Back to the ruined Realms!
Over on Haiku Jaguar's LJ (entry here: http://haikujaguar.livejournal.com/616052.html?view=10980212#t10980212) there's currently a thread going covering one of the more foolish changes made in what was once my favorite fantasy RPG setting, the Forgotten Realms. Basically, it's her wondering why the people at WoTC in a recent novel series made all the good drow (normally evil underground-dwelling elves with obsidian skin and white hair) turn from black to light brown in skin color, arguing that the "blackness of the drow's skin has become a permanent sign of their depravity" (that came from Wotsy, not Haiku).

Be warned, this one gets long. And ranty.

As to why, that seems to have been, simply, "to satisfy the people who complained that there weren't any positive images of dark-skinned people in the Realms". Never mind that the Realms had 'Africans' in the Chultans, a group so rarely used they could have done anything with them with no problems. Or that the Gold and Wood elves were dark-skinned. This was just one of a whole shopping list of complaints from various fans. So, someone at Wotsy had to try and satisfy people who already despised the setting by catering specifically to them.

The result was Lisa Smedman's series The Lady Penitent. In it, basically, the evil drow goddess Lolth plays a game of 'drow chess' against her renegade (and good) daughter Eilistraee. The game is for the drow as a race -- will they be doomed to evil, or will they retain a hope for redemption? Various other drow deities stick their noses in throughout the series and end up sorely regretting it when Lolth or Eilistraee sacrifice them like pawns. In the end, Eilistraee sends one of her worshippers, the high priestess Qilue Veladorn (a well-beloved character for many years in the stories and setting) to attack Lolth herself. And, well, Qilue suddenly loses about 200 IQ points, does all sort of incredibly stupid things, and dies while Eilistraee is 'riding' her.

So Qilue dies. All of her fellow priestesses die. Eilistraee dies, and seemingly her worshippers either go crazy or die (and the transformed good drow in the Underdark presumably get massacred by Lolth's faithful). And all save a handful of drow who don't have the Evil Gene (and who turned to a light brown while their relations with polluted blood got to stay black) became Offically Evil Forever and Beyond Redemption.

The way it was handled rankled -- to far too many fans it felt like Wotsy just spat in their collective face. Some were offended because of the Dumbing of Qilue and a boatload of other characters. Some were furious because a fan-favorite deity like Eilistraee got killed in such an offhanded way. And some got angry because, when they questioned this on the WoTC forums, they were banned for "hate speech".

The series itself was very badly done -- the writer, Lisa Smedman, normally a very fine author, was stuck with two jobs and given a very short period of time to do it in: (1) Prune the drow pantheon down to just Lolth (the evil goddess they've always had since 1st Ed), and (2) Remove some characters some of the fans were unhappy with, like Qilue Veladorn, one of the 'Chosen'.

She did about as good as she could under the circumstances, but the results, well... they were not well received by the older, pre-3rd Ed Realms fans. And by "not well received" I mean "made them go nuclear". Prior canon history from some of the Realms' more respected authors was completely ignored (including the guy who originally made the whole thing!). Literally decades of effort by various hard-working fans-turned-creators like Jeff Grubb and Elaine Cunningham was thrown out with nary an explanation.

Now, this might have been slowly accepted... save that at the same time, Wotsy was bringing out the World of Warcraft RPG D&D 4th Edition, and so they decided to 'improve' the Realms by removing all sorts of things that had long bothered a small and vocal group of fans who mostly didn't play the setting anyway.

Things like:

Removing the Chosen of Mystra, some of the best-developed and written characters in the entire setting. The complaint was that they were 'too powerful' and that 'they won't let the PCs in my campaign do anything!' Apparently the idea that you could just not use the characters or anything else you just didn't like was too difficult for some people to understand.

Changing the physical setting to make it more 'accessible and current for modern fans'. This seemed to translate as 'remove everything that doesn't look just like WoW or the latest generic fantasy series'. The whole High Medieval-Early Renaissance feel of the setting was thrown out. Developed cultures and cities were removed because "no one cares about them". Needless to say, this angered those fans who did care about them, many of whom have now turned their back on Wotsy and 4th Ed (I know this for a fact, as I happen to be one of those disgruntled fans).

The Realmsian pantheon was turned completely on its head. Now, this could have worked, save that it in many cases the changes were described as "It was always like this, you just never knew the truth before." Often the change was done in such a way that made utterly no sense whatsoever to anyone who'd picked up any of the 3rd Ed setting books. The rather copndescending way this was done angered yet more fans... many of whom left the Realms and Wotsy.

And that's the best I can do right now, Haiku. Sorry for the length, but it really was a big whopping mess.