Rudy from Alpha Investments made a video talking about a huge loss of players for MTG over the years.I've seen this point of smaller sales and attendance in some YouTube videos, together with complaints of card quality. While card quality complaint is new, I belive there always were people doomsaying the end of Magic. I wanted to ask if anyone knows if this time is different and we have a real problem in our hands.
My question here is: does anybody know if there is truth behind the loss of product quality, attendance and sales? Some of the videos I've seen pointed the excess production of masters set as an indication that Wizards is scrambling to sell more cards.
I've compiled many different answers here in this thread up until Page 24. I hope this thick data can help guide the discussion going forward. A lot of the conversation that happened in this thread is already assuming that Magic is in dire straits, and I appreciate the back and forth as to why that is so. However, I would also like to see more of the personal reporting that I'm quoting below. I gathered reports of perceived attendance in events, LGS and personal testimonies as to why you left Magic or what you did when you came back. All from this very thread.
Enjoy.
Cainsson
BFZ Standard pretty much killed Magic over here. From 30+ people FNMs at 8+ LGS across the city, to only the largest 2 firing events with no more than 12 people each.
ed06288
I haven't played in many tournaments the last 6 months and just buy the occasional stray booster pack here and there. It feels great. Might even buy some pre constructed decks and jam in some casual games.
orlouge82
There has definitely been a huge dropoff of players. My local LGS, which only opened in September 2013, routinely had 30+ people for FNM in the Spring and Summer of 2014. The dropoff started with Khans block. This seems to be a common story around different LGSs across the country.
socketto
I havent played standard since rally was the top deck and the time before that i think i tried my hand during theros which was not a fun environment.
Offhisgame
The sales of MTG products are better than ever according to Hasbro conference calls. They are sure to SPECIFICALLY call out strength in MTG in the calls. Now could this be partially due to masters sets? A bit, but clearly the game is still strong... and players will wax and wane.
thememan
While my LGS has had a noticeable drop in attendance, I would attribute that more to the opening of two other stores (And another store that didn't run tournaments now running them) than it is to do with anything involving the game itself. I feel this may be the case in larger metro areas, particularly in the states, as more and more people want to open a game store
Burning_Paladin
And my ancedotal evidence says game stores have been shutting down even in prosperous places like Northern VA or South Eastern PA.
natersroom
[...] when i started i met and hung out with a dozen new players.
Of those 12 people here is the breakdown of where they are now:
2-3 of them play standard still consistently (me included)
6 of them have become commander only players because of the costly nature of standard and it volatility.
3 of them sold their collection after 3 or 4 years and don't play at all... various reasons 2/3 personal 1/3 wizards related
3-4 of them play mostly modern (i'm included in this count with a few commander players just owning one or two modern decks)
1-2 of them just play new set releases and a few weeks after
ChrisBlitz
I don't play because I look at the set spoilers and I see crappy rares/mythics and weak/overcosted cards. I started playing serious around RTR and I see cards so much weaker and less interesting than things like Boros Elite.
31F
I dunno about other peoples stores, but where I'm at, the shop usually has events going. Whether such events be MTG, Yugioh, Pokemon, Force of Will, etc. It also used to L5R awhile back.
jesseber
I know I'm about to quit standard because of Energy decks, but maybe that's just me.
TheOnlyOne652089
Ixalan right now actively drives players away in our local store.
They clearly state as a reason to not draft, they dont like Ixalan as a set and how it plays (the theme of pirates, dinos, vampires isnt the issue, its clearly how the set performance in how games just snowball, players hate that).
Greyimp
Again at me LGS we have FNM not firing. Why? DESIGN IS BAD. The broken cards and broken mechanics (energy) dominate the field and it's just boring. My LGS went from 30 Standard players every FNM around Tarkir days to a steady drop off of barely firing. Modern on the other hand has gone from 10-14 players to 30+ every FNM. Last friday FNM did not fire. Take my time to go play and nothing. My store is a big one with lots of mtg participation too.
motleyslayer
the store that has traditionally run the standard FNMs in my area has been struggling to fire lareg events lately. I've been away for a few months, so I don't know the whole story, but from what I've heard, people just got sick of standard, plus due to a certain few outspoken individuals were bashing the format, which had an impact on attendance from what I hear.
On the other hand, the other 2 stores that run modern FNMs are doing reasonably well, so maybe people just got scared of standard
Squirrelclamp
My LGS struggles to fire events despite that most of its competitors haven't survived over the years. I can't speak for their other customers, but I've felt less compelled to play and buy Magic products
Davidalb
In Portugal, where I live, it's definitively dropping.
Basically if you don't play in Lisbon or Porto, you can't play MTG at all.
I live in a city outside to Lisbon center area (17km from Lisbon center) and three years ago there were two LGS. They both closed due to poor attendances and bad management at least in one of them.
WenSon
i do live in a rural area and need to drive an hour to the next game store to play FNM. while i dont mind spending money in stores to support them, I actually want an incentive for winning an FNM and foil tokens do not really want me to WIN a tournement or even travel that far for it. so i stopped with modern and t2 and returned to the kitchen table with my friends
ISBPathfinder
Two years ago I played standard and I actually was enjoying it at the time. Then my LGS closed up shop and it was a 2+ hour drive to the nearest FNM event. Game stores are having a harder and harder time existing due to internet sales. Being a long time magic player I have definitely shifted from opening packs to singles and you have to be a VERY big store generally to have a singles collection (with decent things for sale) in store these days.
As of this last week the LGS I had since I moved this last spring is closing down as well.
GoblinsOfParadis
I know I am just one person, so my experience does not really mean much. I have not been to my LGS in 2 months, which means I have not played standard or drafted in two months. I have been very busy lately with other life things, such as work.
If I really tried and pushed myself I probably could have made it to some events, but my motivation was fairly low to do so. Standard became boring to me, and I have no desire to play modern. Mostly, I got tired of playing against the same decks over and over again at standard.
hateradio
Just to add an additional datapoint:
I was told by the owner of the Game Store that I sometimes go to that Standard has died at his shop. Tournaments are no longer firing.
Modern and Legacy on the other hand, are doing very well and overall attendance has risen.
drmarkb
My two LGSs
Store A- Nothing but Commander, Commander, Commander. Standard is the most popular constructed format, maybe Pauper, but it is millions of miles behind commander, showdowns just about fire, but it is a stretch.
Store B- Legacy thrives (20-30 player FNMs, which is decent for the UK), Modern does well but its FNMs are earlier, Commander is played by the players of Legacy/Modern, Standard seems to lags behind except for National events, obviously. It runs alongside Legacy. Showdowns don't fire, comp players play 2 FNM events the previous evening, they want to play when their friends are playing- Friday.
RichardCardfield
Purchased almost nothing from recent sets.[...]Generally speaking, however, the gameplay quality of cards is so bad and boring it makes purchasing boosters absurd. You get a crap rare and boring commons, so why buy anything!?
Sepulcra
Personally I just sold my collection, just kept a couple decks I play at my kitchen table with some friends every now and then and that have some meaning to them. [...]As far as attendance being down, it probably is, however I've noticed more "new" players while the old are moving on, in fact, the last FNM I attended was just 10 players, early in Dec, down from the usual 16-20, I thought it'd be due to the holydays, but talking to the LGS owner he said that it's been slowly but steadily declining since early Sept, but newer players seem to show up more often, and when I texted my friends to see if they were comin, they said they were already at our usual hang-out place, figured I'd play for a bit then catch up with them, after 3 turns of the first game I dropped. Playing Vs monored or energy for the bajillionth time just wasn't worth my time.
JasonKeays
My LGS fire its standard every sunday without a problem. We were 10-12 today.
FoodChainGoblins
I just got back from the GP in Santa Clara and for what it's worth, I feel that attendance is going down a bit. I go to VERY few GPs, but I don't remember the last time there was actually space to move around easily at a GP. It's just my feel from the GP, so I could be wrong though.
FlowControl
As someone that quit MTG for 10 years, and sold everything off, it was hard getting back in even a bit. Standard looked, and still does to an extent look not-fun. So I got into Modern on MTGO, and that wasn't cheap.
If standard looked cheaper and/or like a better time, I'd probably hit real-life events more, big or small, for standard or modern.
KLT
Our Prerelease had way less participants than the last few. Just barely enough for 2HG and Single to fire.
Last few Prerelease our second LGS had to deny people because they didn't have enough product, now they have more than enough spares. And the midnight Prerelease is also on the decline.
Something's deterring people from playing the sets and in my opinion that's the mediocre limited format.
Greyimp
Big LGS RIX pre-release saw much lower numbers. Midnight was fine but Saturday events didn't fill. Only 2H giant on Sat filled (limited to 16 teams) with Sunday events all barely signed up for.
You can talk reasons all day but the fact is LGS standard participation is barely existent in previously fertile ground and the disappointment is spreading to new product releases.
Togaras
[regarding Rivals of Ixalan]we had biggest prerelease attendance actually. Amonketh / Hour attendance was pretty low, but this one was very huge.
Most of the complaints throughout the thread appeared to be associated with the state of standard and the direction of design (or maybe development?). People appeared to point out these as the main reasons as to why things weren't going so well. Keep in mind that this data is probably biased: people who think things are bad will come up in a thread like this to say that they indeed are bad, where people who think things are good probably aren't going to show up as often (though some number of people did show up).
Would you like to read Commander stories? Check my latest stories, coming from Lorwyn and Innistrad: Ghoulcaller Gisa and Doran, The Siege Tower! If you like my writing, ask me to write something for your commander as well!
The cardboard quality of the physical cards is definitely down, I don't know when it started, but it was hard for me to ignore by Amonkhet. Comparing the cards from that set to let's say Theros, it's a marked difference in the number of misprints, ink running, and how easily the cards warp. The Ixalan cards not in my sleeve or binder are already starting to resemble FTV foils, which used to be the floor as far as quality.
I don't know about attendance, but after the time Standard has had the last couple years, it would really shock me if attendance at those WASN'T down significantly
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Project Booster Fun makes it less fun to open a booster.
For cardboard quality, even youtubers like Tolarian Community College have demonstrated it like here: https://youtu.be/0gEGyH89-qg
The card stock is a real issue that has been ramping up in the past few years.
If I recall hearing correctly, out of country (outside of USA) places that produce MTG cards have higher quality card stock. Like in the UK apparently they have much better card stock that is more like the stuff from late 90s and early 2000s.
As for attendance? I hear a lot of well, hearsay about how events "fails to fire".
This started from Mark tweeting that the game has lost 8 million active players over the last 3 years and even Rudy did a video talking about the entire situation and the implications of what was said. What I think happened is that the game got a ton of casual players / collectors during and after the RTR boom that Wizards basically lost during the years post Magic Origins. This really shouldn't be all that surprising since they had multiple standard bannings, took basically all good non-rotating format money cards and stacked them in luxury sets that only a subset of players could directly access, and created an over abundance of "bulk" casual fodder products that were received with little fanfare. On top of which, when people wanted more reprints of cards the company kept putting those reprints in masters sets.
So, we have had an over-abundance of reprints in over-priced sets and tons of low demand cards getting reprinted in things like Planechase Anthology, comboed with standard bannings that suppress interest in participating in that format. Stick people into a corner with no where to go and they will just leave, basically.
Also, just because the game is down 8 million active players doesn't mean that if your local community is very active in Magic that suddenly events are going to stop firing.
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
This started from Mark tweeting that the game has lost 8 million active players over the last 3 years and even Rudy did a video talking about the entire situation and the implications of what was said. What I think happened is that the game got a ton of casual players / collectors during and after the RTR boom that Wizards basically lost during the years post Magic Origins. This really shouldn't be all that surprising since they had multiple standard bannings, took basically all good non-rotating format money cards and stacked them in luxury sets that only a subset of players could directly access, and created an over abundance of "bulk" casual fodder products that were received with little fanfare. On top of which, when people wanted more reprints of cards the company kept putting those reprints in masters sets.
So, we have had an over-abundance of reprints in over-priced sets and tons of low demand cards getting reprinted in things like Planechase Anthology, comboed with standard bannings that suppress interest in participating in that format. Stick people into a corner with no where to go and they will just leave, basically.
Also, just because the game is down 8 million active players doesn't mean that if your local community is very active in Magic that suddenly events are going to stop firing.
Holy molly! I went to watch the video you mentioned.
8 MILLION PEOPLE MISSING? Jeeezz. Man, this is the craziest thing I've ever seen. I mean, I'm not going to claim the doomsday scenario is happening, because Magic has bounced back from so many apocalyptic predictions that it would be silly at this point.
However, ever since Ravnica rotated out, I felt like standard was in a really, REALLY bad place. When BFZ came in with its mediocre cards and standard became four-color grindfest, I felt like the playability of the flagship format of the game had gone completely downhill. All that said, I think BFZ was the set that sold the most out of recent magic sets, probably carried on its back by the recognition of its name. After that though, watered down Innistrad, broken-and-yet-boring Kaladesh, subpar Amonketh and Ixalan... the situation is getting dire, I would say. Not to mention all the bannings and design mistakes. I mean, look at the current standard format: it is basically energy vs monored. It is so bad that it is painful to watch. I saw LSV doing a throwback standard video back when it was scars, original innistrad and RTR, and the difference is simply overwhelming. Standard was in a completely different level.
I blame design choices. Killing everything that makes magic great like good counterspells, good removal, one-mana dorks and stuff to make standard 'midrange grindfest' is just miserable. I'm saddened by this. I don't think it is doomsday scenario, but if things keep going like this, if design doesn't change and standard gets better... I don't even know what might happen (and I didn't even mention the competition with online tcgs and ccgs).
Private Mod Note
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.
Would you like to read Commander stories? Check my latest stories, coming from Lorwyn and Innistrad: Ghoulcaller Gisa and Doran, The Siege Tower! If you like my writing, ask me to write something for your commander as well!
This started from Mark tweeting that the game has lost 8 million active players over the last 3 years and even Rudy did a video talking about the entire situation and the implications of what was said. What I think happened is that the game got a ton of casual players / collectors during and after the RTR boom that Wizards basically lost during the years post Magic Origins. This really shouldn't be all that surprising since they had multiple standard bannings, took basically all good non-rotating format money cards and stacked them in luxury sets that only a subset of players could directly access, and created an over abundance of "bulk" casual fodder products that were received with little fanfare. On top of which, when people wanted more reprints of cards the company kept putting those reprints in masters sets.
So, we have had an over-abundance of reprints in over-priced sets and tons of low demand cards getting reprinted in things like Planechase Anthology, comboed with standard bannings that suppress interest in participating in that format. Stick people into a corner with no where to go and they will just leave, basically.
Also, just because the game is down 8 million active players doesn't mean that if your local community is very active in Magic that suddenly events are going to stop firing.
Holy molly! I went to watch the video you mentioned.
8 MILLION PEOPLE MISSING? Jeeezz. Man, this is the craziest thing I've ever seen. I mean, I'm not going to claim the doomsday scenario is happening, because Magic has bounced back from so many apocalyptic predictions that it would be silly at this point.
However, ever since Ravnica rotated out, I felt like standard was in a really, REALLY bad place. When BFZ came in with its mediocre cards and standard became four-color grindfest, I felt like the playability of the flagship format of the game had gone completely downhill. All that said, I think BFZ was the set that sold the most out of recent magic sets, probably carried on its back by the recognition of its name. After that though, watered down Innistrad, broken-and-yet-boring Kaladesh, subpar Amonketh and Ixalan... the situation is getting dire, I would say. Not to mention all the bannings and design mistakes. I mean, look at the current standard format: it is basically energy vs monored. It is so bad that it is painful to watch. I saw LSV doing a throwback standard video back when it was scars, original innistrad and RTR, and the difference is simply overwhelming. Standard was in a completely different level.
I blame design choices. Killing everything that makes magic great like good counterspells, good removal, one-mana dorks and stuff to make standard 'midrange grindfest' is just miserable. I'm saddened by this. I don't think it is doomsday scenario, but if things keep going like this, if design doesn't change and standard gets better... I don't even know what might happen (and I didn't even mention the competition with online tcgs and ccgs).
Well, there's a silver lining to this entire story. First, it's Mark Rosewater we are talking about and the conversations that this originated from are confusing to say the least. They definitely lost players, but it wouldn't be surprising if the numbers aren't quite as bad as 8 million. The fact that Mark mentioned 20 million at one point and 12 million at another is still probably more information than WoTC wanted to have spreading around the net right now. I'm just tired of wizards constant "it's too strong for standard" or "we can't print this in a sealed product because of scalpers" excuses they have been making to milk the community dry via the masters sets.
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Careful there, you might overwork your noggin when thinkin about dem birds of paradise. Its a very complex and powerful card. Too strong for the players of tomorrow. Here, have a hope tender instead. /s
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Cancel Culture is the real reason why everyone's not allowed to have nice things anymore." - Anonymous
"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" - Mark 8:36
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta
This started from Mark tweeting that the game has lost 8 million active players over the last 3 years and even Rudy did a video talking about the entire situation and the implications of what was said. What I think happened is that the game got a ton of casual players / collectors during and after the RTR boom that Wizards basically lost during the years post Magic Origins. This really shouldn't be all that surprising since they had multiple standard bannings, took basically all good non-rotating format money cards and stacked them in luxury sets that only a subset of players could directly access, and created an over abundance of "bulk" casual fodder products that were received with little fanfare. On top of which, when people wanted more reprints of cards the company kept putting those reprints in masters sets.
So, we have had an over-abundance of reprints in over-priced sets and tons of low demand cards getting reprinted in things like Planechase Anthology, comboed with standard bannings that suppress interest in participating in that format. Stick people into a corner with no where to go and they will just leave, basically.
Also, just because the game is down 8 million active players doesn't mean that if your local community is very active in Magic that suddenly events are going to stop firing.
Holy molly! I went to watch the video you mentioned.
8 MILLION PEOPLE MISSING? Jeeezz. Man, this is the craziest thing I've ever seen. I mean, I'm not going to claim the doomsday scenario is happening, because Magic has bounced back from so many apocalyptic predictions that it would be silly at this point.
However, ever since Ravnica rotated out, I felt like standard was in a really, REALLY bad place. When BFZ came in with its mediocre cards and standard became four-color grindfest, I felt like the playability of the flagship format of the game had gone completely downhill. All that said, I think BFZ was the set that sold the most out of recent magic sets, probably carried on its back by the recognition of its name. After that though, watered down Innistrad, broken-and-yet-boring Kaladesh, subpar Amonketh and Ixalan... the situation is getting dire, I would say. Not to mention all the bannings and design mistakes. I mean, look at the current standard format: it is basically energy vs monored. It is so bad that it is painful to watch. I saw LSV doing a throwback standard video back when it was scars, original innistrad and RTR, and the difference is simply overwhelming. Standard was in a completely different level.
I blame design choices. Killing everything that makes magic great like good counterspells, good removal, one-mana dorks and stuff to make standard 'midrange grindfest' is just miserable. I'm saddened by this. I don't think it is doomsday scenario, but if things keep going like this, if design doesn't change and standard gets better... I don't even know what might happen (and I didn't even mention the competition with online tcgs and ccgs).
BFZ Standard pretty much killed Magic over here. From 30+ people FNMs at 8+ LGS across the city, to only the largest 2 firing events with no more than 12 people each.
It was stupidly expensive, extremelly boring, and I also heard a lot of stores pissed because they lost a lot of money over-ordering FRF, DTK, BFZ and OGW because they kept hoping WotC would complete the set of Fetchlands for Standard like they did the Checklands, Shocklands and Temples before.
It was also the time judges got banned for something they had no control over and stores got harassed about running Proxy Vintage, not to mention a lot of people don't like the unflattering art in a lot of cards or that MaRo does almost all of his communication with the playerbase through a politically-charged blog site filled with people who like to micro-manage others' thoughts. Not sure about you but as a person who suffered this kind of behavior at school, which is part of the reason I was forced to become reclusive and in turn fell in love with traditional games, I don't appreciate creative and PR catering to bullies.
Ixalan is like a bane and a boon to me. I am mexican, I can see the grand temple of Tenochtitlan from my office window at work, right next to the Metropolitan Cathedral. I once upon a time wished to be a paleonthologist, and spent my teen years being madly in love with Age of Discovery and Golden Age of Piracy history. Ixalan could be a treasure trove or the greatest hobby-related dissapointment of my life.
I absolutely love the natives, I love that the merfolk have a cthonic underbelly that makes them feel menacing and mysterious as I imagine smaller tribes felt about the massive yet reclussive Maya kingdom. I love that the Sun Empire is militant to a fault and very willing to push their weight around with the other rivals, which is very representative of the war-for-war's sake culture of the Aztec empire wich made other kingdoms side with the conquistadors against them.
I love that the vampires have a legitimate reason to be in Ixalan and how unnecessarily refined and taboo-surrounded they are, also the contrast between the freedom of Ixalan and the opressiveness of Torrezon which evokes the mixture of glory and desperation the Spanish empire experienced during the 15th century as relations between european countries became increasingly rotten and the new world signified both a massive expansion for the empire and a continent-sized reason to attack them with renewed force.
But then we have the pirates, and things fall apart for me. First of all there's a disconnect with how violent and cruel they're shown in art, flavor text and effects. And the poor opressed precious darlings of whomever is writing the fiction. Dear god what the **** happened here? I understand they're going with the "better rule in hell than serve in heaven" deal but not only does the insufferably biased support the get each wednesday scratch me the wrong way, pirates were a thing in the first place because of the power dynamics that developed as imperial powers grew in reach way past the borders of their territories and seafaring guerrillas became a viable way to play the game of gold. Ixalan pirates rob us of the most important figures and relationships in the whole history of piracy: Queen Elizabeth II of England and Francis Drake/Walter Raleigh, Thomas Modyford and Henry Morgan, William of Orange and the Beggars of the Sea, etc. All because millenials have an unhealthy obsession with underdogs I guess.
We don't even get a Black Bart, Blackbeard of Calico Jack unless Angrath's crew shows up in Rivals with all the the actually cool and interesting pirates. Otherwise I'll leave Ixalan wishing it had been a 3-faction set.
The dinosaurs are goofy as ****, but entirelly innofensive and charming in a cute animal companion kind of way, I didn't expect much more from dinos in Muraganda so I'm perfectly ok with what I got in Ixalan.
It may also be that the game is returning to normal numbers, keep in mind between 2012 and 2014 we had an 8 million increase. We had the following happen that doesn't really exist from every year after 2014 that has led to this 8 million player loss
-Innistrad block
-Ravnica block
-Modern Masters 2013
-Thoughtseize reprint
-Modern was really kicking off in popularity as were modern staple prices
-Khans of Tarkir with a lot of playables and fetch land reprint
-The GP promos...well they were not the greatest but at the time, pretty good
-The FNM promos, while in general have always been eh, there were a decent amount of really good ones and playable ones
(things I can't easily cite myself yet but found numbers from an article on EchoMTG)
it seems 7 million is our accepted static number and around Innistrad in 2011 is when it really started taking off with a 35% player increase in 2012, 2013 and 2014. So the fact that a lot of factors that led to such huge growth in such a short period of time not being there from after Khans of Tarkir can't be a coincidence with the 8 million leaving in three years. Is product quality and the state of Standard a factor? Absolutely but definitely can't be the only one.
The trouble is the model wizards uses for the game and how they chose to deal with the situation of high demand cards moving forward. Standard bannings did hit standard, but standard is a flash in the pan format that has it's ups and downs no matter what they do. Modern is the real culprit and how they handled the demand when the population boom happened. The reason myself (and a lot of people) ended up getting bitter at wizards is that they promoted a really good format and failed to support it adequately to keep prices down. Meanwhile corporate mostly just sees dollars and financial numbers going up because their reformulation to the product line up allows for higher margins, so to them everything is going great while a lot of resentment and financial fatigue started setting in. This also is happening at the same time that a lot of game companies started to create endless money sinks via RNG systems. Originally, games had expansion passes and then the base game, but Blizzard Activision and a number of companies began to adopt tactics used in the mobile industry to better monetize their enfranchised player base.
With all free time spending on hobbies being equal, this starts really causing a lot of issues if someone is trying to play a variety of different games across genres, from CCGs like Magic to online arena shooters like Destiny / Overwatch, and Battlefront. That's why there's such a massive push back from the consumer base and on social media channels like YouTube right now. It's not any one sector of the entertainment market: It's the entire market across all the games doing this. Also, behind closed doors a lot of people have started to support content creators via patreon and services like Youtube Red because the advertising system fell through that used to help pay for the content, so now we have even more forces pressing on consumers.
Basically, if there is a bubble it's probably the entire entertainment industry and not just Wizards of the Coast. Wizards is just caught up in the entire thing and is probably making things worse instead of better.
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Maybe its the nestisa talking but I seem to remember good times in the past. I remember Invasion and Ravnica and Zen yes even Time Spiral standards... they were good, They were fun for the common gamer. You could homebrew something and win a local torunemt even if people were netdecking (or scry decking....) I remember urza's and Mirrdon standard they were great for the competitive gamer. I even remember some oddball sets like Onslaught and Lorwin and Kamagawa. Gimicy sets that have a neat feel to em.
Maybe I am just getting old but standard is both more expensive then its ever been if you want to win. back in the day you COULD homebrew something with just a box +$20 bucks to fill out critical cards. now you can't. When is the last time you saw a T1 good deck that is primarly common/uncommons (with maybe some rare mana fixing if you want to get all fancy). I can remember when our store had its first ever standard in print nonfoil card priced at over $20, It was Arcbound Ravager during that time when affinity was the only deck everyone played (before it was banned) large numbers of our local play group lost their minds, IT was priced at $25. Now I see standard cards at $50 and people don't blink an eye. Good common/uncommons keep rare/mythic prices down.
Maybe its the nestisa talking but I seem to remember good times in the past. I remember Invasion and Ravnica and Zen yes even Time Spiral standards... they were good, They were fun for the common gamer. You could homebrew something and win a local torunemt even if people were netdecking (or scry decking....) I remember urza's and Mirrdon standard they were great for the competitive gamer. I even remember some oddball sets like Onslaught and Lorwin and Kamagawa. Gimicy sets that have a neat feel to em.
Maybe I am just getting old but standard is both more expensive then its ever been if you want to win. back in the day you COULD homebrew something with just a box +$20 bucks to fill out critical cards. now you can't. When is the last time you saw a T1 good deck that is primarly common/uncommons (with maybe some rare mana fixing if you want to get all fancy). I can remember when our store had its first ever standard in print nonfoil card priced at over $20, It was Arcbound Ravager during that time when affinity was the only deck everyone played (before it was banned) large numbers of our local play group lost their minds, IT was priced at $25. Now I see standard cards at $50 and people don't blink an eye. Good common/uncommons keep rare/mythic prices down.
This was by design. I came back when they just got done with Dragons of Tarkir and went to the two block design (along with trying to cut down the standard rotation time, that was a bad idea). What wizards of the coast did is they poached all the value out of the preconstructed products, reconfigured the line up of sets to put powerful staples of non-rotating formats into luxury sets, price the sets above what most players are comfortable paying, and then reduced the over-all power level of commons and uncommons in standard sets. They've been starting to back out on this recently, but at this point I'd call Fatal Push to be a freak accident and miracle of nature to even show up.
Also, because of how they did this, it's turning off a lot of people who potentially would play the game. I've tried getting my brother back into the game and he doesn't want to touch the thing after seeing the price of masters sets along with the price of decent lands. I've heard the same thing echoed by every single person I've tried to get into the game. The fact is, they know that they are getting ripped off if they buy the starter products because there's so much media and information now they can literally whip out the phone, go to a few sites, and see what established players think of lands or card XYZ. Basically, wizards thought they could push standard and throw all the rest to the wayside. They were very wrong. Are they just hoping that MTG Arena will bring in the new people and somehow stars will align?
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1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
It's not just Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro but online retailers and large chain stores continuing to decimate local game stores simply because they can't afford to offer competitive pricing. I also understand that most players and collectors don't have a lot of expendable income and want the best value for their money but that always comes with a not so apparent cost which is the loss of local game stores. Wizards of the Coast really needs to get their heads out of their asses and look at where Magic will be and what state their community will be in the next 5 to 10 years.
I saw what Wizards of the Coast is doing with MTG Arena and it's basically a carbon copy of Hearthstone based on the screenshot I saw on their homepage when they have the money to hire people to develop a better mobile game to help get more people into Magic. That's not how you revamp MTGO and expect it to do well, the company hired a Microsoft intern as their CEO in order to help resolve this problem for crying out loud! Iconic Masters failed because they didn't reprint anything that was worth any value in the set minus Mana Drain which is expected to dip to $60 by the release of Masters 25 next year.
If Masters 25 is filled with nothing but low value reprints just like with Iconic Masters, then you can expect to see more people getting out of Magic. The problem is that they plan sets so far ahead in advance to the point that when a new set gets released people start to panic and act like the sky is falling. They can't afford to screw this up on the game's 25th Anniversary with a lot of local game store owners already scaling back orders for Iconic Masters while investing in Explorers of Ixalan, From the Vault: Transform, Rivals of Ixalan, and other future products down the line.
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America Bless Christ Jesus
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Cancel Culture is the real reason why everyone's not allowed to have nice things anymore." - Anonymous
"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" - Mark 8:36
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta
The problem is they shouldn't even be releasing masters sets as often as they are doing it. It's fine as a way to cover a lot of bases quickly on reprints, but the sets are far too expensive for most people to purchase and they can achieve a much better result spreading the cards that need reprinting into the supplementary products and standard sets. You know, like they used to do before they decided they didn't need core sets anymore and that they could cram all expensive reprints into luxury sets to just greedily milk their player base financially. It sort of looks like they are doing it now by putting some expensive cards into Explorers of Ixalan, and who knows what we will see later. I'm just afraid of what the new core set is going to look like in the summer if they are just going to keep doing this masters set insanity on top of it.
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1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Somewhat playing devil's advocate here, but hasn't wizards/hasbro been having record profits year after year recently? They must not be doing too bad.
Wizards is probably intentionally cannibalizing it's own products in an attempt to boost profits and keep out competitors. Although individual sets sell less, the company sells more product overall within the course of a year, boosting profits. That's my guess.
Despite this I still feel they are trying to mimic pokemon and are doing too many short term fixes.
And I'm being mean here but it sounds like some of you guys might be burned out and should just take a break from the game. I haven't played in many tournaments the last 6 months and just buy the occasional stray booster pack here and there. It feels great. Might even buy some pre constructed decks and jam in some casual games.
But then again, part of the reason I've stopped keeping up as much with it is because of some of the things you guys touched on above. I wonder if Wizards will ever go back to their old way of doing things. I felt their old strategy allowed them to carve out a niche in the tcg market.
Somewhat playing devil's advocate here, but hasn't wizards/hasbro been having record profits year after year recently? They must not be doing too bad.
Wizards is probably intentionally cannibalizing it's own products in an attempt to boost profits and keep out competitors. Although individual sets sell less, the company sells more product overall within the course of a year, boosting profits. That's my guess.
Despite this I still feel they are trying to mimic pokemon and are doing too many short term fixes.
And I'm being mean here but it sounds like some of you guys might be burned out and should just take a break from the game. I haven't played in many tournaments the last 6 months and just buy the occasional stray booster pack here and there. It feels great. Might even buy some pre constructed decks and jam in some casual games.
But then again, part of the reason I've stopped keeping up as much with it is because of some of the things you guys touched on above. I wonder if Wizards will ever go back to their old way of doing things. I felt their old strategy allowed them to carve out a niche in the tcg market.
I liked it when their product lineup was exactly like how it was from 2001 to 2008. This is how I would change it.
4 theme decks per set, unless core set, in which there are 5.
Core set every other year, although I wouldn't mind if there was a core set every year. In the case of the year without a core set, unlike way back when, there would be a fourth set, instead of no set.
Tournament packs. These can be replaced with official three pack boosters with a promo card.
2 player starter pack that guides you through the game.
World Championship decks, replica deck of the world champions. I personally don't care about these, although I would like to see a return of gold border, not in world championship decks, but in some promotional collectors cards.
$25 bundles with 6 boosters, although I would like the $35 ones they released between 9th edition to Morningtide.
Somewhat playing devil's advocate here, but hasn't wizards/hasbro been having record profits year after year recently? They must not be doing too bad.
Wizards is probably intentionally cannibalizing it's own products in an attempt to boost profits and keep out competitors. Although individual sets sell less, the company sells more product overall within the course of a year, boosting profits. That's my guess.
Despite this I still feel they are trying to mimic pokemon and are doing too many short term fixes.
And I'm being mean here but it sounds like some of you guys might be burned out and should just take a break from the game. I haven't played in many tournaments the last 6 months and just buy the occasional stray booster pack here and there. It feels great. Might even buy some pre constructed decks and jam in some casual games.
But then again, part of the reason I've stopped keeping up as much with it is because of some of the things you guys touched on above. I wonder if Wizards will ever go back to their old way of doing things. I felt their old strategy allowed them to carve out a niche in the tcg market.
You got it all wrong, Wizards of the Coast are intentionally cannibalizing their own products in order to leave local game stores behind as a means of making it harder for people to play Magic. They're doing this by releasing reprints of cards with low value which makes it very difficult for these stores to move cards around to make money off of.
Wizards of the Coast needs to go back to the sustainable release schedule they had back when they were still releasing set blocks before doing away with them to bring back core sets. Pokémon TCG's release schedule is vastly different from Magic's which doesn't make sense as to why Wizards of the Coast thought it was a good idea to emulate one of their competitors when all it did was backfire against them.
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Cancel Culture is the real reason why everyone's not allowed to have nice things anymore." - Anonymous
"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" - Mark 8:36
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta
Somewhat playing devil's advocate here, but hasn't wizards/hasbro been having record profits year after year recently? They must not be doing too bad.
Wizards is probably intentionally cannibalizing it's own products in an attempt to boost profits and keep out competitors. Although individual sets sell less, the company sells more product overall within the course of a year, boosting profits. That's my guess.
Despite this I still feel they are trying to mimic pokemon and are doing too many short term fixes.
And I'm being mean here but it sounds like some of you guys might be burned out and should just take a break from the game. I haven't played in many tournaments the last 6 months and just buy the occasional stray booster pack here and there. It feels great. Might even buy some pre constructed decks and jam in some casual games.
But then again, part of the reason I've stopped keeping up as much with it is because of some of the things you guys touched on above. I wonder if Wizards will ever go back to their old way of doing things. I felt their old strategy allowed them to carve out a niche in the tcg market.
You got it all wrong, Wizards of the Coast are intentionally cannibalizing their own products in order to leave local game stores behind as a means of making it harder for people to play Magic. They're doing this by releasing reprints of cards with low value which makes it very difficult for these stores to move cards around to make money off of.
Wizards of the Coast needs to go back to the sustainable release schedule they had back when they were still releasing set blocks before doing away with them to bring back core sets. Pokémon TCG's release schedule is vastly different from Magic's which doesn't make sense as to why Wizards of the Coast thought it was a good idea to emulate one of their competitors when all it did was backfire against them.
Pokemon releases booster sets every February, May, August, and November, and it has never changed. MTG, for the past years, releases sets in February, May, July, and October. Both games have a sustainable release schedule, at least for the main sets anyway. For the extra stuff, that's a different story. Pokemon have all these box sets that do not have a consistent release schedule. MTG probably has the most consistent release schedule until they decided to release 2 masters sets, and unstable, thus having to move everything around.
The release schedule for standard sets in 2017 is the exact same, and in 2018 it will be the exact same as well, give or take a month, as the release schedule in 2004, and every year in between.
Duel decks have been released at the same time these past years.
Commander and FTV releases have been switched just for this year.
The difference is 2 masters sets in 2017 instead of the usual 1, other than that, they have a consistent release schedule. It's not like they sometimes have 3 standard sets one year, or 5 in another, or 3 duel decks one year, 1 in another, or having commander released in November one year, August the next, then May in another.
Yugioh has the worst release schedule in terms of consistency. You have your 4 core booster sets with a consistent release schedule, much so that if the Japanese version is released in a certain month, the US version would be released 4 months later. As for the other products like decks and non core boosters, in Japan, they have a structured releases schedule for those, and in the US, their release schedule has been erratic.
Then you have cardfight vanguard. I can't even predict what product is coming out when.
Well here is the thing with Magic the Gathering right now and the current population of people who partake in the game. Originally before the RTR boom the game was primarily composed of people who partook of the game as a hobby. They both built decks and they played decks, so when something bad happened in a format people would still generally keep playing the game anyway.
Then we had the RTR boom. This brought a lot of new blood into the game and wizards continued the upward trend with players going up until the Kahns block caused some deck price issues. The catch with this boom, however, is that it brought in people who liked to play the game as a game. There were more people drawn into it as a hobby, but there is a difference between someone who just wants to play magic and someone who both builds and plays magic. These people are impacted a lot more by the meta than deck building players and usually go for the path of least resistance when it comes to getting a competitive deck.
So what happens to card prices? Well, since there aren't as many deck builders this amplified the cost on cards that got spotlighted in tournaments like the pro-tour and Star City Open, from popular personalities like Mr. Olive and Craig Wescoe, and sometimes even youtube brewers. The increased print runs to meet the growing population of magic players helped a bit to keep prices from going too out of control, but this mass printing also did something else: it amplified the devaluing of cards as well that don't make the spotlight. Even if a card is only marginally worse than a mythic printing, if it didn't get spotlighted it's price would tank into oblivion.
Fast forward to BFZ -> Kaladesh. During this period of time Wizards started reconfiguring the product line up and removed core sets from publication. The reason for this became a bit more apparent later on, but it seems that the idea was to take any high value card that was in a secondary product and move it into the luxury masters sets and if this succeeded, they could carry the idea over into Commander as well and start making a masters set dedicated to that particular type of play (hence Iconic Masters). At the same time they also had design issues in the sets and had to make multiple bannings in standard across the course of two years, introduced and discontinued masterpieces (which actually did do good things for singles sales before the public started getting used to their inclusion), and introduced large quantities of low demand secondary products onto the market at rather heafty MSRP values.
So, I don't really know what to say on this. The company promoted an audience that enjoys playing the game, but not necessarily building decks for the game, which increased stress on a subset of the entire card pool. They over-printed cards that the majority of players have little interest in due to how they marketed and promoted the sets, and then under-printed the cards that are actually desired by the player base.
Now that the company has thoroughly over-extended it's resources they are dealing with a collapsing marketplace. They have a minimal influx of new players due to the prices on the pushed cards being just oblivion level high and it's easy for even those with no knowledge of magic to just go to review sites or Youtube to figure out which products are good buys. Standard was nuked to oblivion by the bannings, pushed and underwhelming novelty mechanics (energy on one end, brick and -1/-1 counters on the other), and probably Kaladesh. Modern was a crap shoot for a while and the paywall is still very high to get into the format for most new players. Legacy is basically dead. Commander is fun, but it's a format that only works for a limited number of people, and the great irony is that if MTG Arena is good the push to digital may actually cause more Local Gaming Stores to close than the multiple over priced and low demand products that got pushed to distributors. We're talking Mind Vs Might, Planechase Anthology, Amonkhet -> Hour of Devastation, and now quite possibly Iconic Masters along with all the other forgotten products still lingering on store shelves.
Wowzas, I did not expect that post to get that big. But anyway, that is my take on the entire situation right now without going into the nuanced stuff involving the origins of all of this. Namely it always comes back to MM2013 and True-Name nemesis.
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1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
There has definitely been a huge dropoff of players. My local LGS, which only opened in September 2013, routinely had 30+ people for FNM in the Spring and Summer of 2014. The dropoff started with Khans block. This seems to be a common story around different LGSs across the country.
There are likely a variety of reasons for it, but "power level" plays a very minor role. RTR-THS Standard was a very healthy format that supported a lot of different deck types, despite the fact that two to three different decks were dominant (Mono-B, Mono-U, Azorius/Esper Control). The Theros block itself was very appealing to a wide audience, despite not having the "high power level" that many of the more serious players demand. Magic experienced a huge influx of casual players to FNMs during this time, and this level started to decline dramatically with Khans block, which ushered in a Standard of homogeneous midrange goodstuff decks, to the joy of veterans and chagrin of the more casual players.
Unfortunately for Wizards, casuals crack packs, while the veterans who "know better" just buy singles, thus starting the cycle of Wizards trying all sorts of gimmicks to drive sales of packs.
It's obvious that Wizards is trying to recapture the magic of RTR-THS Standard with Ixalan (i.e. by trying to appeal to casuals again), but it's not really working as well as they'd like, I'd imagine.
honestly i wish they would reinvest back into the magic community. the rewards program got me going to as many tourneys as possible to try to get the promos. the fat packs had a lot more to them. Also pre releases where a big deal. i remember going to a convention hall and loving the experience of playing a vast number of people i wouldnt normally see. FNM promos were relevant cards. i really dont need nor care about these crap treasure flip tokens. also maybe this is just me being old but i remember when spells were spells and every creature didnt come attached with a spell to it. that created diversity in deck design. I havent played standard since rally was the top deck and the time before that i think i tried my hand during theros which was not a fun environment.
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Tooth & Nail........Grishoalbrand....Living Dominance....Tezzerator.........Vannifar Pod
My Decks that have been BANNED
DRS Jund | Kiki-Pod | Bloom Titan | Splinter Twin | KCI
honestly i wish they would reinvest back into the magic community. the rewards program got me going to as many tourneys as possible to try to get the promos. the fat packs had a lot more to them. Also pre releases where a big deal. i remember going to a convention hall and loving the experience of playing a vast number of people i wouldnt normally see. FNM promos were relevant cards. i really dont need nor care about these crap treasure flip tokens. also maybe this is just me being old but i remember when spells were spells and every creature didnt come attached with a spell to it. that created diversity in deck design. I havent played standard since rally was the top deck and the time before that i think i tried my hand during theros which was not a fun environment.
The spells attached to creatures and the multi-mode spells are part of wizards attempt to solve an issue they observed with the older MTG sets. They want the matches to be about skill and not luck. In the older sets many of the most played cards are extremely powerful, but are very linear. This was fine before because Wizards wasn't trying to push the game as a sport so it didn't matter as much if someone could build a deck and then just run into an unanswerable nemesis. Modern actually still has this problem to some extent, which is why pros don't exactly like the format a whole lot on the highest level. Instead of getting to play what they want, they have to play whatever flavor of the month is going to win.
Part of the problem I'm seeing is that people are flocking to formats and they are getting stuck either playing whatever is in standard or going into modern. One would think modern is less restrictive than standard, but because certain cards are just above and beyond others modern can be about as restrictive in deck building as standard, at least competitively. Modern one can build flavor of the week decks, but the ones that are good day to day are pretty much already established. 5c humans has been the newest deck to actually stick.
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1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Magic is too ******* expensive. They've been catering to the "MTG Finance" crowd and the "collectors" for too long and now no one wants to actually play the game.
Oh, and you should remove the video link. It's not necessary for this discussion and it would be nice if reactionary YouTube morons didn't get undeserved ad revenue.
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My question here is: does anybody know if there is truth behind the loss of product quality, attendance and sales? Some of the videos I've seen pointed the excess production of masters set as an indication that Wizards is scrambling to sell more cards.
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I've compiled many different answers here in this thread up until Page 24. I hope this thick data can help guide the discussion going forward. A lot of the conversation that happened in this thread is already assuming that Magic is in dire straits, and I appreciate the back and forth as to why that is so. However, I would also like to see more of the personal reporting that I'm quoting below. I gathered reports of perceived attendance in events, LGS and personal testimonies as to why you left Magic or what you did when you came back. All from this very thread.
Enjoy.
Most of the complaints throughout the thread appeared to be associated with the state of standard and the direction of design (or maybe development?). People appeared to point out these as the main reasons as to why things weren't going so well. Keep in mind that this data is probably biased: people who think things are bad will come up in a thread like this to say that they indeed are bad, where people who think things are good probably aren't going to show up as often (though some number of people did show up).
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Here are some useful links that I found spread throughout the thread:
The perspective of a LGS regarding recent problems of Magic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9jokCjB8Hs
An article from Craig Wescoe on how to fix standard:
http://magic.tcgplayer.com/db/article.asp?ID=14365&writer=Craig Wescoe&articledate=12-29-2017
An article about innovation in Magic:
https://www.rollingstone.com/glixel/features/how-the-company-behind-dd-magic-and-avalon-hill-innovate-w514703
An article from Melissa DeTora on block monsters (and how energy is one):
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/play-design/block-monsters-and-how-we-avoid-them-2018-01-05
A rant from Patrick Sullivan regarding the current problems of Standard design:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=356ilzFF8BE&feature=youtu.be
Hope this helps.
Read my other stories as well (some ongoing):
Reaper King (a horror story), Kaalia of the Vast (an origin story), Sequels for Innistrad (Alternative sequels for Inn), Grey Areas (Odric's fanfic), Royal Succession (goblins),The Tracker's Message (eldrazi on Innistrad) and Ugin and his Eye (the end of OGW).
I don't know about attendance, but after the time Standard has had the last couple years, it would really shock me if attendance at those WASN'T down significantly
The card stock is a real issue that has been ramping up in the past few years.
If I recall hearing correctly, out of country (outside of USA) places that produce MTG cards have higher quality card stock. Like in the UK apparently they have much better card stock that is more like the stuff from late 90s and early 2000s.
As for attendance? I hear a lot of well, hearsay about how events "fails to fire".
So, we have had an over-abundance of reprints in over-priced sets and tons of low demand cards getting reprinted in things like Planechase Anthology, comboed with standard bannings that suppress interest in participating in that format. Stick people into a corner with no where to go and they will just leave, basically.
Also, just because the game is down 8 million active players doesn't mean that if your local community is very active in Magic that suddenly events are going to stop firing.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
8 MILLION PEOPLE MISSING? Jeeezz. Man, this is the craziest thing I've ever seen. I mean, I'm not going to claim the doomsday scenario is happening, because Magic has bounced back from so many apocalyptic predictions that it would be silly at this point.
However, ever since Ravnica rotated out, I felt like standard was in a really, REALLY bad place. When BFZ came in with its mediocre cards and standard became four-color grindfest, I felt like the playability of the flagship format of the game had gone completely downhill. All that said, I think BFZ was the set that sold the most out of recent magic sets, probably carried on its back by the recognition of its name. After that though, watered down Innistrad, broken-and-yet-boring Kaladesh, subpar Amonketh and Ixalan... the situation is getting dire, I would say. Not to mention all the bannings and design mistakes. I mean, look at the current standard format: it is basically energy vs monored. It is so bad that it is painful to watch. I saw LSV doing a throwback standard video back when it was scars, original innistrad and RTR, and the difference is simply overwhelming. Standard was in a completely different level.
I blame design choices. Killing everything that makes magic great like good counterspells, good removal, one-mana dorks and stuff to make standard 'midrange grindfest' is just miserable. I'm saddened by this. I don't think it is doomsday scenario, but if things keep going like this, if design doesn't change and standard gets better... I don't even know what might happen (and I didn't even mention the competition with online tcgs and ccgs).
Read my other stories as well (some ongoing):
Reaper King (a horror story), Kaalia of the Vast (an origin story), Sequels for Innistrad (Alternative sequels for Inn), Grey Areas (Odric's fanfic), Royal Succession (goblins),The Tracker's Message (eldrazi on Innistrad) and Ugin and his Eye (the end of OGW).
Well, there's a silver lining to this entire story. First, it's Mark Rosewater we are talking about and the conversations that this originated from are confusing to say the least. They definitely lost players, but it wouldn't be surprising if the numbers aren't quite as bad as 8 million. The fact that Mark mentioned 20 million at one point and 12 million at another is still probably more information than WoTC wanted to have spreading around the net right now. I'm just tired of wizards constant "it's too strong for standard" or "we can't print this in a sealed product because of scalpers" excuses they have been making to milk the community dry via the masters sets.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2IX3Hou1NM
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Cancel Culture is the real reason why everyone's not allowed to have nice things anymore." - Anonymous
"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" - Mark 8:36
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta
It was stupidly expensive, extremelly boring, and I also heard a lot of stores pissed because they lost a lot of money over-ordering FRF, DTK, BFZ and OGW because they kept hoping WotC would complete the set of Fetchlands for Standard like they did the Checklands, Shocklands and Temples before.
It was also the time judges got banned for something they had no control over and stores got harassed about running Proxy Vintage, not to mention a lot of people don't like the unflattering art in a lot of cards or that MaRo does almost all of his communication with the playerbase through a politically-charged blog site filled with people who like to micro-manage others' thoughts. Not sure about you but as a person who suffered this kind of behavior at school, which is part of the reason I was forced to become reclusive and in turn fell in love with traditional games, I don't appreciate creative and PR catering to bullies.
Ixalan is like a bane and a boon to me. I am mexican, I can see the grand temple of Tenochtitlan from my office window at work, right next to the Metropolitan Cathedral. I once upon a time wished to be a paleonthologist, and spent my teen years being madly in love with Age of Discovery and Golden Age of Piracy history. Ixalan could be a treasure trove or the greatest hobby-related dissapointment of my life.
I absolutely love the natives, I love that the merfolk have a cthonic underbelly that makes them feel menacing and mysterious as I imagine smaller tribes felt about the massive yet reclussive Maya kingdom. I love that the Sun Empire is militant to a fault and very willing to push their weight around with the other rivals, which is very representative of the war-for-war's sake culture of the Aztec empire wich made other kingdoms side with the conquistadors against them.
I love that the vampires have a legitimate reason to be in Ixalan and how unnecessarily refined and taboo-surrounded they are, also the contrast between the freedom of Ixalan and the opressiveness of Torrezon which evokes the mixture of glory and desperation the Spanish empire experienced during the 15th century as relations between european countries became increasingly rotten and the new world signified both a massive expansion for the empire and a continent-sized reason to attack them with renewed force.
But then we have the pirates, and things fall apart for me. First of all there's a disconnect with how violent and cruel they're shown in art, flavor text and effects. And the poor opressed precious darlings of whomever is writing the fiction. Dear god what the **** happened here? I understand they're going with the "better rule in hell than serve in heaven" deal but not only does the insufferably biased support the get each wednesday scratch me the wrong way, pirates were a thing in the first place because of the power dynamics that developed as imperial powers grew in reach way past the borders of their territories and seafaring guerrillas became a viable way to play the game of gold. Ixalan pirates rob us of the most important figures and relationships in the whole history of piracy: Queen Elizabeth II of England and Francis Drake/Walter Raleigh, Thomas Modyford and Henry Morgan, William of Orange and the Beggars of the Sea, etc. All because millenials have an unhealthy obsession with underdogs I guess.
We don't even get a Black Bart, Blackbeard of Calico Jack unless Angrath's crew shows up in Rivals with all the the actually cool and interesting pirates. Otherwise I'll leave Ixalan wishing it had been a 3-faction set.
The dinosaurs are goofy as ****, but entirelly innofensive and charming in a cute animal companion kind of way, I didn't expect much more from dinos in Muraganda so I'm perfectly ok with what I got in Ixalan.
-Innistrad block
-Ravnica block
-Modern Masters 2013
-Thoughtseize reprint
-Modern was really kicking off in popularity as were modern staple prices
-Khans of Tarkir with a lot of playables and fetch land reprint
-The GP promos...well they were not the greatest but at the time, pretty good
-The FNM promos, while in general have always been eh, there were a decent amount of really good ones and playable ones
(things I can't easily cite myself yet but found numbers from an article on EchoMTG)
it seems 7 million is our accepted static number and around Innistrad in 2011 is when it really started taking off with a 35% player increase in 2012, 2013 and 2014. So the fact that a lot of factors that led to such huge growth in such a short period of time not being there from after Khans of Tarkir can't be a coincidence with the 8 million leaving in three years. Is product quality and the state of Standard a factor? Absolutely but definitely can't be the only one.
With all free time spending on hobbies being equal, this starts really causing a lot of issues if someone is trying to play a variety of different games across genres, from CCGs like Magic to online arena shooters like Destiny / Overwatch, and Battlefront. That's why there's such a massive push back from the consumer base and on social media channels like YouTube right now. It's not any one sector of the entertainment market: It's the entire market across all the games doing this. Also, behind closed doors a lot of people have started to support content creators via patreon and services like Youtube Red because the advertising system fell through that used to help pay for the content, so now we have even more forces pressing on consumers.
Basically, if there is a bubble it's probably the entire entertainment industry and not just Wizards of the Coast. Wizards is just caught up in the entire thing and is probably making things worse instead of better.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Maybe I am just getting old but standard is both more expensive then its ever been if you want to win. back in the day you COULD homebrew something with just a box +$20 bucks to fill out critical cards. now you can't. When is the last time you saw a T1 good deck that is primarly common/uncommons (with maybe some rare mana fixing if you want to get all fancy). I can remember when our store had its first ever standard in print nonfoil card priced at over $20, It was Arcbound Ravager during that time when affinity was the only deck everyone played (before it was banned) large numbers of our local play group lost their minds, IT was priced at $25. Now I see standard cards at $50 and people don't blink an eye. Good common/uncommons keep rare/mythic prices down.
This was by design. I came back when they just got done with Dragons of Tarkir and went to the two block design (along with trying to cut down the standard rotation time, that was a bad idea). What wizards of the coast did is they poached all the value out of the preconstructed products, reconfigured the line up of sets to put powerful staples of non-rotating formats into luxury sets, price the sets above what most players are comfortable paying, and then reduced the over-all power level of commons and uncommons in standard sets. They've been starting to back out on this recently, but at this point I'd call Fatal Push to be a freak accident and miracle of nature to even show up.
Also, because of how they did this, it's turning off a lot of people who potentially would play the game. I've tried getting my brother back into the game and he doesn't want to touch the thing after seeing the price of masters sets along with the price of decent lands. I've heard the same thing echoed by every single person I've tried to get into the game. The fact is, they know that they are getting ripped off if they buy the starter products because there's so much media and information now they can literally whip out the phone, go to a few sites, and see what established players think of lands or card XYZ. Basically, wizards thought they could push standard and throw all the rest to the wayside. They were very wrong. Are they just hoping that MTG Arena will bring in the new people and somehow stars will align?
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
I saw what Wizards of the Coast is doing with MTG Arena and it's basically a carbon copy of Hearthstone based on the screenshot I saw on their homepage when they have the money to hire people to develop a better mobile game to help get more people into Magic. That's not how you revamp MTGO and expect it to do well, the company hired a Microsoft intern as their CEO in order to help resolve this problem for crying out loud! Iconic Masters failed because they didn't reprint anything that was worth any value in the set minus Mana Drain which is expected to dip to $60 by the release of Masters 25 next year.
If Masters 25 is filled with nothing but low value reprints just like with Iconic Masters, then you can expect to see more people getting out of Magic. The problem is that they plan sets so far ahead in advance to the point that when a new set gets released people start to panic and act like the sky is falling. They can't afford to screw this up on the game's 25th Anniversary with a lot of local game store owners already scaling back orders for Iconic Masters while investing in Explorers of Ixalan, From the Vault: Transform, Rivals of Ixalan, and other future products down the line.
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Cancel Culture is the real reason why everyone's not allowed to have nice things anymore." - Anonymous
"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" - Mark 8:36
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Wizards is probably intentionally cannibalizing it's own products in an attempt to boost profits and keep out competitors. Although individual sets sell less, the company sells more product overall within the course of a year, boosting profits. That's my guess.
Despite this I still feel they are trying to mimic pokemon and are doing too many short term fixes.
And I'm being mean here but it sounds like some of you guys might be burned out and should just take a break from the game. I haven't played in many tournaments the last 6 months and just buy the occasional stray booster pack here and there. It feels great. Might even buy some pre constructed decks and jam in some casual games.
But then again, part of the reason I've stopped keeping up as much with it is because of some of the things you guys touched on above. I wonder if Wizards will ever go back to their old way of doing things. I felt their old strategy allowed them to carve out a niche in the tcg market.
I liked it when their product lineup was exactly like how it was from 2001 to 2008. This is how I would change it.
4 theme decks per set, unless core set, in which there are 5.
Core set every other year, although I wouldn't mind if there was a core set every year. In the case of the year without a core set, unlike way back when, there would be a fourth set, instead of no set.
Tournament packs. These can be replaced with official three pack boosters with a promo card.
2 player starter pack that guides you through the game.
World Championship decks, replica deck of the world champions. I personally don't care about these, although I would like to see a return of gold border, not in world championship decks, but in some promotional collectors cards.
$25 bundles with 6 boosters, although I would like the $35 ones they released between 9th edition to Morningtide.
Wizards of the Coast needs to go back to the sustainable release schedule they had back when they were still releasing set blocks before doing away with them to bring back core sets. Pokémon TCG's release schedule is vastly different from Magic's which doesn't make sense as to why Wizards of the Coast thought it was a good idea to emulate one of their competitors when all it did was backfire against them.
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Cancel Culture is the real reason why everyone's not allowed to have nice things anymore." - Anonymous
"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" - Mark 8:36
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta
Pokemon releases booster sets every February, May, August, and November, and it has never changed. MTG, for the past years, releases sets in February, May, July, and October. Both games have a sustainable release schedule, at least for the main sets anyway. For the extra stuff, that's a different story. Pokemon have all these box sets that do not have a consistent release schedule. MTG probably has the most consistent release schedule until they decided to release 2 masters sets, and unstable, thus having to move everything around.
The release schedule for standard sets in 2017 is the exact same, and in 2018 it will be the exact same as well, give or take a month, as the release schedule in 2004, and every year in between.
Duel decks have been released at the same time these past years.
Commander and FTV releases have been switched just for this year.
The difference is 2 masters sets in 2017 instead of the usual 1, other than that, they have a consistent release schedule. It's not like they sometimes have 3 standard sets one year, or 5 in another, or 3 duel decks one year, 1 in another, or having commander released in November one year, August the next, then May in another.
Yugioh has the worst release schedule in terms of consistency. You have your 4 core booster sets with a consistent release schedule, much so that if the Japanese version is released in a certain month, the US version would be released 4 months later. As for the other products like decks and non core boosters, in Japan, they have a structured releases schedule for those, and in the US, their release schedule has been erratic.
Then you have cardfight vanguard. I can't even predict what product is coming out when.
Then we had the RTR boom. This brought a lot of new blood into the game and wizards continued the upward trend with players going up until the Kahns block caused some deck price issues. The catch with this boom, however, is that it brought in people who liked to play the game as a game. There were more people drawn into it as a hobby, but there is a difference between someone who just wants to play magic and someone who both builds and plays magic. These people are impacted a lot more by the meta than deck building players and usually go for the path of least resistance when it comes to getting a competitive deck.
So what happens to card prices? Well, since there aren't as many deck builders this amplified the cost on cards that got spotlighted in tournaments like the pro-tour and Star City Open, from popular personalities like Mr. Olive and Craig Wescoe, and sometimes even youtube brewers. The increased print runs to meet the growing population of magic players helped a bit to keep prices from going too out of control, but this mass printing also did something else: it amplified the devaluing of cards as well that don't make the spotlight. Even if a card is only marginally worse than a mythic printing, if it didn't get spotlighted it's price would tank into oblivion.
Fast forward to BFZ -> Kaladesh. During this period of time Wizards started reconfiguring the product line up and removed core sets from publication. The reason for this became a bit more apparent later on, but it seems that the idea was to take any high value card that was in a secondary product and move it into the luxury masters sets and if this succeeded, they could carry the idea over into Commander as well and start making a masters set dedicated to that particular type of play (hence Iconic Masters). At the same time they also had design issues in the sets and had to make multiple bannings in standard across the course of two years, introduced and discontinued masterpieces (which actually did do good things for singles sales before the public started getting used to their inclusion), and introduced large quantities of low demand secondary products onto the market at rather heafty MSRP values.
So, I don't really know what to say on this. The company promoted an audience that enjoys playing the game, but not necessarily building decks for the game, which increased stress on a subset of the entire card pool. They over-printed cards that the majority of players have little interest in due to how they marketed and promoted the sets, and then under-printed the cards that are actually desired by the player base.
Now that the company has thoroughly over-extended it's resources they are dealing with a collapsing marketplace. They have a minimal influx of new players due to the prices on the pushed cards being just oblivion level high and it's easy for even those with no knowledge of magic to just go to review sites or Youtube to figure out which products are good buys. Standard was nuked to oblivion by the bannings, pushed and underwhelming novelty mechanics (energy on one end, brick and -1/-1 counters on the other), and probably Kaladesh. Modern was a crap shoot for a while and the paywall is still very high to get into the format for most new players. Legacy is basically dead. Commander is fun, but it's a format that only works for a limited number of people, and the great irony is that if MTG Arena is good the push to digital may actually cause more Local Gaming Stores to close than the multiple over priced and low demand products that got pushed to distributors. We're talking Mind Vs Might, Planechase Anthology, Amonkhet -> Hour of Devastation, and now quite possibly Iconic Masters along with all the other forgotten products still lingering on store shelves.
Wowzas, I did not expect that post to get that big. But anyway, that is my take on the entire situation right now without going into the nuanced stuff involving the origins of all of this. Namely it always comes back to MM2013 and True-Name nemesis.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
There are likely a variety of reasons for it, but "power level" plays a very minor role. RTR-THS Standard was a very healthy format that supported a lot of different deck types, despite the fact that two to three different decks were dominant (Mono-B, Mono-U, Azorius/Esper Control). The Theros block itself was very appealing to a wide audience, despite not having the "high power level" that many of the more serious players demand. Magic experienced a huge influx of casual players to FNMs during this time, and this level started to decline dramatically with Khans block, which ushered in a Standard of homogeneous midrange goodstuff decks, to the joy of veterans and chagrin of the more casual players.
Unfortunately for Wizards, casuals crack packs, while the veterans who "know better" just buy singles, thus starting the cycle of Wizards trying all sorts of gimmicks to drive sales of packs.
It's obvious that Wizards is trying to recapture the magic of RTR-THS Standard with Ixalan (i.e. by trying to appeal to casuals again), but it's not really working as well as they'd like, I'd imagine.
Tooth & Nail........Grishoalbrand....Living Dominance....Tezzerator.........Vannifar Pod
My Decks that have been BANNED
DRS Jund | Kiki-Pod | Bloom Titan | Splinter Twin | KCI
The spells attached to creatures and the multi-mode spells are part of wizards attempt to solve an issue they observed with the older MTG sets. They want the matches to be about skill and not luck. In the older sets many of the most played cards are extremely powerful, but are very linear. This was fine before because Wizards wasn't trying to push the game as a sport so it didn't matter as much if someone could build a deck and then just run into an unanswerable nemesis. Modern actually still has this problem to some extent, which is why pros don't exactly like the format a whole lot on the highest level. Instead of getting to play what they want, they have to play whatever flavor of the month is going to win.
Part of the problem I'm seeing is that people are flocking to formats and they are getting stuck either playing whatever is in standard or going into modern. One would think modern is less restrictive than standard, but because certain cards are just above and beyond others modern can be about as restrictive in deck building as standard, at least competitively. Modern one can build flavor of the week decks, but the ones that are good day to day are pretty much already established. 5c humans has been the newest deck to actually stick.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Oh, and you should remove the video link. It's not necessary for this discussion and it would be nice if reactionary YouTube morons didn't get undeserved ad revenue.