presents: Waterdeep series of books.
He also continued to answer fan questions at the Candlekeep.com forums--something he's been doing for years.
Once WotC experienced an attitude adjustment vis-a-vis the post-Spellplague Realms, Ed jumped right back in, authoring a trio of Realms books and penning a popular, long-running series of Eye on the Realms articles for the ezine versions of Dragon and Dungeon magazines.
All in all he's been a consistent champion of the setting, made himself available to and otherwise helped scores of designers and writers and fans, provided volumes of information to TSR and WotC--much of it unpublished and therefore NDA'd to this day--and consistently treated people with respect, even when he disagreed with them.
This last, I think, is Ed's most admirable and enduring trait.
Anyway, the bit about Greenwood copping an attitude is pure fiction, and should be ignored.
