The same crowd that "discovers" that Rage Against the Machine is political every year or so would absolutely lose their minds when a 2021/2022 Dark Sun setting leans into the climate change and social justice themes that were there since the beginning and would almost certainly be doubled down upon now.
Which, of course, would also make it sell gangbusters to Gen Z gamers.
Yeah exactly lol. Some things only become more relevant, sad as that might be for the state of the world.
Cleaning up the problematic elements of Dragonlance would make the freak-out over Ravenloft being updated to 2021 standards look mild in comparison. And I remain unconvinced there's a big modern audience for Dragonlance. Today's fantasy fans are reading Game of Thrones, Harry Potter and a thousand other things. Dragonlance isn't even in the conversation nowadays. Whom WotC would be chasing with this product, I have no idea. That said, both TSR and WotC (via a license) seem determined that there is an audience out there.
I tend to agree re: freak-out, but maybe it wouldn't matter? Just don't think there's much of a modern audience either.
Having Panzar tanks and Lewis Carroll elements seems like a good argument for the distinctiveness of Greyhawk to me.
But... is anyone into that?
Especially people under 40. "LOL SO RANDOM!!!" is very... 2004. And sort of meme-y stuff where random elements are being brought in is also redolent of a dead or dying nerd culture, again which was around in the early '00s but is sort of moving on now (literally the same people who were part of that, when they create things now, it doesn't have that stuff in it).
I think realistically the only way GH or DL comes back with with reboots/rewrites which piss off the original fanbase but essentially set it aside as a percentage of a percentage. Like, I'm in the 40+ model, would a GH or DL reboot which drastically reworked things piss me off? Nah. Most people here? Nah. A percentage? Oh they'd be hella mad. But if we're talking say, 30% of the what, 12% of D&D players who are over 40, that's like 4% of the playerbase. Who cares? Because some of the old-skool fans would also welcome change, or just not care.
DL I just don't think there's a compelling angle. "Epic Fantasy" doesn't seem enough to provide rules people are actually going to want to pay money for. And the lineages/races and archetypes are unlikely to be broadly compelling. We'd be looking at what, Solamnic Knights, maybe Moon Wizards (or whatever they're called), maybe a "Wild Magic" Artificer called a Tinker or something. And race/lineage-wise we have - racist-trope halflings (the whole "doesn't believe in property so just takes stuff" was a racist trope applied particularly to the Roma and other nomadic groups, including some Native American groups), Irda - who seem hard to do w/o being OP, and maybe some Dragonborn sub-races. None of which really fit the "epic fantasy" theme (except maybe Solamnic Knights - who they'd probably give DIRE mechanics to lol - esp. as Fighter mechanics peaked at Battlemaster). Fellowship mechanics seem unlikely that they'd move books. And the setting itself is so goddamn vanilla that even a reboot that de-white-ifies it would leave it as utterly vanilla.
GH the only way I can see it not crashing and burning is if they went, as
@Whizbang Dustyboots has suggested, for a very gritty/grim/metal take on it, and had a lot of "GIT GUD" sort of mechanics making for an official
WotC-endorsed(C)(TM)(R) take on OSR-type gaming, with the rules aimed very much at that, and strong suggestions parties should be all alignments, and so on. Even then it's lacking obvious material for lineages/archetypes, especially thematically-appropriate ones. But I think it's much more likely some aging denizen of WotC HQ will authorize a very nostalgic take on the GH of his childhood for yet another irrational shot at making GH happen, with the gonzo/gritty stuff actually toned down, not turned up, as it would need to be.