To me, Arcana Unearthed represents the road not traveled for Wizards of the Coast. It was released at about the same time as WotC's Dungeons & Dragons 3.5. In my perfect world, there would never have been a D&D 3.5, instead there would have been just a revised version of the PHB with the errata added and problem rules (like grapple) clarified. Instead of fracturing their fan base and gutting their creative department, they would retained people like Monte Cooke, and published cool books like this one, that people were actually interested in.