A History of Wizards of the Coast

HerderOfCats writes "Shannon Appelcline has written up an excellent independent history of Wizards of the Coast, the company that brought us Magic: The Gathering, eventually acquired TSR and D&D, transformed the paper RPG game industry with d20 and the Open Game License, and eventually was acquired by game giant Hasbro." From the RPGNet article: "Overall, Hasbro was looking to make Wizards meaner and leaner, and thus a better profit making machine. In 2001 and 2002 Habro also divested themselves of their conventions. Origins went to GAMA and GenCon to Peter Adkison. Around the same time they also outsourced their magazines by licensing Dungeon, Dragon, Polyhedron, and Amazing Stories to Paizo Publishing, who continues to publish the RPG magazines today. Two years later another pruning would come. Wizards had also been running 85 'Game Keeper' and 'Wizards of the Coast' retail stores, but in early 2004, Hasbro shut them all down. Together with selling the conventions, this relieved any concerns that Wizards might be developing a vertical monopoly, like that controlled by Games Workshop in the UK--and really such a monopoly wouldn't have made sense given the d20 strategy. "

D&D South Park... :P

[__aaclcg7560]

Hasbro killed the Game Keeper! Those bastards!

No, no, no.

[InfinityWpi]

WotC is too young to have a 'history of' article. For god's sake, I wasn't -that- old when Magic first game out. It's still a young company, dammit! Get off my lawn!

Re:Kevin Siembieda is a jackass

[ShannonA]

That would be Wizards of the Coast he sued. I think there's an article somewhere that discusses that company's history, along with a look at that lawsuit.

Re:Without a Future?

[mabhatter654]

hey dude... wanta see some new cards... they just released an expansion to Ice Age.... you really need to check it out. Come on a pack of cards is only a few bucks... You know you want to try it out..

3.x = Bah!

[rolfwind]

I'll wait until AD&D '95 comes out.