Haven't read the whole thread yet, just the OP and initial responses, but I think calling it "mothballed" is a slight misunderstanding of the situation.
As I understand it, the situation is more like this:
1) D&D 4E was not a success in the eyes of WotC, but had been required to be a success, or else D&D was going to get mothballed. WotC invested more in 4E than they had in 3.5E, it seems, particularly in tech (this blew up for complicated reasons, but mismanagement was bigger than murder among them).
2) Somehow, the designers/D&D team at WotC convinced the execs not to mothball D&D, but to "go small" instead. 5E wasn't required to be a success like 4E was, because it was designed to spend a lot less money.
3) 5E was designed as an "apology edition", in attempt to get the maximum number of customers back - not just those lost to 4E, but also those lost along the way, with a focus on elegant and accessible design that was also evocative of earlier editions (sometimes this arguably went too far, c.f. controversies around the Ravenloft campaign and Volo's).
4) 5E was designed to have a slow and limited release schedule, minimizing costs and risks, and maximizing ROI (though not necessarily maximizing profits, which might require heavier investment).
5) 5E got extremely lucky and hit a cultural wave caused by multiple factors (not least a bunch of '80s and '90s kids getting into writing/directing/showrunning, the rise of podcasts and streaming, '80s and '90s nostalgia, and so on), and absolutely ballooned in success, far, far beyond what had been expected by WotC.
6) WotC did not really react to this initially. Indeed, the slow release schedule and so on were maintained, despite big sales. When WotC did react, rather than investing a lot more in D&D itself, they chose to invest in digital, specifically developing the infamous 3D VTT, and actually after starting work on that, purchasing D&D Beyond (something that had been predicted for a couple of years before it happened).
7) A very large amount of money has been poured into digital, but it doesn't look like much more has been poured into D&D generally. The release schedule has recently sped up, but not by very much (despite WotC suggesting it would).
8) The digital strategy appears to be essentially a return to 4E's digital strategy, just with like, 10-20x as many staff (and thus 10-20x+ as much money) involved. There also appears to be some possible internal competition or conflict between Beyond and the 3D VTT, depending on who you believe.
9) WotC has made some other efforts to improve the value of the D&D IP (the D&D movie, various seemingly-failed attempts at TV series, etc.), though ironically the only one which has really totally panned out is BG3, which was started back far into "apology edition, zero investment" times. Again, none of this seems to be focused on D&D itself, just the broader IP.
So what does this mean?
I think it means not that WotC are "mothballing" D&D, but rather, they're simply no more interested in investing in D&D itself, in 2023, than they were in 2014, or rather only a little more, despite D&D 5E succeeding wildly more than they expected. This is also, I think, why 2024 has been very clumsily handled and not very well-directed. WotC as an organisation just doesn't care. They assume it's fine. It's just a way of getting a bit more money out of consumers with what they see essentially as a "brand refresh", rather than any real attempt to improve the game, so they're happy to let the game designers approach it however they want so long as it's cheap, but not willing to invest a ton in market research or whatever.
What WotC likely does care about is the success of Beyond and the 3D VTT, both of which I think they see as having much more long-term earning potential than D&D itself. Cynthia Williams claimed the 3D VTT has 250 people working on it (which is not implausible given the scope and nature of the project). Contrast this with the 30 or so working on D&D itself. If the 3D VTT crashes and burns after release, then we might see a more genuine "mothballing" of D&D, especially if there's any temporally close drop off in D&D sales, because I think it'll be attributed to D&D "running out of steam" or the like.
WotC at that point may just leave 5E alone to toddle along - that's the best case scenario for many people. Or they may genuinely mothball it, and end production of all but a few "evergreen" books and perhaps bits and bobs published digitally on Beyond. Or, if they see the overall D&D IP as valuable but dropping in value (which they might well), they may attempt to sell off the entire IP. If so, and they're successful, I'd strongly expect a videogame company, probably MS (given their extremely close links to Hasbro and WotC top brass) to purchase the IP.
Maybe there’s a better word I could have used, but clearly you understood my meaning.
