Did Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro know ahead of time that these Universes Beyond cards would essentially be another Reserved List thinking that there wouldn't be any backlash from the Magic Community for reprinted versions of these cards reflecting the Magic: The Gathering story and lore more? Did they really think that those within the Magic Community who genuinely care about the story and lore of the game itself were a niche demographic and that the majority cared more about the games' mechanical identity instead? If they had given the Magic story and lore enough time for the novelty to set in then they probably could've profited off of it. Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro could've done a much better job at conveying the story and lore of Magic: The Gathering better than what they're doing now. Whose going to read a web series to keep up with what's going on unless they advertised it in a manner that gets everyone's attention more? But no, Wizards of the Coast doesn't have the budget for it because Hasbro won't give it to them.
I'm going to be honest, back when I first got into Magic: The Gathering 20+ years ago I was more in love with the mechanical identity of the game rather than the story and lore (still am). What really got me into the story and lore of the game was the introduction of Planeswalkers in Lorwyn as it was setting the stage for the Gatewatch a.k.a. MCU Avengers. I used to think that Urza was the hero of the storyline he was a part of only to find out that he was his own worst enemy. I thought Akroma was cool before Avacyn came onto the scene as a lot of players' favorite Angel Waifu. Shortly after the War of the Spark ended and the Planeswalkers lost their spark, my interest in the story and lore waned. The storytellers of the game have become so creatively bankrupt that they're relying more and more on other Intellectual Properties (IP's) to sell a game that it's own story and lore couldn't hold together. I also have my suspicions of Magic's story and lore that has contested my own faith and beliefs in which I'm personally not allowed to share on these forums.
In my opinion actual lore is just one aspect of what i'd call Magic's identity. Personally i'm very much ignorant to most of Magic's story line. Sure i know a bit about the Urza/Mishra arc but beyond that it gets dark very quickly (admittedly me not being much into fantasy in general might play a role here - i've read a lot of Terry Pratchett but otherwise my involvement with fantasy is pretty much zero and Terry Pratchett isn't really fantasy in a classic sense either). To me it's rather the overall impression of a fantasy world but even something as simple as that gets disturbed instantly when you start putting Lara Croft and Spiderman into it. My mind has no (or at least a manageable amount of) problems incorporating something like pirates, dinosaurs or cutesy Bloomborrow animals into said world but adding something that's supposed to exist in it's very own universe will make it stumble badly.
Even worse it makes the whole thing seem awkward and embarrassing. Like i'm actually playing a silly game for children (which even today most people's impression of TCGs is - it kinda seems like Wizards is hellbent on reinforcing that stereotype), which i forgot to drop out of like 20 years ago (i get quite a bit of insight into the views of the generations that came after me due to being surrounded by people younger than me where i live and the overall idea of TCGs being something you grow out of when you start reaching your 20s doesn't seem to have changed much even if those generation's exposure to TCGs seems to have been mostly Yu-Gi-Oh).
I don't know where i read it (might have been here or in some comment section) but the commentator very much hit a nerve with me when he stated "I miss the time when Magic took itself seriously.", which i can very much second. It's not like it needs to take itself overly serious in some grim and humorless manner but it should have a little self respect. Magic is a little silly and goofy by definition anyways. There's no need to artificially reinforce those aspects.
It's not that I'm some kind of fuddy duddy UB hater, I actually think it's fun and cool when they do crossovers in stuff like secret lairs. Making commander/modern only sets is alright too. The problem I have is that we're going from a special yearly collab to 3 sets a year of collab, and it's really obviously a money play. Once hasbro gets that sweet spiderman hit they're going to demand more because it's fully owned by hedge funds who will demand constant growth and nothing else hasbro does makes any money. it's 3 sets next year, it's gonna be 4 sets in 2026 and 6 sets in 2028.
It's not that I'm some kind of fuddy duddy UB hater, I actually think it's fun and cool when they do crossovers in stuff like secret lairs. Making commander/modern only sets is alright too. The problem I have is that we're going from a special yearly collab to 3 sets a year of collab, and it's really obviously a money play. Once hasbro gets that sweet spiderman hit they're going to demand more because it's fully owned by hedge funds who will demand constant growth and nothing else hasbro does makes any money. it's 3 sets next year, it's gonna be 4 sets in 2026 and 6 sets in 2028.
Basically the story of commander. It went from a handful of decks of 95%+ reprints to every set having a commander version + X decks + a bunch of specific sets full of silly stuff and format defining cards. I was pretty excited back when the first commander products were announced and even after it turned out they contained dumb cards like Command Tower and a bunch of legendaries that were a little to forcefully over the top for my tastes i didn't mind it much. Fast forward 13 years... I've basically lost count of the amount of stuff that got dumped on commander. Wizards simply doesn't know what "moderation" means.
Right now, Magic is changing faster than it ever has before. We’re barreling into an era of five-year core sets, yearly Standard rotations, and a huge number of Standard-legal Universes Beyond sets. All of this is big for players, but the Universes Beyond elements in particular have ignited a lot of controversy. At such a critical time, Magic’s Head Designer, Mark Rosewater, has brought up another thorny issue. Despite promises to the contrary, Universes Beyond cards from Secret Lairs will not necessarily be getting MTG Universes Within versions going forward per new changes. Suffice to say, players aren’t particularly happy about this.
Promises Made
Before we get into what’s been said today, we need to look back at what was said before. When Secret Lair was still in its infancy, and mechanically unique cards were just starting to get printed there, Wizards made a promise regarding reprints of those cards.
Quote from Wizards of the Coast, June 2021 »
For the next Universes Beyond Secret Lair, we plan to: Create and print versions of the mechanically unique Secret Lair Universes Beyond cards that are set in Magic‘s Multiverse approximately six months (the exact time may vary) after their release in Secret Lair.
This policy made a lot of sense. Keeping unique designs gated behind limited-time Secret Lairs is clearly a bad move, even on a print-to-demand model. Printing in-universe versions also addressed the immersion issue many had with Universes Beyond. Now players could enjoy the new designs without engaging with non-Magic IPs if they didn’t want to.
For a while, this system worked well. We saw Universes Within versions of the Walking Dead, Street Fighter, and Stranger Things Secret Lairs. While these were The List reprints, and therefore not hugely accessible, they did still serve their purpose well. Many ended up a lot cheaper than the original Lair cards, too, which was a nice bonus.
To be clear, this policy only extended to Universes Beyond cards from Secret Lairs. This much was clear from the start, and Mark Rosewater reaffirmed it on Blogatog the following year.
Quote from Mark Rosewater, August 2022 »
The only Universes Beyond cards we’ve promised to make in-universe versions of is Secret Lairs.
While fully in-universe versions of everything in Warhammer and Lord of the Rings would be great, the logistics of such an initiative would be tricky, to say the least. Reprinting a handful of cards is very different from reprinting an entire set, after all. With that in mind, Universes Within reprints of just the Secret Lair cards seemed like a fair compromise.
So that’s where we left things off. Today, however, Mark Rosewater has released a new statement that contradicts crucial details of this policy.
An Uncertain Future
Quote from Mark Rosewater, November 2024 »
Much has changed since we made our initial plan on how to get mechanically unique cards from Secret Lairs into players’ hands who didn’t purchase the Secret Lair drop. In the article we published, it said they’ll appear in The List in set boosters, both things that don’t exist any more.
Before we discuss the Universes Within changes Rosewater is discussing for MTG going forward, it’s important to note that the above statement is totally true. With The List gone, the outlet Wizards was relying on to distribute these reprints is also gone.
This, naturally, demands some kind of change in strategy. Unfortunately, what Wizards has in mind so far doesn’t sound too promising. In his statement, Rosewater revealed that they are “still working on the details” of the new Universes Within policy but that two key points had been agreed upon.
Quote from Mark Rosewater »
1: We want to make sure that players who aren’t able to purchase the Secret Lair have access to the card mechanically. The non-Secret Lair version will always be different from what the Secret Lair offered, but might keep the same name, representing the same character/object/place – aka it won’t always be a “Universe Within” version.
Right off the bat, this is a direct contradiction of the previous Universes Within policy. Before, we were guaranteed in-universe reprints of Secret Lair exclusive cards. Now we’re only being guaranteed reprints outside of the Lair itself. Since we’re moving into a much more Universes Beyond-heavy Magic, you’d assume this means we’ll get the reprints within actual mainline sets. According to Rosewater, there likely won’t be a catch-all solution like this, however.
Quote from Mark Rosewater »
2: There’s not going to be a single way to do this. Each Secret Lair might have its own solution. The intention is that we will make sure a version of that mechanical card is made available somewhere other than from purchasing directly from our site.
These points are both too vague to be useful at present. What’s clear is that Universes Within reprints are no longer guaranteed, which feels like a betrayal given the promises made in the past. With Universes Beyond taking up half of Standard, the number of core Magic havens is already taking a huge hit next year. Removing Universes Within feels minor in comparison, but it’s another step toward Magic becoming a very different game from the one many in the community fell in love with. Hopefully, we see some changes to this new policy when Rosewater clarifies it further.
Jesus Christ, Who Is God Revealed In The Flesh, Bless America.
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Sometimes I think it's a sin when I feel like I'm winning but I'm losing again." - Gordon Lightfoot
"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's not merely that the points are vague. By now, they've rolled back their policies not, or twice, again, again and again. Their words have no value at this point.
I was going to buy no UB products next year, only buying some singles. I've changed my mind: I won't even buy singles. A line must be drawn in the sand, and only players can draw it, as WotC employees have no spine to stand up to anyone higher up in the corporate ladder.
I used to think that their trickle-only reprint habits in regard to format staples was a sign of no-ambition in regard to the MtG growth. That it showed they thought the growth would remain flat and thus the idea of generous reprint too risky. The UB-or-bust mindset is another proof of this. WotC clearly thinks it can only grow MtG by pandering to other universes instead of by making magic itself fun and creative. They don't think they can make more Ravnicas and Tarkirs, so they just buy settings from others.
Their endgame is to turn magic into Monopoly: 90% of it will be UB and they are gonna try to milk some kind of "Magic Go" app
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How i feel about competitive players and casual players in EDH: The competitive are german tourists, the casual are italian tourists, both in a italian beach. The italians asking themselves "why are the germans here?" make a legitimate question, the answer is because the beach is beautiful, no matter the country you came from. The italians wanting to ban the germans are dumb, because if the germans pay for their stay and follow the rules like everyone else, they have the right to be in the beach. Hovewer, if the germans started to ask themselves "why are the italians here?"... they would be dumb as hell.
WotC clearly thinks it can only grow MtG by pandering to other universes instead of by making magic itself fun and creative. They don't think they can make more Ravnicas and Tarkirs, so they just buy settings from others.
Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro isn't willing to invest in the necessary resources to make their own Intellectual Property (IP) for Magic: The Gathering stronger because they don't think the risk will be worth the reward. Either that or they lack the confidence to succeed where they feel pressured to live up to the same potential as other more popular Intellectual Properties (IP) that already have their own established fandoms that took decades and years on end for the novelty to set in to cash in on the nostalgia. Why create something brand new that won't sell when you can profit off of someone else's own work? Only problem is that eventually you run out of nostalgia until you HAVE to rely on something novel.
So they cut corners by trying to piggyback on other Intellectual Properties (IP's) in order to sell a Trading Card Game / Collectible Card Game that's unable to attract new and younger players. So how do you profit off of an Intellectual Property (IP) of a Trading Card Game / Collectible Card Game whose only selling point is it's own mechanical identity? The mechanical identity of Magic: The Gathering alone isn't going to save the game long-term. Commander was really the last thing that was propping up the game since Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro deliberately gave up on Standard as Universes Beyond in the format will only make things worse in terms of breaking the immersion of the Magic: The Gathering.
Jesus Christ, Who Is God Revealed In The Flesh, Bless America.
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Sometimes I think it's a sin when I feel like I'm winning but I'm losing again." - Gordon Lightfoot
"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
Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro isn't willing to invest in the necessary resources to make their own Intellectual Property (IP) for Magic: The Gathering stronger because they don't think the risk will be worth the reward.
So they cut corners by trying to piggyback on other Intellectual Properties (IP's) in order to sell a Trading Card Game / Collectible Card Game
I mean a big part of it is doing the kind of extensive worldbuilding that went into the original ravnica or tarkir is a big undertaking for a creative team, and that's why we would spend a whole magic the gathering year on one plane with all kinds of fleshed out factions. Since lately we've gone from three sets per plane to two sets per plane to one set per plane the amount of work the creative team has to do has increased significantly and the time they have to do it has gone down significantly. Ramping up the collabs is a surefire way to get around this. Rather than six new planes in six sets next year the creative team only has to work on three new planes for three sets next year. Or uh, two I think one of them is tarkir remastered. So from a wotc standpoint this is a win/win. Pressure off the creative team but also more card sets coming out faster than ever.
They /could/ have hired a bunch more people and had a huge creative team that could probably handle the workload of a bunch of original sets, but that would mean hiring a whole lot of liberal arts underwater basket weavers who don't have a really clear cost to benefit measure and given that they've shrunk the creative team down to like 4 people in the last ten years over there I doubt they're gonna reverse course on that.
Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro isn't willing to invest in the necessary resources to make their own Intellectual Property (IP) for Magic: The Gathering stronger because they don't think the risk will be worth the reward.
So they cut corners by trying to piggyback on other Intellectual Properties (IP's) in order to sell a Trading Card Game / Collectible Card Game
I mean a big part of it is doing the kind of extensive worldbuilding that went into the original ravnica or tarkir is a big undertaking for a creative team, and that's why we would spend a whole magic the gathering year on one plane with all kinds of fleshed out factions. Since lately we've gone from three sets per plane to two sets per plane to one set per plane the amount of work the creative team has to do has increased significantly and the time they have to do it has gone down significantly. Ramping up the collabs is a surefire way to get around this. Rather than six new planes in six sets next year the creative team only has to work on three new planes for three sets next year. Or uh, two I think one of them is tarkir remastered. So from a wotc standpoint this is a win/win. Pressure off the creative team but also more card sets coming out faster than ever.
They /could/ have hired a bunch more people and had a huge creative team that could probably handle the workload of a bunch of original sets, but that would mean hiring a whole lot of liberal arts underwater basket weavers who don't have a really clear cost to benefit measure and given that they've shrunk the creative team down to like 4 people in the last ten years over there I doubt they're gonna reverse course on that.
What was their reasoning behind basically removing blocks again? I know there was something new and exciting about it but i can't really remember what it was... Actually it seems like a kind of stupid thing to do when you are looking to actually minimize workloads. Besides with this kind of rapid fire version of "new and exciting" it's pretty much given that overall player attention will go down since before they even get much of a chance to get invested in some world the next one, which is radically different, will be thrown at them. Immersion gets less and less while everything just feels more and more like generic throwaway characters. I guess it probably has something to do with the changing demographics and ADS attention span epidemic these days but at least from my perspective it just seems obviously counterproductive and stupid.
What was their reasoning behind basically removing blocks again? I know there was something new and exciting about it but i can't really remember what it was... Actually it seems like a kind of stupid thing to do when you are looking to actually minimize workloads. Besides with this kind of rapid fire version of "new and exciting" it's pretty much given that overall player attention will go down since before they even get much of a chance to get invested in some world the next one, which is radically different, will be thrown at them. Immersion gets less and less while everything just feels more and more like generic throwaway characters. I guess it probably has something to do with the changing demographics and ADS attention span epidemic these days but at least from my perspective it just seems obviously counterproductive and stupid.
The second and third sets always sold worse, drafted worse, and players keep *****ing about being bored by the second set.
The most funny thing about all this UB hate is that within the next 10-15 years, the future MtG players that will see threads will react as "Omg, people were arguing and being overdramatic for real about this stuff???"
What was their reasoning behind basically removing blocks again? I know there was something new and exciting about it but i can't really remember what it was... Actually it seems like a kind of stupid thing to do when you are looking to actually minimize workloads. Besides with this kind of rapid fire version of "new and exciting" it's pretty much given that overall player attention will go down since before they even get much of a chance to get invested in some world the next one, which is radically different, will be thrown at them. Immersion gets less and less while everything just feels more and more like generic throwaway characters. I guess it probably has something to do with the changing demographics and ADS attention span epidemic these days but at least from my perspective it just seems obviously counterproductive and stupid.
The second and third sets always sold worse, drafted worse, and players keep *****ing about being bored by the second set.
and that gets proven to still apply with midnight hunt and crimson vow
and that gets proven to still apply with midnight hunt and crimson vow
That might be due to Midnight Hunt not being great and both coming out so close to each other. We'll see how that strategy works out for WotC when they ramp up to constant Standard releases.
and that gets proven to still apply with midnight hunt and crimson vow
That might be due to Midnight Hunt not being great and both coming out so close to each other. We'll see how that strategy works out for WotC when they ramp up to constant Standard releases.
Was it though? In limited for sure (with the extreme imbalance towards blue/black and the weakness of the day/night mechanic), but Midnight Hunt had tons of cards that were played in many formats if I remember correctly, definitely Standard though. Not so sure about Crimson Vow.
Have to say, it is astonishing that the creative team is still able to knock it out of the park from time to time, the worldbuilding itself has been pretty neat (with the exception of Thunder Junction, where they had no outlet to even show off that same worldbuilding) for the last few new worlds (and the soft reinvention of Ixalan). I understand that some of them even sacrificed their free time to flesh out some of these, which is obviously less than ideal and Wizards should be ashamed of reducing the creative team so extremely. But not gonna lie, I am still impressed with what they are still able to do with such limited resources. People should definitely be critical of Wizard's treatment of creative, but the creative itself, at the very least when it comes to worldbuilding, is doing a pretty fine job all things considering, that is often not acknowledged because of the negativity surrounding recent decisions.
The second and third sets always sold worse, drafted worse, and players keep *****ing about being bored by the second set.
Well, personally i certainly didn't experience it this way but it sounds plausible overall. Attention span shortening didn't just start yesterday, i guess.
and that gets proven to still apply with midnight hunt and crimson vow
That might be due to Midnight Hunt not being great and both coming out so close to each other. We'll see how that strategy works out for WotC when they ramp up to constant Standard releases.
Pretty much this. I'm not a big fan of pulling cards from sleeves to begin with but put day/night on top of it and you pretty much have an auto-downvote. While the subpar performances of continuation sets are certainly an interesting detail i wonder if it wouldn't have been more practical to simply accept that not every set can have a banger performance.
The most funny thing about all this UB hate is that within the next 10-15 years, the future MtG players that will see threads will react as "Omg, people were arguing and being overdramatic for real about this stuff???"
Highly unlikely in my opinion as the topic of discussion would be nothing but abstract to them. The major takeaway would likely be the puzzling realization that at some point in time Magic wasn't a conglomeration of pop culture references. Sure they might feel the idea of Magic representing a bunch of "random" fantasy characters and people actually liking that to be downright crazy but there won't be any connection to the status ante so the a whole A vs B dynamic will just escape them.
Obviously that assumes that there is a 10-15 years down the road and who really knows that (well, admittedly Rosewater's crystal ball, err pardon, sales data claims to know that but let's just assume for a second that neither crystal balls nor sales data sheets are able to predict the future)? If sales data suddenly starts tanking in a couple years there's no turning back and neither are popular IPs infinite (ie even lottery cards and minimal friction with people opposed to crossovers aside there's no second LOTR) nor are the pictures printed on the cards really the root of Magic's accessibility problems. It's rather the hefty price tag (spending 100's of $/€ on a few pieces of colorful paper is an absolutely insane idea to the average person but that willingness is one of the basic requirements to play Magic), the overall high complexity (not everyone is a programmer and just goes "Ah, so it's a LIFO*. Simple enough." when hearing about the stack, massive time investment just to somewhat know the standard pool and so on - kind of a tough sell in general but in the era of instant gratification...) and for paper the fact that there'll soon be generations that have never touched a dead tree before at all.
*Edit: It's obviously a LIFO not a FIFO. - Not to self: Trying to sound intelligent is not always that much of a great idea at 1am in the morning.
The most funny thing about all this UB hate is that within the next 10-15 years, the future MtG players that will see threads will react as "Omg, people were arguing and being overdramatic for real about this stuff???"
Says the person that said UB wouldn't take over Magic. I wonder if you'll be wrong about that prediction too.
But look, if there’s a large enough playerbase that cares, we’ll respond. If you really want a Universes Beyond free format, make one. If it gets enough player support, we’ll follow suit.
Remember, we didn’t make Commander. The players did. When it got popular enough, we tried out a product, and the success of that product convinced us to make more.
I'm finding less and less to desire in the game, especially with all of this alienating UB nonsense. Foundations has some promising cards, but MTG has been in decline for quite some time now, and if Magic 30th was rock bottom, delaying an in-universe product for a UB release is 6 feet under that.
But look, if there’s a large enough playerbase that cares, we’ll respond. If you really want a Universes Beyond free format, make one. If it gets enough player support, we’ll follow suit.
Remember, we didn’t make Commander. The players did. When it got popular enough, we tried out a product, and the success of that product convinced us to make more.
Maybe I'm projecting my own views into Maro's post, but considering how pro-whatever-magic-is-doing he always is, this is pointedly missing the "I'm excited for UB and I am looking forward to seeing what you guys think!" bit which he does for every set no matter how horrible it ends up being.
Especially the whole "I was against it for a long time, but our stakeholders want it because it makes number go up" feels like hes tiptoeing around his own current opinion on the matter.
It's like this is the farthest his leash allows him to go.
Now I’m stwrrting to wonder if it really is just the internet players (including here) are the only ones complaining about this whole thing or taking it way out of portions
my LGS’s nobody’s complaining they are just playing what they added UB or not. Plus still not seeing an avalanche of UB cards from all the sets we had so far on tables. (And before you say 2025 sets and up. Answer me this, from the 2023 and 2024 sets how many cards from those sets you see on tables? Basically I still have yet to see nearly every deck have cards from thunder junction, Bloomburrow, heck I’m still not seeing stuff from kamigawa neon dynasty that much and that was a previous best seller set.)
and the mtg Vorthos is what they are trying to protect from this UB thing if you internet are trying to save it… why is it that most of the time I keep hearing “the story was not good/bad” for one example from quite a bit of the internet. The only ones I heard that were good from internet is BRO,and the epilogue of Thunder junction and duskmourn was a surprising good story to people, not hearing too much positivity about a lot of others.
I mean the internet is seen but yet the research from their thing shows “yes on UB” despite the internets voice on how hated it is
on top with the whole UB in standard……… has standard been paper ever since arena/covid. I don’t think so. So it’s mostly arena players talking in a way for that issue
cherry on top don’t get me started with the whole modern/future world technology complaints from neon dynasty/new capenna/MKM/Thunder junction/Duskmourn, and yet some older players smartly idenitfy they been doing stuff like this in magic since “Antiquities” and also I did hear a peep from people about this issue in “Brothers war” reboot set with the giant mechs, we got rocket launcher/Alaborn Zealot like arts and cards before neon dynasty and up of those for peak sake,
The problem that Mark Rosewater doesn't seem to understand is that the functionality of Standard won't permit an environment where players aren't obligated to run Universes Beyond cards. Creating a community based format that's basically Standard without Universes Beyond in practicality is impossible because unlike other formats where you can choose what cards to run, Standard doesn't necessarily give players that option and neither does Modern, Legacy, and Vintage. I've mentioned before that you can Rule Zero with your Commander playgroups not to run Universes Beyond cards and this is really the only format available in Paper Magic that makes it possible. This is what has a lot of Competitive Magic players frustrated where as the Casual Magic players continue to get a free pass on this because they don't care about the source material as long as they're having fun.
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Jesus Christ, Who Is God Revealed In The Flesh, Bless America.
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Sometimes I think it's a sin when I feel like I'm winning but I'm losing again." - Gordon Lightfoot
"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
well some people including some of you think maro is a liar on some stuff but i would still read this
Well, as i'm probably classed as "some of those persons" (no offense taken) i'll have to say that "liar" isn't all that good at describing my opinion of him. It's rather something between manipulative PR drone, awful personality and simple ignorance as it's usually somewhat hard to accurately tell those apart.
As for his current output:
But look, if there’s a large enough playerbase that cares, we’ll respond. If you really want a Universes Beyond free format, make one. If it gets enough player support, we’ll follow suit.
From my perspective that first and foremost pretty much sounds like a threat... Also he conveniently ignores how much more it needs for the stars to align for an actual grassroots effort to succeed compared to some kind of official approach, which i'd once again categorize as - not wanting to assume stupidity - dishonest communication. It's basically a cleverly worded version of "So you can't get something going on your own? Well, told you. Nobody cares.".
Remember, we didn’t make Commander. The players did. When it got popular enough, we tried out a product, and the success of that product convinced us to make more.
And that's exactly why. I remember vividly what EDH was and what it became a couple years after Wizards "follwed suit". Of course there'll always be the people-buy-it-so-it-must-be-good argument but in any case i think that it's kinda hard to argue against Wizards involvement during the last 4-5 years basically having warped to format to hell and back while basically introducing rotation to what used to be pretty much the most slow moving format available. Funny enough 10 years back i was among the people that didn't feel the inception of "Commander" to be much of a problem. Boy was i wrong.
I used to downright love EDH but these days it's a major struggle every time i contemplate building a new deck since getting the cards more and more just feels like a waste of money. Sure, i know the Rosewater logic of just-don't-play-what-you-don't-like and i'm actually doing that but in reality it's just as misleading as major part of this guys other output. Whatever i do, outside of my tiny pocket of players i'll always be surrounded by the flood of "hilarious" for-commander-cards commanded by Spongebob or whatever silly nonsense was just dumped onto Magic. Magic is a multiplayer game and a single player only accounts for a portion of the decisions being made regardless of Rosewater realizing this or not.
Also he once again goes on trying to compare UB to game mechanics one might or might not like... it's not the same thing. At least he instantly makes it clear how far detached from reality he is when he throws Commander into the mix too. Sure, a format one doesn't like and is perfectly free to simply not play is comparable to design aspects one has no option of effectively avoiding. Of course i'm free to simply not play Magic. Maybe that's actually the point he's trying to get across...
Oh and the part where he goes full on telepathic proclaiming to follow "the will of the players"... Jeez... I'm not expecting him to openly state that "will of the players" is an euphemism for most profitable approach but at the very least acknowledge that there's no uniform "the players" (well, who knows, maybe the people whose will they don't follow simply aren't Magic players after all... would be a bit strange for someone going ballistic over a guy jokingly wanting to trade Transformers for "real" Magic cards though) but rather a assumed majority they are trying to cater to, which is still blurry enough as to what's included there and what's not. Not that i care all that much but if i were to put on a tin foil hat i'd almost suspect that this wording is quite calculated. "No one shares your opinion. You are alone while everyone else agrees." is a very common and effective manipulation tactic as most people instinctively avoid being singled out.
I can only repeat myself when i say: I know why i'm not listening to this guy.
Answer me this, from the 2023 and 2024 sets how many cards from those sets you see on tables? Basically I still have yet to see nearly every deck have cards from thunder junction, Bloomburrow, heck I’m still not seeing stuff from kamigawa neon dynasty that much and that was a previous best seller set.)
That's pretty easy. Like with every other set you get to see the "good" cards. The amount of UB cards you see is directly related to the amount of good cards printed among them, which is bound to increase therefore increasing visibility. I agree that the status quo is still bearable but then we also haven't really seen many UB sets (possibly containing good cards) yet.
I keep hearing “the story was not good/bad” for one example from quite a bit of the internet.
And it might as well be. Like i've said before i'm largely ignorant to Magic's story but that doesn't make Spiderman or Spongbob any less immersion breaking. It's enough to take Magic as a losely connected fantasy world for that to happen. Sure, there's seemingly people who enjoy the story and that's perfectly fine in my books but the dislike for UB isn't necessarily linked to it.
I mean the internet is seen but yet the research from their thing shows “yes on UB” despite the internets voice on how hated it is
Well, a theory would be that isn't so much about the internet but rather about people fine with UB likely not having that much of a strong opinion on it but rather being somewhat indifferent or appreciative depending on if the UB in question appeals to them or not. I certainly don't doubt that Wizards/Hasbro wouldn't be doing this if it didn't make them money. The real question is rather at what price and will it continue to do so in the long run.
Funny enough when it comes to long term players the reaction i've been getting on the topic seems to be pretty uniform: LOTR is tolerated due to fitting the theme (it's "Magic adjacent" as UB was originally promised to be in general - not sure who was the person stating that but it doesn't seem to be one worth listening too...) but beyond that the opinions get strongly negative, so i figure that's pretty much the portion of the player blase Wizards thinks doesn't matter enough, which might or might not be true. Only time will tell.
on top with the whole UB in standard……… has standard been paper ever since arena/covid. I don’t think so. So it’s mostly arena players talking in a way for that issue
Well, it's not like i directly disagree with your observation but it's not like this wouldn't have any wider reaching implications either and standard also was the last non assimilated format after all. In general i'd love to see UB moved to it's entirely own format and out of everything else though.
cherry on top don’t get me started with the whole modern/future world technology complaints from neon dynasty/new capenna/MKM/Thunder junction/Duskmourn, and yet some older players smartly idenitfy they been doing stuff like this in magic since “Antiquities” and also I did hear a peep from people about this issue in “Brothers war” reboot set with the giant mechs, we got rocket launcher/Alaborn Zealot like arts and cards before neon dynasty and up of those for peak sake,
Yeah, a couple of the recent sets weren't all that strong in flavor (maybe it's simply the shape of things to come? it would kinda match the UB trend) but there's still a huge gap between those and Spiderman or Spongebob. There's even a huge gap between the Antiquities Rocket Launcher and those type of cards. There's also a picture of Albert Einstein in, i think, Legends but still the overall result is different be it in flavor or in scope and while those points are technically correct making them into something that's supposedly 1:1 comparable is, well... not exactly a convincing impression.
The problem that Mark Rosewater doesn't seem to understand is that the functionality of Standard won't permit an environment where players aren't obligated to run Universes Beyond cards. Creating a community based format that's basically Standard without Universes Beyond in practicality is impossible because unlike other formats where you can choose what cards to run, Standard doesn't necessarily give players that option and neither does Modern, Legacy, and Vintage. I've mentioned before that you can Rule Zero with your Commander playgroups not to run Universes Beyond cards and this is really the only format available in Paper Magic that makes it possible. This is what has a lot of Competitive Magic players frustrated where as the Casual Magic players continue to get a free pass on this because they don't care about the source material as long as they're having fun.
Tbh I think he does understand that and he knows the community won't be able to make a functional UW format. Reading between the lines he's just saying that players are going to have to revolt to get the company to change its path, that it's out of his hands.
cherry on top don’t get me started with the whole modern/future world technology complaints from neon dynasty/new capenna/MKM/Thunder junction/Duskmourn, and yet some older players smartly idenitfy they been doing stuff like this in magic since “Antiquities” and also I did hear a peep from people about this issue in “Brothers war” reboot set with the giant mechs, we got rocket launcher/Alaborn Zealot like arts and cards before neon dynasty and up of those for peak sake,
I'm still mad they made a cowboy set but gave everyone the stupidest possible fake fantasy guns instead of the kind of weaponry that existed in the 1800s. Guns generally are 500 years old!
In my opinion actual lore is just one aspect of what i'd call Magic's identity. Personally i'm very much ignorant to most of Magic's story line. Sure i know a bit about the Urza/Mishra arc but beyond that it gets dark very quickly (admittedly me not being much into fantasy in general might play a role here - i've read a lot of Terry Pratchett but otherwise my involvement with fantasy is pretty much zero and Terry Pratchett isn't really fantasy in a classic sense either). To me it's rather the overall impression of a fantasy world but even something as simple as that gets disturbed instantly when you start putting Lara Croft and Spiderman into it. My mind has no (or at least a manageable amount of) problems incorporating something like pirates, dinosaurs or cutesy Bloomborrow animals into said world but adding something that's supposed to exist in it's very own universe will make it stumble badly.
Even worse it makes the whole thing seem awkward and embarrassing. Like i'm actually playing a silly game for children (which even today most people's impression of TCGs is - it kinda seems like Wizards is hellbent on reinforcing that stereotype), which i forgot to drop out of like 20 years ago (i get quite a bit of insight into the views of the generations that came after me due to being surrounded by people younger than me where i live and the overall idea of TCGs being something you grow out of when you start reaching your 20s doesn't seem to have changed much even if those generation's exposure to TCGs seems to have been mostly Yu-Gi-Oh).
I don't know where i read it (might have been here or in some comment section) but the commentator very much hit a nerve with me when he stated "I miss the time when Magic took itself seriously.", which i can very much second. It's not like it needs to take itself overly serious in some grim and humorless manner but it should have a little self respect. Magic is a little silly and goofy by definition anyways. There's no need to artificially reinforce those aspects.
I'll hopefully be dead at that point
Basically the story of commander. It went from a handful of decks of 95%+ reprints to every set having a commander version + X decks + a bunch of specific sets full of silly stuff and format defining cards. I was pretty excited back when the first commander products were announced and even after it turned out they contained dumb cards like Command Tower and a bunch of legendaries that were a little to forcefully over the top for my tastes i didn't mind it much. Fast forward 13 years... I've basically lost count of the amount of stuff that got dumped on commander. Wizards simply doesn't know what "moderation" means.
Link to Article -
https://mtgrocks.com/universes-within-changes-mtg/
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Sometimes I think it's a sin when I feel like I'm winning but I'm losing again." - Gordon Lightfoot
"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
I was going to buy no UB products next year, only buying some singles. I've changed my mind: I won't even buy singles. A line must be drawn in the sand, and only players can draw it, as WotC employees have no spine to stand up to anyone higher up in the corporate ladder.
I used to think that their trickle-only reprint habits in regard to format staples was a sign of no-ambition in regard to the MtG growth. That it showed they thought the growth would remain flat and thus the idea of generous reprint too risky. The UB-or-bust mindset is another proof of this. WotC clearly thinks it can only grow MtG by pandering to other universes instead of by making magic itself fun and creative. They don't think they can make more Ravnicas and Tarkirs, so they just buy settings from others.
So they cut corners by trying to piggyback on other Intellectual Properties (IP's) in order to sell a Trading Card Game / Collectible Card Game that's unable to attract new and younger players. So how do you profit off of an Intellectual Property (IP) of a Trading Card Game / Collectible Card Game whose only selling point is it's own mechanical identity? The mechanical identity of Magic: The Gathering alone isn't going to save the game long-term. Commander was really the last thing that was propping up the game since Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro deliberately gave up on Standard as Universes Beyond in the format will only make things worse in terms of breaking the immersion of the Magic: The Gathering.
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Sometimes I think it's a sin when I feel like I'm winning but I'm losing again." - Gordon Lightfoot
"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
I mean a big part of it is doing the kind of extensive worldbuilding that went into the original ravnica or tarkir is a big undertaking for a creative team, and that's why we would spend a whole magic the gathering year on one plane with all kinds of fleshed out factions. Since lately we've gone from three sets per plane to two sets per plane to one set per plane the amount of work the creative team has to do has increased significantly and the time they have to do it has gone down significantly. Ramping up the collabs is a surefire way to get around this. Rather than six new planes in six sets next year the creative team only has to work on three new planes for three sets next year. Or uh, two I think one of them is tarkir remastered. So from a wotc standpoint this is a win/win. Pressure off the creative team but also more card sets coming out faster than ever.
They /could/ have hired a bunch more people and had a huge creative team that could probably handle the workload of a bunch of original sets, but that would mean hiring a whole lot of liberal arts underwater basket weavers who don't have a really clear cost to benefit measure and given that they've shrunk the creative team down to like 4 people in the last ten years over there I doubt they're gonna reverse course on that.
What was their reasoning behind basically removing blocks again? I know there was something new and exciting about it but i can't really remember what it was... Actually it seems like a kind of stupid thing to do when you are looking to actually minimize workloads. Besides with this kind of rapid fire version of "new and exciting" it's pretty much given that overall player attention will go down since before they even get much of a chance to get invested in some world the next one, which is radically different, will be thrown at them. Immersion gets less and less while everything just feels more and more like generic throwaway characters. I guess it probably has something to do with the changing demographics and ADS attention span epidemic these days but at least from my perspective it just seems obviously counterproductive and stupid.
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Spoiler Editorand that gets proven to still apply with midnight hunt and crimson vow
That might be due to Midnight Hunt not being great and both coming out so close to each other. We'll see how that strategy works out for WotC when they ramp up to constant Standard releases.
Was it though? In limited for sure (with the extreme imbalance towards blue/black and the weakness of the day/night mechanic), but Midnight Hunt had tons of cards that were played in many formats if I remember correctly, definitely Standard though. Not so sure about Crimson Vow.
Have to say, it is astonishing that the creative team is still able to knock it out of the park from time to time, the worldbuilding itself has been pretty neat (with the exception of Thunder Junction, where they had no outlet to even show off that same worldbuilding) for the last few new worlds (and the soft reinvention of Ixalan). I understand that some of them even sacrificed their free time to flesh out some of these, which is obviously less than ideal and Wizards should be ashamed of reducing the creative team so extremely. But not gonna lie, I am still impressed with what they are still able to do with such limited resources. People should definitely be critical of Wizard's treatment of creative, but the creative itself, at the very least when it comes to worldbuilding, is doing a pretty fine job all things considering, that is often not acknowledged because of the negativity surrounding recent decisions.
Well, personally i certainly didn't experience it this way but it sounds plausible overall. Attention span shortening didn't just start yesterday, i guess.
Pretty much this. I'm not a big fan of pulling cards from sleeves to begin with but put day/night on top of it and you pretty much have an auto-downvote. While the subpar performances of continuation sets are certainly an interesting detail i wonder if it wouldn't have been more practical to simply accept that not every set can have a banger performance.
Highly unlikely in my opinion as the topic of discussion would be nothing but abstract to them. The major takeaway would likely be the puzzling realization that at some point in time Magic wasn't a conglomeration of pop culture references. Sure they might feel the idea of Magic representing a bunch of "random" fantasy characters and people actually liking that to be downright crazy but there won't be any connection to the status ante so the a whole A vs B dynamic will just escape them.
Obviously that assumes that there is a 10-15 years down the road and who really knows that (well, admittedly Rosewater's crystal ball, err pardon, sales data claims to know that but let's just assume for a second that neither crystal balls nor sales data sheets are able to predict the future)? If sales data suddenly starts tanking in a couple years there's no turning back and neither are popular IPs infinite (ie even lottery cards and minimal friction with people opposed to crossovers aside there's no second LOTR) nor are the pictures printed on the cards really the root of Magic's accessibility problems. It's rather the hefty price tag (spending 100's of $/€ on a few pieces of colorful paper is an absolutely insane idea to the average person but that willingness is one of the basic requirements to play Magic), the overall high complexity (not everyone is a programmer and just goes "Ah, so it's a LIFO*. Simple enough." when hearing about the stack, massive time investment just to somewhat know the standard pool and so on - kind of a tough sell in general but in the era of instant gratification...) and for paper the fact that there'll soon be generations that have never touched a dead tree before at all.
*Edit: It's obviously a LIFO not a FIFO. - Not to self: Trying to sound intelligent is not always that much of a great idea at 1am in the morning.
Says the person that said UB wouldn't take over Magic. I wonder if you'll be wrong about that prediction too.
https://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/766703322533150720/you-say-that-magic-is-ever-evolving-and-therefore
important part
|| UW Jace, Vyn's Prodigy UW || UG Kenessos, Priest of Thassa (feat. Arixmethes) UG ||
Cards I still want to see created:
|| Olantin, Lost City || Pavios and Thanasis || Choryu ||
Maybe I'm projecting my own views into Maro's post, but considering how pro-whatever-magic-is-doing he always is, this is pointedly missing the "I'm excited for UB and I am looking forward to seeing what you guys think!" bit which he does for every set no matter how horrible it ends up being.
Especially the whole "I was against it for a long time, but our stakeholders want it because it makes number go up" feels like hes tiptoeing around his own current opinion on the matter.
It's like this is the farthest his leash allows him to go.
my LGS’s nobody’s complaining they are just playing what they added UB or not. Plus still not seeing an avalanche of UB cards from all the sets we had so far on tables. (And before you say 2025 sets and up. Answer me this, from the 2023 and 2024 sets how many cards from those sets you see on tables? Basically I still have yet to see nearly every deck have cards from thunder junction, Bloomburrow, heck I’m still not seeing stuff from kamigawa neon dynasty that much and that was a previous best seller set.)
and the mtg Vorthos is what they are trying to protect from this UB thing if you internet are trying to save it… why is it that most of the time I keep hearing “the story was not good/bad” for one example from quite a bit of the internet. The only ones I heard that were good from internet is BRO,and the epilogue of Thunder junction and duskmourn was a surprising good story to people, not hearing too much positivity about a lot of others.
I mean the internet is seen but yet the research from their thing shows “yes on UB” despite the internets voice on how hated it is
on top with the whole UB in standard……… has standard been paper ever since arena/covid. I don’t think so. So it’s mostly arena players talking in a way for that issue
cherry on top don’t get me started with the whole modern/future world technology complaints from neon dynasty/new capenna/MKM/Thunder junction/Duskmourn, and yet some older players smartly idenitfy they been doing stuff like this in magic since “Antiquities” and also I did hear a peep from people about this issue in “Brothers war” reboot set with the giant mechs, we got rocket launcher/Alaborn Zealot like arts and cards before neon dynasty and up of those for peak sake,
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Sometimes I think it's a sin when I feel like I'm winning but I'm losing again." - Gordon Lightfoot
"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
Well, as i'm probably classed as "some of those persons" (no offense taken) i'll have to say that "liar" isn't all that good at describing my opinion of him. It's rather something between manipulative PR drone, awful personality and simple ignorance as it's usually somewhat hard to accurately tell those apart.
As for his current output:
From my perspective that first and foremost pretty much sounds like a threat... Also he conveniently ignores how much more it needs for the stars to align for an actual grassroots effort to succeed compared to some kind of official approach, which i'd once again categorize as - not wanting to assume stupidity - dishonest communication. It's basically a cleverly worded version of "So you can't get something going on your own? Well, told you. Nobody cares.".
And that's exactly why. I remember vividly what EDH was and what it became a couple years after Wizards "follwed suit". Of course there'll always be the people-buy-it-so-it-must-be-good argument but in any case i think that it's kinda hard to argue against Wizards involvement during the last 4-5 years basically having warped to format to hell and back while basically introducing rotation to what used to be pretty much the most slow moving format available. Funny enough 10 years back i was among the people that didn't feel the inception of "Commander" to be much of a problem. Boy was i wrong.
I used to downright love EDH but these days it's a major struggle every time i contemplate building a new deck since getting the cards more and more just feels like a waste of money. Sure, i know the Rosewater logic of just-don't-play-what-you-don't-like and i'm actually doing that but in reality it's just as misleading as major part of this guys other output. Whatever i do, outside of my tiny pocket of players i'll always be surrounded by the flood of "hilarious" for-commander-cards commanded by Spongebob or whatever silly nonsense was just dumped onto Magic. Magic is a multiplayer game and a single player only accounts for a portion of the decisions being made regardless of Rosewater realizing this or not.
Also he once again goes on trying to compare UB to game mechanics one might or might not like... it's not the same thing. At least he instantly makes it clear how far detached from reality he is when he throws Commander into the mix too. Sure, a format one doesn't like and is perfectly free to simply not play is comparable to design aspects one has no option of effectively avoiding. Of course i'm free to simply not play Magic. Maybe that's actually the point he's trying to get across...
Oh and the part where he goes full on telepathic proclaiming to follow "the will of the players"... Jeez... I'm not expecting him to openly state that "will of the players" is an euphemism for most profitable approach but at the very least acknowledge that there's no uniform "the players" (well, who knows, maybe the people whose will they don't follow simply aren't Magic players after all... would be a bit strange for someone going ballistic over a guy jokingly wanting to trade Transformers for "real" Magic cards though) but rather a assumed majority they are trying to cater to, which is still blurry enough as to what's included there and what's not. Not that i care all that much but if i were to put on a tin foil hat i'd almost suspect that this wording is quite calculated. "No one shares your opinion. You are alone while everyone else agrees." is a very common and effective manipulation tactic as most people instinctively avoid being singled out.
I can only repeat myself when i say: I know why i'm not listening to this guy.
That's pretty easy. Like with every other set you get to see the "good" cards. The amount of UB cards you see is directly related to the amount of good cards printed among them, which is bound to increase therefore increasing visibility. I agree that the status quo is still bearable but then we also haven't really seen many UB sets (possibly containing good cards) yet.
And it might as well be. Like i've said before i'm largely ignorant to Magic's story but that doesn't make Spiderman or Spongbob any less immersion breaking. It's enough to take Magic as a losely connected fantasy world for that to happen. Sure, there's seemingly people who enjoy the story and that's perfectly fine in my books but the dislike for UB isn't necessarily linked to it.
Well, a theory would be that isn't so much about the internet but rather about people fine with UB likely not having that much of a strong opinion on it but rather being somewhat indifferent or appreciative depending on if the UB in question appeals to them or not. I certainly don't doubt that Wizards/Hasbro wouldn't be doing this if it didn't make them money. The real question is rather at what price and will it continue to do so in the long run.
Funny enough when it comes to long term players the reaction i've been getting on the topic seems to be pretty uniform: LOTR is tolerated due to fitting the theme (it's "Magic adjacent" as UB was originally promised to be in general - not sure who was the person stating that but it doesn't seem to be one worth listening too...) but beyond that the opinions get strongly negative, so i figure that's pretty much the portion of the player blase Wizards thinks doesn't matter enough, which might or might not be true. Only time will tell.
Well, it's not like i directly disagree with your observation but it's not like this wouldn't have any wider reaching implications either and standard also was the last non assimilated format after all. In general i'd love to see UB moved to it's entirely own format and out of everything else though.
Yeah, a couple of the recent sets weren't all that strong in flavor (maybe it's simply the shape of things to come? it would kinda match the UB trend) but there's still a huge gap between those and Spiderman or Spongebob. There's even a huge gap between the Antiquities Rocket Launcher and those type of cards. There's also a picture of Albert Einstein in, i think, Legends but still the overall result is different be it in flavor or in scope and while those points are technically correct making them into something that's supposedly 1:1 comparable is, well... not exactly a convincing impression.
Tbh I think he does understand that and he knows the community won't be able to make a functional UW format. Reading between the lines he's just saying that players are going to have to revolt to get the company to change its path, that it's out of his hands.
I'm still mad they made a cowboy set but gave everyone the stupidest possible fake fantasy guns instead of the kind of weaponry that existed in the 1800s. Guns generally are 500 years old!
|| UW Jace, Vyn's Prodigy UW || UG Kenessos, Priest of Thassa (feat. Arixmethes) UG ||
Cards I still want to see created:
|| Olantin, Lost City || Pavios and Thanasis || Choryu ||