well crap, the subject line was supposed to be 2017 and I see no way to correct it or delete the topic.

OK, while the subject line is made without actual knowledge that WOTC/Hasbro isn't going to be at Gen Con in 2017, given their current track record it certainly seems unlikely they will be appearing.  I post this statement in the slim hope that other people on the forums, facebook, and other social media outlets will let WOTC know their lack of attendance is certainly missed. Contacting them needs to remain civil as belligerence rarely carries weight in an argument when you are against the odds.

As an attendee of Gen Con since 1989 and seeing "the castle" along with everything else that was TSR in the late 80s and early 90s, I cannot deny my sadness in the disappearance of Gen Con's truly formative presence.  I hope against hope they will return for GC's 50th!

I really wish they would show up at Gen Con in 2017 (and beyond) as well.  It's not much, but I've sent WotC an email and letter expressing my hopes they could work things out with Gen Con and make a return.  OP, and other's here, it would be great if many of us could get this message out to Gen Con and WotC.  I really don't think it even matters if you play D&D or not...Gen Con is a (mostly) table top game convention.  To not have one of the big rpg/table top game companies at Gen Con is crazy.  Having them at Gen Con is a win for the convention and our industry.

This may be really tough.   I get the feeling that the WotC employees want to be at GenCon, but that it doesn't make financial sense for them to be there and Hasbro won't allow them to go.  Now having said that, I can imagine the huge presence of Pathfinder had an impact on them as well.   I am not a Pathfinder player and am but a casual DnD player, but it was apparent to me 4 years ago that Pathfinder was huge compared to DnD and every year the gap widened.  I can't imagine it looked good to Hasbro to see one of the largest gaming shows make their product look second rate.   I could be wrong, but my thought is that Hasbro/WotC probably felt that to compete with that they would have to spend a huge amount of money and that money could be spent in other places.  

So at this point I don't expect WotC to be there unless they happen to be releasing some new product and could leverage the customers at GenCon to push/sell the product to.   

Then again I could be wrong.  :-)   
I hope to see them there though  :-)   

Agreed.

I attended about 5 years in a row when it was in Milwaukee and once down at Indy. Yeah, I miss the big castle as well and not having official Dungeons and Dragons in house just seems wrong. I too will send an email.

They didn't have an official showing this year ether. From their own site why they are walking from Gencon.

Where’s Gen Con?

Gen Con is not on this list because we are changing things up to support more conventions and locations. Even though the Dungeons & Dragons team won’t be there we know our friends at Baldman Games will be hosting plenty of D&D adventures. It’s safe to say there will be ample opportunity to play Dungeons & Dragons during Gen Con. We’re excited to head to some new conventions this year and meet folks who don’t have the opportunity to travel to Indianapolis.

-------------

To put it mildly, Gencon is getting very pricey. Wotc can attend several other conventions at the same cost of showing at one Gencon. To them, it's more cost effective this way, it gets a wider showing to more people, as the same price.

Maybe you could start a kickstarter or GoFundMe for them to pay for the booth space?

Trying to get a publicly traded company to do something it has decided is not in its best interest is a colossal waste of time - unless it is an ethical issue and you can bring popular opinion to bear.  Literally anything productive would be a better use of your time.

Now don't take my word for it, this is based on things I've heard and articles I have seen.

Many are starting to believe that the reason WOTC and thus Dungeons and Dragons are sort of backing away from big conventions like Gen Con, is because Hasbro (Which owns WOTC and thus D&D) are planning to do their own Convention.

Doing some digging I did indeed see that in April this year, Hasbro, Inc. has submitted a very intriguing name to the United States Patent and Trademark Office. HASCON.

So it will be interesting to see what happens. I am hoping that WOTC won't step away from other conventions because of this possible big convention that Hasbro has brewing.
 

Good find britbrit.  

I took a look at that trademark and lo and behold, the goods and services sections shows "Organizing and conducting conventions, exhibitions, fan clubs and gatherings for entertainment purposes and in the fields of toys, animation, comic books, fantasy, gaming, popular culture, science fiction, television and film".

It sure looks like they are planning some sort of convention(s).

I've heard good things about D&D 5.0, but Hasbro lost me back at D&D 4.0.  I'm happily Pathfinder these days - especially since Nascrag is generally pretty rules-light anyway.  If they choose to ignore us then I suppose we can just continue to choose to ignore them back.

Found this short article on ICv2: http://icv2.com/articles/news/view/34490/hasbro-marks-hasbrocon

As long as their tagline is: "Hasbro-Con: more than meets the eye" I'm okay with this.

I wouldn't be surprised by Hasbro doing their own convention, and I would expect to see WotC having a presence there.

But keep in mind, Hasbro doing such a con, would be to showcase their various toys and games. And WotC is a smaller portion of their company. I would honestly expect to see a larger portion of such a con dedicated to their Transformers line, as well as G.I. Joe and Starwars. As well as their various board games. Not so much their D&D book games.

So would such a con become their new home for D&D gameing? (Remember, TSR founder of D&D started Gencon) I really doubt it. It would in most respect be just a large showcase for their new upcoming products, and be just about that. More inline with E3 for computer games, or Toy Fair for toy companies.