MTG Salvation

Now we get an "early access" for Streamers of the "Pre"-Release instead of waiting for the actual physical Release.

Its a shift in the digital direction and this will further make PreRelease events less attractive to a whole bunch of people.
The people that want the social event will still attend the PreRelease , but its a pretty sad experience in this combination.

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This might set a pretty terrible precedence that will cause them to push digital over physical more and more (for no real reason other than "because we can").

For sure they will. Digital is the future. I dont go to pre-release anyway, I'm old enough to not care to stay up that late.

Its got some good numbers though, near 30K viewers last I looked. I just wish we got the cards early as well.

I mean, playing digitally is convenient, but it's only better than paper if you only care about actually playing. The social aspects of MTG nights are what bring me out to my LGS in the first place, and a well-attended prerelease has a festive atmosphere that Arena simply can't replicate. Maybe things will change once Arena's social aspects become more fleshed out, though. Also, just playing in paper has some advantages over digital games, much like how many people simply prefer paper books over e-readers. Games between two experienced players oftentimes flow much better in paper due to the existence of shortcuts, which are a big draw on their own.