I think the latter had a long and troubled road up till this point in time - mainly because of things like MERP.

It's one thing to have a shared story in a created setting that is built from the foundation to be just that - it's another thing entirely to be caught up in communal fan-fiction. Since the older the school the closer it came to fan-fic - the less and less appealing a game setting was.

This was probably the main thing I didn't like about the Forgotten Realms - started up as a shared setting purely for gaming - and came to be dominated by all this fiction - you had clashes between the players who wanted to do Drizzzzt homages and those who wanted to kill Drizzzzt. All fanfic.

So you want to do your own thing and break the mold and be original!