Couple thoughts on this:
1) Mike has clearly been trying to find a way to publish Greyhawk for quite awhile now. He has said over and over again that it's his favorite settting, he wants to publish it, but he has to find a way to have it make sense business-wise. What I wonder is whether this Lore You Should Know is a hint that he's made progress on this front and we may see something in the next couple years. Or whether it's a salvo in an opening attempt to make it happen internally. I don't think it's just a random event. But, of course, I'm just speculating.
2) In that interview, Mike emphasizes over and over again that his take on the uniqueness of Greyhawk has to do with how Gary presented the setting as a starting point where you were given a situation and then expected to do your own thing with it. He likes that how the stories play out is left up to the DM. He uses Iuz as an example of how the lore Gary presented could go in many directions and that those directions are intentionally not specified. He thinks this really distinguishes it from settings like Forgotten Realms. He also makes a point that this is only his opinion and that he doesn't have the latitude to just do what he wants. (Read: He has to convince people internally it's a good idea and he'll almost certainly find a way to survey the general audience)
3) Mike is 'anti-cannon'. He doesn't like the whole concept of there being 'one correct lore' or story for a setting. He acknowledges other people don't feel the same way. . In connection to Greyhawk, he mentions that while later supplements (post brown box) were sometimes excellent pieces of work that he thought they moved the setting away from what he liked most about it. You get the feeling he'd like to set the lore back to the brown box and put it out there. Not advance timelines. Not run out the stories for you. Put it back to where Gary left it.
He also talks about how he sees that people love Greyhawk for a lot of different reasons and that discussions among Greyhawk lovers often move into lengthy discussions where folks have very different opinions about what the best part of Greyhawk is.
Anyway, all in all, I'm encouraged that we might actually see something down the road. But I still don't have a good idea what form it will take or how long it will be.
Cheers,
AD
