MTG Salvation

I'm sorry.

What policy? The whole business about certain sites getting certain spoilers?

Edit: to clarify my question. What is the policy exactly?

I'll say, upfront, that at least some of the complaints about this spoiler season are overblown. I'm not terribly upset with the amount or frequency of spoilers overall (maybe the quality, but that's probably for another thread).

I do think that the way spoilers are divveyed up and divvied out is pretty odd. As a frequent visitor/poster both here and on Twitter, the number of affiliate spoilers--not just the number of affiliates, but the actual number of cards per site/blog/YouTuber/etc.--seems to have gotten out of control. I can barely find them all via my two main communities, and I'm not the only one. Heck, the posters and mods here have been having trouble.

When I first came into the game, spoilers were pretty much limited to WotC official website and maybe a few nascent official social media accounts. This worked far better in terms of accessibility, consistency and timing.

Now there's dozens of different channels to check, often revealing just one card at a time. It's so tedious. Not to mention, it forces people to overhype cards that are often filler/bulk.

I think cutting back significantly on both the number of people who get spoilers and the number of cards spoiled in this way would help whatever anxiety has been building up in the community.

Beyond that though, I think people need to stop overreacting to every little card (or the absence of cards) during spoiler season. We're conditioned to get about a third or a half of each set before the full reveal, but the speed at which WotC brings it to us shouldn't be such a point of contention.

Quote from KeMT »

There are websites like mythicspoiler.com where you can find every spoiler and is updated every day, Twitter and MTGSalvation both have way too many other things, you can easily get lost, you're just not searching at the good place.

Uh, no thanks. I think you missed my point. There's too many spoilers coming from about of miscellaneous (or downright random) sources. I find all the spoilers alright in spite of this, but I'd prefer WotC change it in the future.

I kinda wish that they would give us one card every week or two from the upcoming set shortly after the Pro Tour from the previous set. Nothing that shows off any important story revelations or upcoming mechanics, but an innocuous common or uncommon (or possibly jank rare) that makes me look forward to the set.

Quote from rowanalpha »

The thing we have to remember is that we are the most enfranchised players, but spoilers are supposed to reach customers at all levels, hence a mix of cards (constructed playable to limited bomb to commander) for a mix of players (Timmy/Johnny/spike) though a bunch of sources (magic sites, Twitter, etc.). They are trying to create interest in a few thing so players are pulled in to explore more. If the whole set was spoiled up front (like Judgement and NPH) it's a info dump so large that the nuances are missed by most, and the nuances are what excite people. Same is true for leaks: for the enfranchised players it is just information to be gathered, but for wizards it interrupts the experience they try to create, and it's their product so they can reveal it however they feel best serves them.

Your argument about multiple sources depends on premise that some or all of those sources reach a market WotC isn't reaching already. Barring the foreign language sites, I just don't buy this premise.

No matter how they choose to do it (and I have voiced that their current method feels insulting to me personally) it's the cards and their quality and utility to me and what I'm looking for that will decide everything. Not "marketing" not articles, not timing, not convincing. I will decide what I admire, desire and will use. This usually means art and theme for me, and effect last but still applicable. I prefer seeing the entire set to I can decide early on what I like, make a list of what I want and work to fit them into my decks or build new decks around such cards. I don't like waiting until last minute to see the big picture. I prefer judging a set as a whole, not judging individual cards on a daily basis until we finally see them all. I neither play standard nor care for limited so it's a wasted and frustrating tactic to do planned reveals like this. I could understand holding back cards like Oath of Lilliana for story purposes, but even that hasn't been the case with cards like Anguished Unmaking spoiling endings and all that. So I really see no point to this method. But it is what it is - contrary to my strong opinions voiced here, it doesn't actually bother me as much as one might suspect. But I do find it frustrating when I come anticipating Blue or White cards to get spoiled or a certain character to get a card and end up with Black and Red limited fodder that I could care less about. BFZ just continued to disappointment me and I found it unnecessary to subject a set to having to live up to the anticipation built up be withholding information. Especially when not all reveals are always targeting the right audience. Why set yourselves up for disappointing people for a day, then impressing others, then disappointing someone else, etc? Just drop the whole set a month before and target all the audiences and impress everyone at once.

Hm, have the spoilers really been bad that this go-around? I mean, I've hated a lot of the cards shown, but that's just my personal opinion on the cards themselves. It seems like the frequency hasn't really been any different than normal. Every day when I get on Salvation I find 3-5 new cards posted. To me, it just seemed like everyone was getting mad because they didn't spoil Tamiyo and Liliana in the first couple of days. But maybe I missed something.

Personally I don't have a problem with wizards method of slowly revealing cards from the new upcoming set as they currently do, in addition to giving out spoilers to other sites. The slow rolling of previews as they have tended to nearly always do, is something that has worked well for wizards for ages now. It helps to build hype for the set and for the individual cards slowly in advance of the set, to help encourage pre-orders based upon that hype, but also to avoid overwhelming people by dumping the set out all at once without having previously revealed in an organized fashion, the various mechanics, planeswalkers, and story information to help give overall context to the different aspects of the set before the final big reveal.

That said, I can understand that this can cause some people to pre-order before knowing the full set, buy into maximum hype and otherwise and can leave them disappointed by the time the full set is revealed. Personally I've always tried to ignore the hype, that patience has often paid off in the long run, but occasionally I miss out on some (in the end) wicked low pre-order prices on some singles, but that's the cost of being patient.

As to the sheer number of sites that are getting previews now, well, that's just all a part of the expanding nature of online media, and the expanding number of businesses and other entities that wizards has built a working relationship with to trust enough with such spoilers. I view that overall as a good thing, even if it means it can be nearly impossible to be the first or among the first to find out about the spoilers before they get posted to a site like this one and reasonably quickly added to the spoiler at the top of the page.

Anyhow, just a few thoughts on the topic.

Quote from Edward Mass »

Uh, no thanks. I think you missed my point. There's too many spoilers coming from about of miscellaneous (or downright random) sources. I find all the spoilers alright in spite of this, but I'd prefer WotC change it in the future.

I may be an enfranchised player like most of here as well and am personally annoyed by some of marketing's antics (although those tend to fall on the line of PR), but I don't actually see what they're doing now is entirely wrong either - we enfranchised players don't need the marketing, that they know very well. The reason why they still have to hype everything up is not for us, nor is it to annoy us, it's to cater to the group of new players who were attracted to their website - that is all.

MaRo could put up an article with nothing but the preview card and all of us enfranchised players would be done analyzing it in the same time it would have us read an actual article. But the new(er) players might not be able to and MaRo's article, while maybe a bit too optimistic, would provide tips for those players. Even the bad tips that we see through immediately the new players will learn through mistakes/experience. It may be overly optimistic, but the positive tone is still a good one for the game and community overall.

WotC knows that marketing means nothing to us enfranchised players, we are kept anchored mainly by the quality of the cards. But everything in preview season is marketing. Marketing has its own target market unrelated to us. Sure, R&D might be producing subpar products in the recent years in some of our opinions, but whoever really thought that they should drop Marketing so that R&D would be forced to "buck up" and produce "great cards" as to cater to us is also asking them to drop the entire other market completely and cater only to us - I hate to say it, but when people put it that way, it always comes with the "aura of entitlement" that we don't actually have. We can say us enfranchised players spend more, but all we have is "logic" (that's arguable, even), while what they have is "statistics" - so the "entitlement" that comes from that is sort of moot.

As for the diversity in marketing - that's simple. In the last 10 years (we've been through 10 years since Ravnica: City of Guilds already), media has evolved rapidly and very differently. Gone are the days of direct advertising - now Social Media and "Influencers" are the "In-Thing" for marketing and that demands diversity. Direct Marketing wasn't really helping us since in those ages, the media/marketing was sort of monopolized/influenced by some smaller groups of people and MTG (as a hobby under the subsection of "Hollywood Geek Hobby" stereotypes) didn't gel with those. But nowadays marketing/media is in the hands of literally everyone, so it's not surprising that WotC is scrambling to find as many of those who will ally with them as soon as possible.

"I play MTG" doesn't qualify - it is still media/marketing/influencer and that has a threshold level. MTGS is a great site for us enfranchised players, but what's the point of giving us a preview card since the site doesn't even reach the target market of marketing? (Also, we'll probably screw up the article considering the vocal negativity here, but that's another matter...) One could say other MTG websites also do the same, but to put it bluntly, those websites try to reach out to the outside (whereas MTGS here generally just sits and waits for those already in the game to discover and enter) via different means such as YouTube and Twitter. We're also too much of a bunch of mixed voices to form 1 coherent voice via Social Media and as a result, we don't qualify.

Anyway, even for us enfranchised players, they did do some positive changes - the largest of which was having the full spoiler the week before prerelease (which happened after the NPH incident). I guess we could sit here and argue that 1 week isn't enough, but considering we used to have to literally sit on the day before and finish analyzing the set the day (or night) before the prerelease, I'll say 1 week is still an improvement. Their "Social Media" test relatively speaking still in their early stages and if they pushed the full set preview too early, the "hype" (that's not targeted at us) might completely wear off by the time Prereleases hit (I'll say it already wore off most of the time, but hey I'm an enfranchised player and I'm hard to exactly impress outside of great cards (and flavor)).

I like that they`re throwing independent websites a bone by letting them get an exclusive preview of a card. They sure as hell don`t do enough to acknowledge the wider community, but this is one thing they do right.

I dislike spoiler threads to the point where I almost always just look at the card in the first post and then close the thread, because everyone seems to think that every card spoiled should be constructed playable and support their deck and not decks that they dislike, and at least half the cards should be eternal playable, and so on. The bad vibes among posters completely kill the excitement for me, expectations are too high. It`s a problem inherent with spoiling a few cards at a time, most of them are going to be not very interesting to a lot of players. That`s just how it is, most cards in a new set is not for *you* exactly. But this isn`t a flaw in the spoiler policy per se.

I like that independent websites are getting spoilers, and I don't have a problem with WoTCs own spoiler rollout. These sites are (basically for free) promoting WoTC and Magic, and letting them in on the hype is awesome.

That being said, however, the last two spoiler seasons (this one, and Eternal Masters) have felt flaccid to me. There's been barely any excitement on my part. I've been following spoilers since MTG News, so its not just me getting burned out, and I'm super interested in the cards (I think, from a design perspective, these are some of the most interesting sets they've ever done), so its not the sets. It's that leaks, and puzzles, and partially known cards, and cards that might be fake, just creates a far more interesting and engaging experience for me. Even just leaks of large numbers of commons, are more exciting, than an official leak of a card that I think is amazing and can't wait to play with.

I listened to WoTC about how they were sad that leaks were making it way harder for them to craft the experience the way they wanted to for spoiler season. The leaks for EMA were non-existent, and they appear to be nearly non-existent for this set as well. These last two spoiler seasons have been boring (to me). I am less hyped for the sets than normal. The experience they want to craft doesn't work. It might be better for the player who doesn't seek out spoilers in general, but for me it doesn't work. Are other people having the same feeling that I am?

The most excited I've ever been going to a pre-release was the Mirage one. I knew what literally none of the cards were going to be. I get that uncertainty can be amazing. However, I also get excited when I've been hyped the entire spoiler season and seeing the cards early, and had more time to think about them and anticipate what cards I hope to get in my sealed pool. When the spoiler season is not as exciting for me, it dampens my excitement for the set.

Quote from Havrekjex »

I like that they`re throwing independent websites a bone by letting them get an exclusive preview of a card. They sure as hell don`t do enough to acknowledge the wider community, but this is one thing they do right.

I dislike spoiler threads to the point where I almost always just look at the card in the first post and then close the thread, because everyone seems to think that every card spoiled should be constructed playable and support their deck and not decks that they dislike, and at least half the cards should be eternal playable, and so on. The bad vibes among posters completely kill the excitement for me, expectations are too high. It`s a problem inherent with spoiling a few cards at a time, most of them are going to be not very interesting to a lot of players. That`s just how it is, most cards in a new set is not for *you* exactly. But this isn`t a flaw in the spoiler policy per se.

God forbid a card gets criticism. Sounds like you don't play competitive magic at all.

Quote from Brawny15 »

Quote from Havrekjex »

I like that they`re throwing independent websites a bone by letting them get an exclusive preview of a card. They sure as hell don`t do enough to acknowledge the wider community, but this is one thing they do right.

I dislike spoiler threads to the point where I almost always just look at the card in the first post and then close the thread, because everyone seems to think that every card spoiled should be constructed playable and support their deck and not decks that they dislike, and at least half the cards should be eternal playable, and so on. The bad vibes among posters completely kill the excitement for me, expectations are too high. It`s a problem inherent with spoiling a few cards at a time, most of them are going to be not very interesting to a lot of players. That`s just how it is, most cards in a new set is not for *you* exactly. But this isn`t a flaw in the spoiler policy per se.

God forbid a card gets criticism. Sounds like you don't play competitive magic at all.

Ugh. Okay, I`ll bite. I only play competitive magic, actually. But that doesn`t mean that I go on a rant every time they spoil a card that isn`t competitively viable.

Did you see Mind's Dilation get spoiled?
I didn`t bother digging too deep, but you get the picture. This happens in almost every spoiler thread except for the three or four cards that ar obviously super powerful. Those only get complains about rarity or about archetypes or colors getting pushed. Meanwhile, I have friends who are super excited about Mind's Dilation in EDH and casual magic. This product is for them too. This is someone`s favorite card in the set. Also, not every card can be competitively viable. We know this. It`s a fundamental principle of how booster packs work. Some cards are good and some aren`t. It`s been like that for over 20 years. Complaining and whining whenever a card isn`t going to make it into their favourite format is no good for anyone. Card criticism, or evaluation if you will, is a good thing, but I`d hardly call it criticism when it`s nothing deeper than "this card isn`t exactly what I wanted, set blows".

Also, please reply exactly how my post led you to believe that I

don't play competitive magic at all.

because I don`t see the connection at all. I`d like to believe that you weren`t just trolling/flaming.

Also, this quote is for you: "I do love people who write off an entire post with an unintelligent one-liner." Who wrote that?

I cant stand they way they give spoilers to third party sites and would prefer everything be in one location on their website if they are going to insist on putting them out themselves in a way they set forth. The reality of what they are doing is picking favorites and giving them an extreme financial upside over those that they do not choose. I also think they are making fools of themselves by insisting that people spoiling cards ahead of time is hurting their story telling when the terribly bad unreadable stories are clearly what is hurting them.

Bottom line, i think they own the rights to a great game, i think they do a terrible job at promoting it, running it, expanding it, telling a story through it etc. I also feel that the fail is starting to creep into the game from these other areas as a result of them being unable to cut the "Worth"lessness (pun intended, although the problem is much bigger than just worth) out of their organization.

Well, they display everything on their side. They have a collected spoiler thread and later gatherer.

I see no problem in handing out spoilers to third parties. Yes these sides, persons etc. get a financial upside but I find that hardly problematic. I would assume that MTGS could also get spoiler... along with a very problematic NDA.

I would however agree that the way they present the spoiler is bad. Especially EMN was very loopsided on the rares and mythics, which are not very interesting for limited. However all pre-relaese events are limited... A vertical slice through their set would be much more interesting. Especially when they do tribes like in EMN. I would be much more interesting in seeing the spirit support, the zombie support etc. And not oh look two awesome rares and one mythic, you will not open during pre-release.

Quote from Havrekjex »

Quote from Brawny15 »

Quote from Havrekjex »

I like that they`re throwing independent websites a bone by letting them get an exclusive preview of a card. They sure as hell don`t do enough to acknowledge the wider community, but this is one thing they do right.

I dislike spoiler threads to the point where I almost always just look at the card in the first post and then close the thread, because everyone seems to think that every card spoiled should be constructed playable and support their deck and not decks that they dislike, and at least half the cards should be eternal playable, and so on. The bad vibes among posters completely kill the excitement for me, expectations are too high. It`s a problem inherent with spoiling a few cards at a time, most of them are going to be not very interesting to a lot of players. That`s just how it is, most cards in a new set is not for *you* exactly. But this isn`t a flaw in the spoiler policy per se.

God forbid a card gets criticism. Sounds like you don't play competitive magic at all.

Ugh. Okay, I`ll bite. I only play competitive magic, actually. But that doesn`t mean that I go on a rant every time they spoil a card that isn`t competitively viable.

Did you see Mind's Dilation get spoiled?

"Blue enchantment is super ultra mega garbage."
"Mind Dilation seems like one of those designs where they replace a card last minute and have to make the new one bad on purpose because they don't have time to test it. It's a 7 mana mythic enchantment that does nothing right away, can proceed to do nothing, or possibly very unexciting things."
"a really, really bad enchantment."
"Blue enchantment is absolute garbage."
"The enchantment is nonsense"

I didn`t bother digging too deep, but you get the picture. This happens in almost every spoiler thread except for the three or four cards that ar obviously super powerful. Those only get complains about rarity or about archetypes or colors getting pushed. Meanwhile, I have friends who are super excited about Mind's Dilation in EDH and casual magic. This product is for them too. This is someone`s favorite card in the set. Also, not every card can be competitively viable. We know this. It`s a fundamental principle of how booster packs work. Some cards are good and some aren`t. It`s been like that for over 20 years. Complaining and whining whenever a card isn`t going to make it into their favourite format is no good for anyone. Card criticism, or evaluation if you will, is a good thing, but I`d hardly call it criticism when it`s nothing deeper than "this card isn`t exactly what I wanted, set blows".

Also, please reply exactly how my post led you to believe that I

don't play competitive magic at all.

because I don`t see the connection at all. I`d like to believe that you weren`t just trolling/flaming.

Also, this quote is for you: "I do love people who write off an entire post with an unintelligent one-liner." Who wrote that?

Lol, sure. Every card is amazing. Set is amazing. Your opinion is perfect. Everyone who says a card isn't competitively viable is dumb. Got it.

I don't even know what you want. You want every spoiler thread to be nothing but positivity cause SOMEONE out there could possibly make use of the card? That's asinine. It's like one time I argued with someone who thought that something was "modern-viable" because they put it in their awful casual treefolk deck that just so happened to be modern-legal. Most of the people on this site play competitive magic and as such threads are going to be dominated by those types of perspectives. This is especially so when everyone is clamoring for new cards to break the strangehold that GW has on standard atm. What you call "whining and complaining" is called CRITICISM. I don't know what your idea of card criticism/discussion is but it's incredibly stifling to real discussion.(also, love the small quip basically saying a card isn't garbage because someone will play it in in EDH, real intelligent there)

Also, that response was literally to someone providing 0 points/reasons for their argument. I guess you're really grasping for comebacks.

Quote from Brawny15 »

Quote from Havrekjex »

Quote from Brawny15 »

Quote from Havrekjex »

I like that they`re throwing independent websites a bone by letting them get an exclusive preview of a card. They sure as hell don`t do enough to acknowledge the wider community, but this is one thing they do right.

I dislike spoiler threads to the point where I almost always just look at the card in the first post and then close the thread, because everyone seems to think that every card spoiled should be constructed playable and support their deck and not decks that they dislike, and at least half the cards should be eternal playable, and so on. The bad vibes among posters completely kill the excitement for me, expectations are too high. It`s a problem inherent with spoiling a few cards at a time, most of them are going to be not very interesting to a lot of players. That`s just how it is, most cards in a new set is not for *you* exactly. But this isn`t a flaw in the spoiler policy per se.

God forbid a card gets criticism. Sounds like you don't play competitive magic at all.

Ugh. Okay, I`ll bite. I only play competitive magic, actually. But that doesn`t mean that I go on a rant every time they spoil a card that isn`t competitively viable.

Did you see Mind's Dilation get spoiled?

"Blue enchantment is super ultra mega garbage."
"Mind Dilation seems like one of those designs where they replace a card last minute and have to make the new one bad on purpose because they don't have time to test it. It's a 7 mana mythic enchantment that does nothing right away, can proceed to do nothing, or possibly very unexciting things."
"a really, really bad enchantment."
"Blue enchantment is absolute garbage."
"The enchantment is nonsense"

I didn`t bother digging too deep, but you get the picture. This happens in almost every spoiler thread except for the three or four cards that ar obviously super powerful. Those only get complains about rarity or about archetypes or colors getting pushed. Meanwhile, I have friends who are super excited about Mind's Dilation in EDH and casual magic. This product is for them too. This is someone`s favorite card in the set. Also, not every card can be competitively viable. We know this. It`s a fundamental principle of how booster packs work. Some cards are good and some aren`t. It`s been like that for over 20 years. Complaining and whining whenever a card isn`t going to make it into their favourite format is no good for anyone. Card criticism, or evaluation if you will, is a good thing, but I`d hardly call it criticism when it`s nothing deeper than "this card isn`t exactly what I wanted, set blows".

Also, please reply exactly how my post led you to believe that I

don't play competitive magic at all.

because I don`t see the connection at all. I`d like to believe that you weren`t just trolling/flaming.

Also, this quote is for you: "I do love people who write off an entire post with an unintelligent one-liner." Who wrote that?

Lol, sure. Every card is amazing. Set is amazing. Your opinion is perfect. Everyone who says a card isn't competitively viable is dumb. Got it.

I don't even know what you want. You want every spoiler thread to be nothing but positivity cause SOMEONE out there could possibly make use of the card? That's asinine.

Sure the position you outline is asinine but that's not at all what he said. He's noting that there can be an unnecessary competetive bias on card evaluation. When you say that it's like he doesn't play competetive at all you're also making a weighed statement as though competetive critique is the only real critique relevant to a thread. He dislikes spoiler reception being weighed towards competetive analysis when it isn't relevant to the card on question. Also, sales wise, that position is actually much more consistent with reality, as most cards are bought and played casually.

Edit: sorry mods I didn't catch the second part of your post saying it was off topic. I'll shut up about this.

What really bugs me about the new spoiler trend is the spoilers start three (four?) weeks out from release, we get them all in one big go, and then done. And then the announcements! "Here's the next year's worth of product!" Art? no. A card? no. Anything other than basic info? no. Woo.

I loved it when the announcements were coupled with some art, or a card. COMM 13 having Jeleva, Nephalia's Scourge when it was announced was amazing! Speculation about the rest of the commander's "from the command zone" abilities were great. COMM 14 showing Teferi, Temporal Archmage, and then Ghoulcaller Gisa lead to massive speculation about what other older characters were going to be seen! It was fantastic!

Now we get an influx of new cards just before release, the only speculation is one major story point (see: Emrakul as EMN's big bad), and a whole bunch of "I told you so"'s when the speculation is correct.

I like seeing the new cards, I like seeing what I can put into my decks, but it's no way near as exciting any more.

I don't mind the spoilers on third party sites and the slowness of spoilers. What I mind (and always had) is the fact that Wizards reveal the last 100 or so cards in one day, creating this huge info dump.