I've been reading this thread now for several days and all the speculation and theories based on all the evidence which is somewhat conflicting and what makes sense in accordance with our own perspectives and it's been quite amazing to me.
First, when we talk about "classic" settings I don't ever think of a setting which has only existed since 2004. I've been playing since 1979 and at this time there was Greyhawk and Blackmoor (or Mystara) and maybe Kalibruhn. Those are the worlds of E Gary Gygax, Dave Arneson and Rob Kuntz. The first thing I played in was the Holmes sample (and incomplete) dungeon The Tower of Zenopus and then we were looking for The Cave of the Unknown for Keep On the Borderlands. We waited a long time for Temple of Elemental Evil and many other things. I tended to set everything in Greyhawk, but I could have used settings from Gods, Demi-Gods & Heroes or later Deities and Demi-Gods which became Legends & Lore, which features many real-world settings such as Arthurian, Greek, Norse etc or setting from fiction such as Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos, Moorcock's Melnibone, REH's Hyperborea of Conan, Red Sonja etc or Nehwon. You could also piece together your own Middle Earth based on Tolkein's works.
The first "new" setting that came along was Ed Greenwood's Forgotten Realms and it came piece by piece in Dragon magazine. I just put everything I liked from that into Greyhawk. When Forgotten Realms finally came out I wasn't interested and it became the main setting of AD&D 2nd edition and I went away for a while. The only new setting at that time I ran was Dragonlance. Ravenloft to me was sort of an extension of FR. I played a bit in FR and Ravenloft only because that was the setting my (then) DM's used, but when 3rd edition came along I was back DMing in Greyhawk full force and playing in Kalamar. When Eberron came along it looked like FR all over again only way better, but I never played 4th edition.
The thing I don't like about 5th edition is that the main setting is again The Realms, but to make matters worse a good portion of the material and seasons of AL have clearly been ripped off from Greyhawk and recycled into FR. To an extend that makes it easy to port over to Greyhawk, but it's still annoying. The most interesting things have been the upcoming Waterdeep and Undermountain books which are easily turned into Greyhawk and Castle Greyhawk. The interesting thing about them though is you start to move towards being able to visit other settings. That is we are moving towards what I really love.
The announcement of other settings was exciting and of course I thought Eberron would be coming along as well as Planescape, Spelljammer, The Chronomancer, Manual of the Planes and so on. Using Ravnica now makes a lot of sense to me, but that's not until November after the Waterdeep and Undermountain books. In the meantime although it's not 100% ready to go we have Eberron now! The final version of which could conceivably be ready before November. Is Ravnica more ready to go than Eberron? Maybe or maybe not.
The disappointing thing to me is there is no "classic" setting here yet. I don't exactly consider FR a classic setting although I could accept it as one if you think it is. Likewise my feelings about Dragonlance, Kara Tur, Ravenloft, Dark Sun and others, but I absolutely do not accept Eberron as classic. It to me is still bright and shiny new. It does however fit into what I love about the ability to visit different and diverse settings in the multiverse and Ravnica does this too and displaces Eberron as the newest setting. That's the thing I don't really like about Forgotten Realms though is that it's not that different than Greyhawk. They are like mirror images of each other and easy to port material back and forth unlike most of the other settings, which offer greater differences.
So what are the hopes that WotC might be planning settings that I would call classic? I don't know, but this calling Eberron classic lessens those hopes significantly, but we'll see as we go along. Seems to me though that the plan for 5th edition has always been to put products out slow and make sure they've got them right as well as always make sure there is something new coming. One might say this could also be taken as "milking" the market, but you are always trying to at least maintain a balance that sustains and doesn't drive away your market and doesn't flood the market. Recycling material is part of that as is listening to what the base wants. What we have announced now is a product of the market research and we have no idea what they are looking at for the future.
We look at financial numbers and rationalize all sorts of speculation, but we don't really know. I would like to see a reunion with all the remaining original founders of D&D and whomsoever holds the rights to any of the original material. That is the sort of unifying vision they seem to be working to put forth and maintain for the D&D community. Welcoming every new player and making it a good experience and getting away from being gate keepers of the rules and continuity or what is or isn't canon, so much of the fun of this is improv. The rules get bent all the time, get over it because this has to be about having a fun time and developing relationships. I know we have feelings and distress about certain things, but we don't want to be feeling bad about any of this really. None of us could ever have things 100% the way we want 100% of the time. This is about sacrificing pieces of that 100% and seeing what happens. It might be unexpectedly ok or better than we feared or we might even like it. Nothing ventured, nothing gained after all. Life tends to be about taking risks, not playing it safe all the time. Sometimes it works out well and sometimes not so well, but we learn something in either case, but not if we don't take some action beyond our comfort zone.
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