Wizards seems to think an obscene secondary market helps sales of sealed product, but that's questionable at best.
I believe you are finally starting to see what is really going on here.
We know certain things:
1.) Wizards can print whatever (non-RL cards) they want, whenever they want.
2.) They would make a bunch (whatever that means) of money doing it.
3.) They don't.
Probably the best way to reconcile this, since WotC is a business, is to follow the money. Not the make-believe money they could make, but the money they are making.
I believe that the continuation of a very antiquated and horribly unfit (for the games current player base) is twofold: Standard and Limited.
Wizards has said with it's reprints that it wants you to constantly buy into Standard and Limited. Wizards really only wants to sell it's new set. When they drop a turd on Eternal with something like Theros, how are they going to sell it to us? In fact, how are they going to sell it at all? Standard is how; you want to play, you need to pay (even if you think the set sucks). Limited fuels this too, the cards don't even need to be good, just work together well. They actually believe that we'll be priced out of Eternal and then pay into the never ending cycle of Standard. I have no idea if this actually works, but anecdotal evidence seems to point to yes.
This really doesn't have to be a cloak-and-dagger conspiracy theory, or some nefarious plan to screw us over. It's just flat business sense. Wizards wants to sell as much of it's new set as possible, ergo the best way to do that is to make it clear that the easiest and cheapest way to play the game is Standard and Limited. Take for example Theros, which even from the Standard kids who have played for less than a year, say is pretty bad from a constructed POV, is the BEST SELLING SET OF ALL TIME. Which tells me and, no doubt tells them, that what they are doing (and probably more importantly, not doing) is working.
It's sad to say, but we won't see real mass reprints until they game has begun to fail. Once multiple sets fail to sell like hotcakes, even when they are mostly disliked, will they really feel they need to change anything.
