So basically all it would take for Wizards to get people's money no matter what they'd think is to just don't give a ****?
Re-read what I said. Most YuGiOh players in the long run abandon YuGiOh all together for other games or more likely Magic, exactly because Magic manage infinitely better than Konami his own game.
More players, more formats, more events, more supported, infinitely better PR with playerbase, cards that have more value, players that last for much longer time, etc.
Well, i figure you have access to some data i don't know about. Stuff like "better PR with playerbase" is a very subjective thing. If you feel that way it's great but like i've said above there's also a portion that basically feels mocked by people like Rosewater. I also don't doubt that Magic has a massive long term player base (jeez, i've almost been around for 30 years myself) but there is zero guarantee that this will also hold true tomorrow and decisions don't necessarily produce instantly observable effects. Like i've said above, everyone has their breaking points. When such a point is reached on average, by what amount of players and to what degree they'll be replaced by then is something that remains to be seen.
If all this doesn't prove to you that WotC is doing a more competent job than Konami at his own TCG because it has objectively much better people handling the game, nothing in this world will convince you.
Well, i don't remember making any claim to the contrary. I just stated that both companies are competent in their primary goal of making money and staying in operation. If anything i think reducing the whole thing to Magic is better administered because it has the larger bottom line is something between overly simplistic and intellectually dishonest.
As I mentioned up thread we're in a clear "cashing out" phase for magic. Sets are coming out faster than ever, the purchasable products have gone way up thanks to collector/play/set booster type stuff, and fully half of next years sets are going to be collab tie-ins, which is a money move to cut the costs of art and design and generate hype. This is all happening amidst wotc layoffs, which is an attempt to buoy stock prices. We are fully in it now. There has never been a point in this games history where the sales of these cards has been so important to wotc.
I'm also not convinced they do any playtesting for commander, since it's one of those huge eternal formats they almost certainly just say "well this card pool is way too big to reasonably playtest." Maybe they test against the set itself and not the wider pool.
As I mentioned up thread we're in a clear "cashing out" phase for magic. Sets are coming out faster than ever, the purchasable products have gone way up thanks to collector/play/set booster type stuff
While i'll stay clear of absolute statements i'll have to agree that amount and pace of product being pushed is kind of a pink elephant. I don't get how one can simply 100% disregard this or at least assume that there's some kind of organic demand (i've yet to hear even just a single person proclaim "Jeez, i'd wish Wizards would release more products!" and personally i feel keeping up has become cumbersome). Even if the people at Wizards were to most sincere and altruistic bunch ever Hasbro is hurting badly with Wizards contributing a lot to balancing their deficits elsewhere so assuming it's necessarily all business as usual seems bold to me.
Watching card prices is also kinda crazy. One can buy tons of rares and a lot of mythics from recent sets at single digit cent prices. Sure, those aren't the hugely sought after pieces but it's really more the sheer amount of those which is baffling. I mean, it's not like i'm complaining about getting a lot of stuff while paying next to nothing but i can't help but wonder if the amount of products being released and the steep curve from random mythic to actual chase card plays a role with so many cards being practically 100% ignored.
I'm also not convinced they do any playtesting for commander, since it's one of those huge eternal formats they almost certainly just say "well this card pool is way too big to reasonably playtest." Maybe they test against the set itself and not the wider pool.
Probably at least not very much in depth. My personal impression is that Wizards treats Commander pretty much like a joke format. Sure it's broken by design and never was overly serious but there's a bit of a distance between non-serious and downright silly. It's all about being "more fun" (which in this context basically means the most bonkers interaction at the least amount of effort possible) with everything else being secondary.
One doesn't need to look much further than Nadu and ask how the design team managed to ignore even the most obvious question: "Can this be triggered for free?". It's the first thing that comes to mind when just looking at the card and all it takes is a 30 second gatherer search to get an answer. There's obviously also the possibility they knew quite well that it would "synergize" with nonsense like Shuko but didn't anticipate someone would manage to push it from degenerate to miserable combo and were fine with it because "lolz, so casual".
Funny take to portrait Yugioh anime links when next year''s release with be half UB sets, most of them Marvel-themed. On top that the most recent non_UB set and the upcoming aetherdrift are barely, barely magic sets, one in art and name a thinly disguised 80s UB and the other thinly disguised speed racer UB rip-off. All that following a cyberpunk, an Al Capone, a Cluedo and Western set, each increasingly lazy as far as world-design goes. Just put fedora on everyone! Just put cow-boy hats on everyone! IMO, we're at an all-time low as far as MtG as a an IP, flavor and originality. It's all a giant ball of derived-product mud now.
Funny take to portrait Yugioh anime links when next year''s release with be half UB sets, most of them Marvel-themed. On top that the most recent non_UB set and the upcoming aetherdrift are barely, barely magic sets, one in art and name a thinly disguised 80s UB and the other thinly disguised speed racer UB rip-off. All that following a cyberpunk, an Al Capone, a Cluedo and Western set, each increasingly lazy as far as world-design goes. Just put fedora on everyone! Just put cow-boy hats on everyone! IMO, we're at an all-time low as far as MtG as a an IP, flavor and originality. It's all a giant ball of derived-product mud now.
I can't help but wonder if this is the result of both War of the Spark and march of the machines or whatever they call the phryexia stuff bombing. Hasbro looking at the sales numbers and being like "wow our IP sucks actually."
Funny take to portrait Yugioh anime links when next year''s release with be half UB sets, most of them Marvel-themed. On top that the most recent non_UB set and the upcoming aetherdrift are barely, barely magic sets, one in art and name a thinly disguised 80s UB and the other thinly disguised speed racer UB rip-off. All that following a cyberpunk, an Al Capone, a Cluedo and Western set, each increasingly lazy as far as world-design goes. Just put fedora on everyone! Just put cow-boy hats on everyone! IMO, we're at an all-time low as far as MtG as a an IP, flavor and originality. It's all a giant ball of derived-product mud now.
I can't help but wonder if this is the result of both War of the Spark and march of the machines or whatever they call the phryexia stuff bombing. Hasbro looking at the sales numbers and being like "wow our IP sucks actually."
Well if there's anything I agree wholehearthly is that magic lore sucks now. But suck really, really hard. Both War of the Spark and March of the Machines, the two most important recent events in magic history were jokes handled in the worst way possible, too shorts, too banal, no fricckin real stakes with our heros being all the classic mary sues with invincible plot armors insulting players intelligence (how easily was the reversibility of phyrexian status just to name one or how in a war of hundreds of planeswalkers literally died almost none) and the major villains literally treated like poor idiots all of a sudden. Even I am convinced that WotC prefer to invest to others lore IP's because they run out of decent ideas and writers for their own stories. At least the creative team responsible solely of the worldbuilding is still good as always (and I find Duskmourn one of the most interesting things Magic has actually did in the last few years)
[quote from="buffntuff »" url="/forums/magic-fundamentals/the-rumor-mill/833764-mtg-commander-quartly-update-four-banned-cards?comment=155"] At least the creative team responsible solely of the worldbuilding is still good as always (and I find Duskmourn one of the most interesting things Magic has actually did in the last few years)
I dunno the 'original' stuff has gone from like, interesting fairy tale world or like, mythological south asia to a bunch of genre planes like cyberpunk plane or cowboy plane or horror movie plane. Bloomburrow is probably the least planet of hats-y and it's still mostly redwall plane. Gone are the planes with complicated multi-factional concepts, like a ravnica could not exist here, let alone a llorwyn or a shards of alara. Now the concepts are really straightforward like, "this plane is a story about one train heist on a plane we're barely going to explore."
Which lets be real is because we don't spend more than one set in any plane anymore. There's no room or time to create a creative identity when you have to do it in 275 cards instead of 700 cards.
Funny take to portrait Yugioh anime links when next year''s release with be half UB sets, most of them Marvel-themed. On top that the most recent non_UB set and the upcoming aetherdrift are barely, barely magic sets, one in art and name a thinly disguised 80s UB and the other thinly disguised speed racer UB rip-off. All that following a cyberpunk, an Al Capone, a Cluedo and Western set, each increasingly lazy as far as world-design goes. Just put fedora on everyone! Just put cow-boy hats on everyone! IMO, we're at an all-time low as far as MtG as a an IP, flavor and originality. It's all a giant ball of derived-product mud now.
I can't help but wonder if this is the result of both War of the Spark and march of the machines or whatever they call the phryexia stuff bombing. Hasbro looking at the sales numbers and being like "wow our IP sucks actually."
War of the Spark sold well and I'm pretty sure March of the Machine as well. Magic own IP is doing pretty okay by a lot of metric despite what people are wanting to think.
EDIT: double check ya MOM was considered a successful (aka profitable) set.
“There are no weak Jews. I am descended from those who wrestle angels and kill giants. We were chosen by God. You were chosen by a pathetic little man who can't seem to grow a full mustache"
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"
War of the Spark sold well and I'm pretty sure March of the Machine as well. Magic own IP is doing pretty okay by a lot of metric despite what people are wanting to think.
They might be confused about MOM because Aftermath did badly.
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Planar Chaos was not a mistake neither was it random. You might want to look at it again.
[thread=239793][Game] Level Up - Creature[/thread]
War of the Spark sold well and I'm pretty sure March of the Machine as well. Magic own IP is doing pretty okay by a lot of metric despite what people are wanting to think.
They might be confused about MOM because Aftermath did badly.
Lol, yeah, I love paying full booster pack price for one third of a booster pack. Honestly they were pretty silly to think that would work. Here, have a burger! There's no meat or bun, but there's sesame seeds, lettuce, and tomato. That's basically a burger! Pay full price!
I'm so glad Aftermath did poorly, since there was literally no reason to buy it. I only wish other bad products had done as poorly.
I'm so glad Aftermath did poorly, since there was literally no reason to buy it. I only wish other bad products had done as poorly.
I just wish they had made a good product. People had been asking for a similar product for a while and they entirely botched it - and the cards they moved into the main set from the OTJ Aftermath product they had planned, too, was looking terrible.
But what can you expect when they make a booster product not built for Limited? They just throw together a bunch of rares and then overprice it because it's skewed towards a higher rarity. But then everyone who wanted an Aftermath-like product would have loved simple commons with room for flavor text to actually tell the story of the aftermath.
Private Mod Note
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Planar Chaos was not a mistake neither was it random. You might want to look at it again.
[thread=239793][Game] Level Up - Creature[/thread]
I'm more talking about the story, like card-wise WotS had plenty of heavy hitters, but the book was genuinely terrible and killed all the future books and banished the plot to web shorts again. And as web shorts the phyrexian stuff couldn't really pick up the kind of steam they were trying to sell. I'm sure mom sold just fine but I would eat my hat if you told me mom sold better than lord of the rings.
I'm more talking about the story, like card-wise WotS had plenty of heavy hitters, but the book was genuinely terrible and killed all the future books and banished the plot to web shorts again.
While the first War of the Spark book was messy, the second one had them trying to retcon Chandra X Nissa which was the what lost them a lot of the momentum they had gained from the gatewatch era. There are def worst magic novels and storylines if you don't count the backlash ( cough quest for karn cough). However both Eldraine and Ikorias novels where well received with the biggest issues was many people didn't wanna buy a something they had gotten for free for years which was the biggest reason wotc ended up switching back to web stories.
And as web shorts the phyrexian stuff couldn't really pick up the kind of steam they were trying to sell.
Considering the steam the gatewatch era built with web stories I don't say its the medium of being web stories.
I'm sure mom sold just fine but I would eat my hat if you told me mom sold better than lord of the rings.
Lord of the Ring was the best selling mtg set currently, so yes you right there. But my point is Mtg's own lore is going -okay- enough I don't see Hasbro considering them unprofitable or bombing. Since War of the Spark in terms of lore, Neon Kamigawa and Bloomburrow where hugely successful, with Eldraine 1 and 2, Kaldheim, Strixhaven and Ixalan 2 doing extremely well as new planes/world building, with only Murders and Thunder Junction being the only real flops and most of the other returns and new planes where average to moderately well received. Web stories have been mixed with the main stories often weaker, thought a Midnight Hunt side story did get nominated for a Hugo Award and the overall prose been better with them hiring outside authors.
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“There are no weak Jews. I am descended from those who wrestle angels and kill giants. We were chosen by God. You were chosen by a pathetic little man who can't seem to grow a full mustache"
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"
Lord of the Ring was the best selling mtg set currently
Seriously? Wow. I didn't touch it, since I don't like Universes Beyond, but that really does surprise me. With that atrocious "ring tempts you" mechanic and everything. Seems weird. Maybe it was a fun limited.
However both Eldraine and Ikorias novels where well received with the biggest issues was many people didn't wanna buy a something they had gotten for free for years which was the biggest reason wotc ended up switching back to web stories.
As I understand it it was more of a contract obligation that they did the following two books, because the wots books (they were both bad, one just so bad it retroactively made other things worse by existing) were so poorly received that wotc had to put out an apology and fire the head creative guy who had pushed them. It was not business as usual for the creative team.
Considering the steam the gatewatch era built with web stories I don't say its the medium of being web stories.
The gatewatch had a bunch of novels and also comic books and also about ten years of sets. Toward the end it got dicey but they could get away with just making alison luhr write everything because they were using characters with a really established background. Jace x Vraska love story in the time of amnesia only works bc jace nad vraska had been thoroughly covered in the dragon's maze books.
Compare it to the stretch between wots and mom, which was about three years of web shorts and like little story bits in their preview shows.
I didn't touch it, since I don't like Universes Beyond, but that really does surprise me. With that atrocious "ring tempts you" mechanic and everything. Seems weird. Maybe it was a fun limited.
LOTR is super popular and a lot of people who like mtg like lotr so you had a bigger group of fans buying stuff then other UB would gather (which is mostly newer people who are fans of the IP) and a lot of enfranchised players bought cards due to it being modern legal in addition to the casual and commander groups the other UB are bought by. LOTR also had that lottery thing going on with the one ring and the other limited printed art run of cards that got a ton of collectors picking up sealed.
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“There are no weak Jews. I am descended from those who wrestle angels and kill giants. We were chosen by God. You were chosen by a pathetic little man who can't seem to grow a full mustache"
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"
However both Eldraine and Ikorias novels where well received with the biggest issues was many people didn't wanna buy a something they had gotten for free for years which was the biggest reason wotc ended up switching back to web stories.
As I understand it it was more of a contract obligation that they did the following two books, because the wots books (they were both bad, one just so bad it retroactively made other things worse by existing)
I don't think the contracts had anything to due with it as they canned the Thero Beyond Death novel in-between seemly with no issue before then releasing the Ikoria novel. The Eldraine novel also came out before the second war of the spark novel and did poorly in sales despite being out before the huge drop off due to wots 2 and despite it being considered one of the more well written mtg stories. Again a large number of people didn't like having to pay for the story after getting used to having it for free and saw as a paywall to being able to get involved with the lore. And from what even wotc have said the web stories have been the most popular way for people to interact with the lore, at least when it comes to the storylines tied to the standard sets.
The gatewatch had a bunch of novels and also comic books and also about ten years of sets. Toward the end it got dicey but they could get away with just making alison luhr write everything because they were using characters with a really established background. Jace x Vraska love story in the time of amnesia only works bc jace nad vraska had been thoroughly covered in the dragon's maze books.
Compare it to the stretch between wots and mom, which was about three years of web shorts and like little story bits in their preview shows.
By gatewatch era I mean Origns- War of the Spark where there was a focus effort on telling a more connected storylines which was mostly web fiction. But if you wanna go back far like that the Phyrexian arc also had a lot of ties with basically of all Elspeth arc from Alara to Theros being partly set up for it as well as chunks from stuff like the other phyrexian invasion stories and the past gatewatch stories. That said I do think they are giving the author too low of a word count for the stories they are trying wanting to tell at the moment.
Also Jace and Vraska never interacted in the dragon maze book, it was one online story for the Duel Decks before they met again in Ixalan.
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
“There are no weak Jews. I am descended from those who wrestle angels and kill giants. We were chosen by God. You were chosen by a pathetic little man who can't seem to grow a full mustache"
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"
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So it needs to stay this way forever?
I see. So the further the box prices rise the better the game gets. Simple enough, i guess.
Well, i figure you have access to some data i don't know about. Stuff like "better PR with playerbase" is a very subjective thing. If you feel that way it's great but like i've said above there's also a portion that basically feels mocked by people like Rosewater. I also don't doubt that Magic has a massive long term player base (jeez, i've almost been around for 30 years myself) but there is zero guarantee that this will also hold true tomorrow and decisions don't necessarily produce instantly observable effects. Like i've said above, everyone has their breaking points. When such a point is reached on average, by what amount of players and to what degree they'll be replaced by then is something that remains to be seen.
Well, i don't remember making any claim to the contrary. I just stated that both companies are competent in their primary goal of making money and staying in operation. If anything i think reducing the whole thing to Magic is better administered because it has the larger bottom line is something between overly simplistic and intellectually dishonest.
Not my words
I'm also not convinced they do any playtesting for commander, since it's one of those huge eternal formats they almost certainly just say "well this card pool is way too big to reasonably playtest." Maybe they test against the set itself and not the wider pool.
While i'll stay clear of absolute statements i'll have to agree that amount and pace of product being pushed is kind of a pink elephant. I don't get how one can simply 100% disregard this or at least assume that there's some kind of organic demand (i've yet to hear even just a single person proclaim "Jeez, i'd wish Wizards would release more products!" and personally i feel keeping up has become cumbersome). Even if the people at Wizards were to most sincere and altruistic bunch ever Hasbro is hurting badly with Wizards contributing a lot to balancing their deficits elsewhere so assuming it's necessarily all business as usual seems bold to me.
Watching card prices is also kinda crazy. One can buy tons of rares and a lot of mythics from recent sets at single digit cent prices. Sure, those aren't the hugely sought after pieces but it's really more the sheer amount of those which is baffling. I mean, it's not like i'm complaining about getting a lot of stuff while paying next to nothing but i can't help but wonder if the amount of products being released and the steep curve from random mythic to actual chase card plays a role with so many cards being practically 100% ignored.
Probably at least not very much in depth. My personal impression is that Wizards treats Commander pretty much like a joke format. Sure it's broken by design and never was overly serious but there's a bit of a distance between non-serious and downright silly. It's all about being "more fun" (which in this context basically means the most bonkers interaction at the least amount of effort possible) with everything else being secondary.
One doesn't need to look much further than Nadu and ask how the design team managed to ignore even the most obvious question: "Can this be triggered for free?". It's the first thing that comes to mind when just looking at the card and all it takes is a 30 second gatherer search to get an answer. There's obviously also the possibility they knew quite well that it would "synergize" with nonsense like Shuko but didn't anticipate someone would manage to push it from degenerate to miserable combo and were fine with it because "lolz, so casual".
I can't help but wonder if this is the result of both War of the Spark and march of the machines or whatever they call the phryexia stuff bombing. Hasbro looking at the sales numbers and being like "wow our IP sucks actually."
Well if there's anything I agree wholehearthly is that magic lore sucks now. But suck really, really hard. Both War of the Spark and March of the Machines, the two most important recent events in magic history were jokes handled in the worst way possible, too shorts, too banal, no fricckin real stakes with our heros being all the classic mary sues with invincible plot armors insulting players intelligence (how easily was the reversibility of phyrexian status just to name one or how in a war of hundreds of planeswalkers literally died almost none) and the major villains literally treated like poor idiots all of a sudden. Even I am convinced that WotC prefer to invest to others lore IP's because they run out of decent ideas and writers for their own stories. At least the creative team responsible solely of the worldbuilding is still good as always (and I find Duskmourn one of the most interesting things Magic has actually did in the last few years)
I dunno the 'original' stuff has gone from like, interesting fairy tale world or like, mythological south asia to a bunch of genre planes like cyberpunk plane or cowboy plane or horror movie plane. Bloomburrow is probably the least planet of hats-y and it's still mostly redwall plane. Gone are the planes with complicated multi-factional concepts, like a ravnica could not exist here, let alone a llorwyn or a shards of alara. Now the concepts are really straightforward like, "this plane is a story about one train heist on a plane we're barely going to explore."
Which lets be real is because we don't spend more than one set in any plane anymore. There's no room or time to create a creative identity when you have to do it in 275 cards instead of 700 cards.
War of the Spark sold well and I'm pretty sure March of the Machine as well. Magic own IP is doing pretty okay by a lot of metric despite what people are wanting to think.
EDIT: double check ya MOM was considered a successful (aka profitable) set.
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"
They might be confused about MOM because Aftermath did badly.
Finally a good white villain quote: "So, do I ever re-evaluate my life choices? Never, because I know what I'm doing is a righteous cause."
Factions: Sleeping
Remnants: Valheim
Legendary Journey: Heroes & Planeswalkers
Saga: Shards of Rabiah
Legends: The Elder Dragons
Read up on Red Flags & NWO
Lol, yeah, I love paying full booster pack price for one third of a booster pack. Honestly they were pretty silly to think that would work. Here, have a burger! There's no meat or bun, but there's sesame seeds, lettuce, and tomato. That's basically a burger! Pay full price!
I'm so glad Aftermath did poorly, since there was literally no reason to buy it. I only wish other bad products had done as poorly.
Low-power cube enthusiast!
My 1570 card cube (no longer updated)
My 415 Peasant+ Artifact and Enchantment Cube
Ever-Expanding "Just throw it in" cube.
I just wish they had made a good product. People had been asking for a similar product for a while and they entirely botched it - and the cards they moved into the main set from the OTJ Aftermath product they had planned, too, was looking terrible.
But what can you expect when they make a booster product not built for Limited? They just throw together a bunch of rares and then overprice it because it's skewed towards a higher rarity. But then everyone who wanted an Aftermath-like product would have loved simple commons with room for flavor text to actually tell the story of the aftermath.
Finally a good white villain quote: "So, do I ever re-evaluate my life choices? Never, because I know what I'm doing is a righteous cause."
Factions: Sleeping
Remnants: Valheim
Legendary Journey: Heroes & Planeswalkers
Saga: Shards of Rabiah
Legends: The Elder Dragons
Read up on Red Flags & NWO
While the first War of the Spark book was messy, the second one had them trying to retcon Chandra X Nissa which was the what lost them a lot of the momentum they had gained from the gatewatch era. There are def worst magic novels and storylines if you don't count the backlash ( cough quest for karn cough). However both Eldraine and Ikorias novels where well received with the biggest issues was many people didn't wanna buy a something they had gotten for free for years which was the biggest reason wotc ended up switching back to web stories.
Considering the steam the gatewatch era built with web stories I don't say its the medium of being web stories.
Lord of the Ring was the best selling mtg set currently, so yes you right there. But my point is Mtg's own lore is going -okay- enough I don't see Hasbro considering them unprofitable or bombing. Since War of the Spark in terms of lore, Neon Kamigawa and Bloomburrow where hugely successful, with Eldraine 1 and 2, Kaldheim, Strixhaven and Ixalan 2 doing extremely well as new planes/world building, with only Murders and Thunder Junction being the only real flops and most of the other returns and new planes where average to moderately well received. Web stories have been mixed with the main stories often weaker, thought a Midnight Hunt side story did get nominated for a Hugo Award and the overall prose been better with them hiring outside authors.
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"
Seriously? Wow. I didn't touch it, since I don't like Universes Beyond, but that really does surprise me. With that atrocious "ring tempts you" mechanic and everything. Seems weird. Maybe it was a fun limited.
Low-power cube enthusiast!
My 1570 card cube (no longer updated)
My 415 Peasant+ Artifact and Enchantment Cube
Ever-Expanding "Just throw it in" cube.
As I understand it it was more of a contract obligation that they did the following two books, because the wots books (they were both bad, one just so bad it retroactively made other things worse by existing) were so poorly received that wotc had to put out an apology and fire the head creative guy who had pushed them. It was not business as usual for the creative team.
The gatewatch had a bunch of novels and also comic books and also about ten years of sets. Toward the end it got dicey but they could get away with just making alison luhr write everything because they were using characters with a really established background. Jace x Vraska love story in the time of amnesia only works bc jace nad vraska had been thoroughly covered in the dragon's maze books.
Compare it to the stretch between wots and mom, which was about three years of web shorts and like little story bits in their preview shows.
From what I've seen reported yup.
LOTR is super popular and a lot of people who like mtg like lotr so you had a bigger group of fans buying stuff then other UB would gather (which is mostly newer people who are fans of the IP) and a lot of enfranchised players bought cards due to it being modern legal in addition to the casual and commander groups the other UB are bought by. LOTR also had that lottery thing going on with the one ring and the other limited printed art run of cards that got a ton of collectors picking up sealed.
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"
I don't think the contracts had anything to due with it as they canned the Thero Beyond Death novel in-between seemly with no issue before then releasing the Ikoria novel. The Eldraine novel also came out before the second war of the spark novel and did poorly in sales despite being out before the huge drop off due to wots 2 and despite it being considered one of the more well written mtg stories. Again a large number of people didn't like having to pay for the story after getting used to having it for free and saw as a paywall to being able to get involved with the lore. And from what even wotc have said the web stories have been the most popular way for people to interact with the lore, at least when it comes to the storylines tied to the standard sets.
By gatewatch era I mean Origns- War of the Spark where there was a focus effort on telling a more connected storylines which was mostly web fiction. But if you wanna go back far like that the Phyrexian arc also had a lot of ties with basically of all Elspeth arc from Alara to Theros being partly set up for it as well as chunks from stuff like the other phyrexian invasion stories and the past gatewatch stories. That said I do think they are giving the author too low of a word count for the stories they are trying wanting to tell at the moment.
Also Jace and Vraska never interacted in the dragon maze book, it was one online story for the Duel Decks before they met again in Ixalan.
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"