Just wanted to add that Baldman Games has been running the games at GenCon and Winter Fantasy for years. I'm surprised to hear there were issues with Baldman running things. I've been to both conventions with games run by Baldman. I gave them good scores all around... so maybe this year was an off year?
As for WotC not having a booth... this has been par for the course for some time now. If I was at GenCon would I want to see a cool D&D booth? Sure! Does it ruin my convention if it's not there. Nope!
From what I can tell is that the issues that happened this year are 3 fold and compounded on one another:
1. WOTC didn't bring any monetary support this year at all. Last year they didn't have a booth(except for a small one selling T-shirts and novels inside the D&D gaming area) but they brought some decorations with them to make the gaming area look nicer. Plus they contributed some money(I gather..not confirmed) to pay for the gaming space. They also donated books as prize support for the judges and All-Access Pass players.
This year, they didn't bring anything at all. No booth selling T-shirts, no decorations, no prize support, no money. This meant that Baldman did without some things they've had in the past; like a speaker and microphone. Which caused marshals to have to yell loudly to tell the DMs what do to. Some didn't hear and caused games to start up to an hour and a half late.
2. Baldman games appears to have had some issues with DMs due to the number of complaints I've seen about DMs this year. I assume most of the DMs were good but a couple bad ones caused some problems.
3. The Epic wasn't as good as some people would have liked. It wasn't as interactive as previous years and some people thought it was too easy or too boring.
Also, as an honourable mention, I'll add 4. The lights went off at midnight in the middle of the Epic due to an automatic timer that wasn't shut off and no one was able to get them turned back on so a bunch of people just gave up and left in the middle of the game.
Most of the issues weren't really Baldman's fault. But people have grown to expect a level of showmanship mostly created by WOTC in the past that was missing this year. I gather that Baldman expected WOTC to donate books as prizes for the All-Access pass people and WOTC changed their schedule to released their books too late to come out at Gen Con, leaving them without anything to give out.