I really don't understand the people who say they want the Realms to go back to the Gray Box - that is, to be a loosely-developed setting with little history, few characters, and a largely undefined map.
Quite simply, we have that already. In fact, we've had a lot of that already. Most other campaigns settings have been written this way, to say nothing of how incredibly easy it is to make a homebrew setting that has minimal development.
What made the Realms great - before the Spellplague killed it - was just how incredibly detailed and nuanced the setting was. Yes, that was a problem for some people (who apparently live in fear of "canon lawyers"), but for others it was the only setting that had a great depth of material that could be used to flesh out the world. Making that degree of detail takes time and energy, something not every GM has in abundance, and so it was nice that there was a single setting that did that.
But for some people, having even one campaign world go that far is too much, and they need to stamp it out.
(Okay, that came out more rant-y than I expected, but it's just frustrating to me that some people hate FR's degree of verisimilitude, which is something I always thought was a good thing for a setting to have.)