cmad1977
Hero
Respectfully, I think it is fair. She dismissed Greyhawk as a "vintage" setting, in contrast to the Forgotten Realms which Ed began publishing in Dragon in 1979, and which had it's big "Gray Box" release in 1987. Greyhawk was originally published in 1980, and updated as part of the "Living Greyhawk" campaign through 2008. They're both "vintage" settings dating back to TSR. She went on to imply, to my ears anyway, an association between Greyhawk fans and the "gatekeeping" that Mearls made comments about when she was hired, referring to a "barrier" and a "gate" that Greyhawk, or its lore, or its fandom represents.
It is difficult to take her comments as anything other than entirely dismissive of both Greyhawk and its fans. She spoke about Greyhawk lore as something that not a lot of people (including herself) are interested in. She suggested that the Forgotten Realms is more "new-player friendly" as if that is the cause of their abandonment of other settings, not the result of it. Having then spoken about Greyhawk fans, her only comment for them was that she didn't know whether there was much GH material on the DMs Guild, but if she wanted to find "old Greyhawk stuff" that's where she would look.
I think in all fairness paraphrasing her comments the way I did (don't know, don't care, FR is the setting that matters) was giving her the benefit of the doubt. I don't know, but I suspect that she associates Greyhawk with whatever crap she caught when she started working for WotC (I didn't see it, but I saw the conversation here about it.) If that is the case, it would explain her apparent low regard for the setting, and I'm not trying to say that she ought to be a huge Greyhawk fan. It's perfectly fine for her to not like or care about a setting, just like it's fine for Mike to unabashedly love that setting. Ultimately, she did say she didn't know much about Greyhawk, she made it pretty clear that she doesn't care much about Greyhawk, and she went out of her way to point out that the Forgotten Realms is more popular and more useful. It's just what she said.
I’m sensing the anger here isn’t actually about what was said.