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Wizards of the Coast was founded by [[Peter Adkison]] in 1990 just outside Seattle, Washington, and their headquarters is still in nearby Renton. Originally the company only published [[role-playing game]]s such as the third edition of [[Talislanta]].
At 1993 [[Gen Con]] the company presented ''Magic: The Gathering'', the success of which success was so big that its revenue helped to solve numerous other problems Wizards has been having at that time. In 1994, they expanded their role-playing game line by buying [[SLA Industries]] from [[Nightfall Games]] and [[Ars Magica]] from [[White Wolf, Inc.]] In 1995 they released [[Everway]] and then closed their roleplaying game product line with Peter Adkison explaining that they were doing a disservice to the games with lack of support and had lost money on all of their roleplaying game products. In [[1997]], Wizards of the Coast was granted [http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?patentnumber=5662332 US patent 5662332] on Collectible card games, followed by the purchase of [[TSR, Inc.]], the cash-strapped makers of ''[[Dungeons & Dragons]]''.
Many of the creative and professional staff of [[TSR]] relocated from Wisconsin to the Renton area, and Wizards re-hired many [[wikipedia:game designer|game designers]] who had been laid off during the troubled last years of TSR. TSR was used as a brand name for a while, then retired. Wizards of the Coast allowed the TSR trademarks to expire. The game and toy giant [[Hasbro]] bought Wizards of the Coast in September 1999. Between 1997 and 1999, they spun off several well-loved but poorly-selling [[campaign setting]]s (most notably [[Planescape]], [[Dark Sun]] and [[Spelljammer]]) to fan groups, focusing their business primarily on the profitable ''[[Greyhawk]]'' and ''[[Forgotten Realms]]'' lines.
