The thing that bugs me most about this whole episode is that many players have the "I already got the card so I don't care if you can get yours!" mentality. This is just so unhealthy for the game as a whole. We all like the game, thats why we play it. So why should we deny another player the pleasure of playing with cards that are on the restricted list. I have personally owned and played with some of the cards that are on the Restricted list and I wish that newer players have the chance to enjoy the experience of playing with such cards without having to shell out an arm and a leg just to afford it. Nobody said that MTG is a cheap game, but there should be certain limits to the cost of certain cards. This continued unlimited rise in the price of such cards can only result in the eventual demise of the game that we love.
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Sent an email. Hiding it behind a spoiler tag. Still pretty unhappy about this.
Dear Wizards of the Coast, regarding the announcement of the "Revised Reprint Policy":
I have been a Magic player since almost the earliest days -- I bought my first cards the week Legends was released -- and I can't remember a decision your company has made about this game that has disappointed me so deeply since the day the creation of the Reserved List was first announced.
As many of your own employees and public ambassadors for Magic have acknowledged, the Reserved List was a knee-jerk reaction when it was first introduced, a heavy-handed and harmful response cobbled together quickly in response to an unforeseen problem. In the years since, we've come to see exactly how the policy restricts the creators of Magic in building the game, forces valuable elements of the game's past to be off-limits to its present, and even perversely prevents reprints that can expand and improve on the values of now largely-useless cards from older sets.
While I disapproved of the decision to use a loophole in the policy to reprint Reserved Cards, I did so because it seemed the worst of both worlds -- breaking the "promise" of the Reserved List without taking advantage of the benefits to the game that could come from truly eliminating it completely. At very least I hoped that it might be a way to slow-roll the elimination of the list, to get people used to the idea of reprinting old cards so that it would be less of a shock when the list was dropped altogether. To now pull back from even that change is the worst possible choice you could make in this situation -- it will continue to allow a tiny number of people to dictate a policy that is against the interests of the majority of players and of the game itself.
Please reconsider this decision and move your policy once again towards eliminating or revising the Reserved List and thereby bringing Magic's reprint policy in line with the modern design and aims of the game as it exists today.
Sounds to me like AaFo and friends wanted to abolish the list. I have a feeling this is far from over.
Aaron Forsythe has wanted to eliminate the Reserved List literally since before he took over R&D. He's talked frankly in public about what a terrible and harmful policy it is many times. His tweet makes it sound to me like this came down from Hasbro (for, uh, reasons I am having trouble actually guessing) and the decision was completely out of Wizards' hands.
I think part of the problem here is that a lot of us (correctly, in my view) called WotC out on their hypocrasy for using a loophole to bypass the Reserve List (thereby rendering it more or less meaningless) instead of abolishing it or trimming it back to only the cards that should be on it, e.g. the Power 9 (which has always been my preferred solution).
Unfortunately, while the desire of many (but certainly not all) of us was to get WotC to acknowledge their hypocrasy so they would modify/abolish the Reserve List, I think what happened was that WotC clearly wasn't ready for such a radical step, so instead they basically panicked and closed the loophole instead.
<Insert minor rant: I've been mostly apathetic about the M10 rules changes (and completely in agreement with some of them), rolled my eyes at the introduction of Mythic Rares, was mostly in favor of the 8th Edition's new card frames, and was actually thrilled about the advent of the 6th Edition rules changes. I've played through Homelands, Black Summer, Combo Winter, Affinity's reign of terror, Kamigawa's reign of... disappointment, and Faeries. Having established all of that, I am stating with only a moderate amount of hyperbole that this is one of the worst decisions WotC has ever made - worse even than initially establishing the Reserve List as it is because that was a kneejerk reaction made regarding a game in its infancy that was still heavily driven by collectors. /rant over>
... ...
Having said all of that, the real thing I take issue with is how badly WotC handled this situation. They could have let us all know months ago they were thinking about using the premium loophole, kept us informed of their thought-processes thereon, and reassured everyone that reprints of the Power 9 weren't coming down the pipeline anytime in the foreseeable future. They could have held another poll, like the one that led to the removal of all non-rares from the Reserve List back in 2002 or so. They could have stated they were thinking about changing things, and held open forum discussions at Prereleases and Pro Tour events, or allowed a full year for feedback or something.
Instead, everything was done in secret, allowing rumors to fester and fears (both legitimate and ridiculous) to be raised by collectors. And before anyone goes blaming rumormongers for letting us know about the Negator well in advance, let's not forget WotC released the Negator's art months ago, and the decklists weeks ago - and we are only just now getting an official announcing on the future status of the Reprint Policy (I don't count the announcement that revealed Masticore would be in FtV: Relics because that told us very little other than the premium loophole would be used more aggressively in the future, and only fed the flames of people's concerns). Is it any surprise WotC received a backlash?
I am so impressed with Wizards right now. They made the right choice, and I just cannot fully express how glad I am about this announcement. This is really a bold statement that shows they can be (mostly) trusted. Again, I'm just really impressed and completely delighted with the new policy. I hope my emails were influential in this decision.
Isn't it great how Wizards only gets feedback when we're angry, so when they please 90% of players by loosening the reserve list they think that they're displeasing players :-/.
If this is true and this is Hasbro's decision, don't you think you should be less harsh. Shooting the messenger much?
It's more just going up the chain. If enough people complain to WotC, they'll bring it to Hasbro's attention. And apparently, Hasbro loves making rash decisions based on some fan e-mails, so who knows where this will go.
Card prices have always seemed to be driven more by demand due to playability than demand due to actual rarity. (Smokestack is $8-12 while other artifact rares in the same set are ~50 cents, Memory Jar, which is banned, is ~$3. All these cards are the same "rarity" except for large-set versus small-set I suppose. The only difference is some are played, others are not, and Jar isn't tournament legal).
All collectibles seem to have that nature of actually being hard to find and worthy of being collected.
To maintain collection value by keeping game pieces from being reproduced in a tournament-legal form seems like some kind of perverse idea of "collecting."
Imagine if Wizards' decided (as a kneejerk reaction to extreme prices in some rares) to just ban them?
That way they won't have to reprint them so collector's collections prices won't crash.
After the outpouring of responses he got to that last tweet, Aaron wants to talk about Scars of Mirrodin on his twitter now. Maybe he'll feel guilty and give us a hint or something.
After the outpouring of responses he got to that last tweet, Aaron wants to talk about Scars of Mirrodin on his twitter now. Maybe he'll feel guilty and give us a hint or something.
I swear, if he mentions Contraptions I'm quitting Magic.
Can someone help me contact Hasbro? or post a link?
I thought of something funny. What if WotC fights back by reprinting Force, Goyf, etc? Hasbro obviously knows nothing about the game, so it's not like they'd notice.
This is so bad. Legacy is now doom to slowly become a new vintage... How much duals lands will worth in 3 years? in 5 years? Let see Underground Sea hit 300$ around 2015. This is sooo bad...
His tweet makes it sound to me like this came down from Hasbro (for, uh, reasons I am having trouble actually guessing) and the decision was completely out of Wizards' hands.
This was almost certainly due to complaints from dealers/retailers - that is, the people that Hasbro has an actual direct business relationship with. I don't think they'd flip their stance this fast or this hard just based on reactions from random people on message boards.
Thanks WotC for making the RIGHT but unpopular decision. Magic survives only because it is a COLLECTIBLE card game, locking up the reserved list and throwing away the key was a needed step.
IMHO now is the perfect time to buy into Legacy. The value of duals are locked in forever, no need for hesitation when buying anymore.
For everyone complaining, you're still getting Masticore, Mox Diamond, Memory Jar and more. That's way more than you could have expected or reasonably hoped for just a few months ago.
Edit: One thing I DO agree with the complainers on is that Wizards handled the whole situation very poorly. They called in Smennen and that bigshot dealer guy who got 60% of the MTG community excited over the possibility of reprinted everything while the other 40% were ready to slit their wrists (including me). But it was all for nothing! Basically Wizards took us all for a ride.
I'm extremely disappointed in this. It is a further segregation of Magic players between those who can afford to play legacy/vintage and those who can't, and helps to create an elitist class who believe that other people shouldn't be able to garner the same enjoyment from this game that they do.
I believe Kelly Reid once tweeted about his wonderings as to how many players at worlds didn't play Baneslayer Angel because they didn't own copies. Will supply become a metagame-changing factor in Legacy with duals and Force of Will becoming scarce in decklists, becoming replaced by cheaper alternatives such as Counterspell and the shocklands.
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What if you can't "buy into" Legacy now? Are you ****ed over? And Magic survives because of the players, not because of speculators or collectors.
His tweet makes it sound to me like this came down from Hasbro (for, uh, reasons I am having trouble actually guessing) and the decision was completely out of Wizards' hands.
We may be looking at it the wrong way. It may be possible that Hasbro pushed to use the premium loophole putting WotC in the uncomfortable position of having to re-evalute their Reprint Policy. And they balked. So rather than take the hard step (abolish the policy) they took the much easier step of appeasing Hasbro in the short term and forstalling any decision on what to do with the policy. That would certainly explain the lack of an adequate narrative on their end. I don't think they have a grasp or cohesive narrative to actually spin. Surely no one expects WotC to offically stick to the "a promise is a promise" line were they to open up communication. Ben and Stephen over at Star City made very compelling arguments when WotC invited them to talk about the list in JAN. And open dialogue would need to address the points that they made. And I just don't see them having a strong enough story to spin.
I mean press releases are the only thing you can do when you've got no argument.
There are plenty of reasons to dislike the reserved list but Legacy isn't a good one. Keeping an eternal format "viable" by constantly reprinting old demanded cards is just not something you can or should keep up in the long run, and this has in fact destroyed many card games because it's so easy to mess up. It's more sensible to try and come up with a different format, say the popular "choose your own standard" variant, than scrambling around trying to identify and reprint all the tourney staples, while balancing the numbers so the card value isn't totally shot.
Banner By Seingalt
Dear Wizards of the Coast, regarding the announcement of the "Revised Reprint Policy":
I have been a Magic player since almost the earliest days -- I bought my first cards the week Legends was released -- and I can't remember a decision your company has made about this game that has disappointed me so deeply since the day the creation of the Reserved List was first announced.
As many of your own employees and public ambassadors for Magic have acknowledged, the Reserved List was a knee-jerk reaction when it was first introduced, a heavy-handed and harmful response cobbled together quickly in response to an unforeseen problem. In the years since, we've come to see exactly how the policy restricts the creators of Magic in building the game, forces valuable elements of the game's past to be off-limits to its present, and even perversely prevents reprints that can expand and improve on the values of now largely-useless cards from older sets.
While I disapproved of the decision to use a loophole in the policy to reprint Reserved Cards, I did so because it seemed the worst of both worlds -- breaking the "promise" of the Reserved List without taking advantage of the benefits to the game that could come from truly eliminating it completely. At very least I hoped that it might be a way to slow-roll the elimination of the list, to get people used to the idea of reprinting old cards so that it would be less of a shock when the list was dropped altogether. To now pull back from even that change is the worst possible choice you could make in this situation -- it will continue to allow a tiny number of people to dictate a policy that is against the interests of the majority of players and of the game itself.
Please reconsider this decision and move your policy once again towards eliminating or revising the Reserved List and thereby bringing Magic's reprint policy in line with the modern design and aims of the game as it exists today.
Aaron Forsythe has wanted to eliminate the Reserved List literally since before he took over R&D. He's talked frankly in public about what a terrible and harmful policy it is many times. His tweet makes it sound to me like this came down from Hasbro (for, uh, reasons I am having trouble actually guessing) and the decision was completely out of Wizards' hands.
Unfortunately, while the desire of many (but certainly not all) of us was to get WotC to acknowledge their hypocrasy so they would modify/abolish the Reserve List, I think what happened was that WotC clearly wasn't ready for such a radical step, so instead they basically panicked and closed the loophole instead.
<Insert minor rant: I've been mostly apathetic about the M10 rules changes (and completely in agreement with some of them), rolled my eyes at the introduction of Mythic Rares, was mostly in favor of the 8th Edition's new card frames, and was actually thrilled about the advent of the 6th Edition rules changes. I've played through Homelands, Black Summer, Combo Winter, Affinity's reign of terror, Kamigawa's reign of... disappointment, and Faeries. Having established all of that, I am stating with only a moderate amount of hyperbole that this is one of the worst decisions WotC has ever made - worse even than initially establishing the Reserve List as it is because that was a kneejerk reaction made regarding a game in its infancy that was still heavily driven by collectors. /rant over>
... ...
Having said all of that, the real thing I take issue with is how badly WotC handled this situation. They could have let us all know months ago they were thinking about using the premium loophole, kept us informed of their thought-processes thereon, and reassured everyone that reprints of the Power 9 weren't coming down the pipeline anytime in the foreseeable future. They could have held another poll, like the one that led to the removal of all non-rares from the Reserve List back in 2002 or so. They could have stated they were thinking about changing things, and held open forum discussions at Prereleases and Pro Tour events, or allowed a full year for feedback or something.
Instead, everything was done in secret, allowing rumors to fester and fears (both legitimate and ridiculous) to be raised by collectors. And before anyone goes blaming rumormongers for letting us know about the Negator well in advance, let's not forget WotC released the Negator's art months ago, and the decklists weeks ago - and we are only just now getting an official announcing on the future status of the Reprint Policy (I don't count the announcement that revealed Masticore would be in FtV: Relics because that told us very little other than the premium loophole would be used more aggressively in the future, and only fed the flames of people's concerns). Is it any surprise WotC received a backlash?
I can chip in $500.
Let's save Magic!
Seriously, Hasbro, the game was perfectly fine before you stuck your nose in. Mind your own business and just cash the checks.
Isn't it great how Wizards only gets feedback when we're angry, so when they please 90% of players by loosening the reserve list they think that they're displeasing players :-/.
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If this is true and this is Hasbro's decision, don't you think you should be less harsh. Shooting the messenger much?
It's more just going up the chain. If enough people complain to WotC, they'll bring it to Hasbro's attention. And apparently, Hasbro loves making rash decisions based on some fan e-mails, so who knows where this will go.
I know, I was joking! Hence the worrrrrthleeeeeess!
All collectibles seem to have that nature of actually being hard to find and worthy of being collected.
To maintain collection value by keeping game pieces from being reproduced in a tournament-legal form seems like some kind of perverse idea of "collecting."
Imagine if Wizards' decided (as a kneejerk reaction to extreme prices in some rares) to just ban them?
That way they won't have to reprint them so collector's collections prices won't crash.
I swear, if he mentions Contraptions I'm quitting Magic.
I thought of something funny. What if WotC fights back by reprinting Force, Goyf, etc? Hasbro obviously knows nothing about the game, so it's not like they'd notice.
This was almost certainly due to complaints from dealers/retailers - that is, the people that Hasbro has an actual direct business relationship with. I don't think they'd flip their stance this fast or this hard just based on reactions from random people on message boards.
Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.
IMHO now is the perfect time to buy into Legacy. The value of duals are locked in forever, no need for hesitation when buying anymore.
For everyone complaining, you're still getting Masticore, Mox Diamond, Memory Jar and more. That's way more than you could have expected or reasonably hoped for just a few months ago.
Edit: One thing I DO agree with the complainers on is that Wizards handled the whole situation very poorly. They called in Smennen and that bigshot dealer guy who got 60% of the MTG community excited over the possibility of reprinted everything while the other 40% were ready to slit their wrists (including me). But it was all for nothing! Basically Wizards took us all for a ride.
I believe Kelly Reid once tweeted about his wonderings as to how many players at worlds didn't play Baneslayer Angel because they didn't own copies. Will supply become a metagame-changing factor in Legacy with duals and Force of Will becoming scarce in decklists, becoming replaced by cheaper alternatives such as Counterspell and the shocklands.
http://twitter.com/mtgaaron/status/10657920657
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Hmm, I think he's reading this thread.
Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.
What if you can't "buy into" Legacy now? Are you ****ed over? And Magic survives because of the players, not because of speculators or collectors.
We may be looking at it the wrong way. It may be possible that Hasbro pushed to use the premium loophole putting WotC in the uncomfortable position of having to re-evalute their Reprint Policy. And they balked. So rather than take the hard step (abolish the policy) they took the much easier step of appeasing Hasbro in the short term and forstalling any decision on what to do with the policy. That would certainly explain the lack of an adequate narrative on their end. I don't think they have a grasp or cohesive narrative to actually spin. Surely no one expects WotC to offically stick to the "a promise is a promise" line were they to open up communication. Ben and Stephen over at Star City made very compelling arguments when WotC invited them to talk about the list in JAN. And open dialogue would need to address the points that they made. And I just don't see them having a strong enough story to spin.
I mean press releases are the only thing you can do when you've got no argument.
He just did.
.
Proves he's reading this thread.
EDIT: Sarnathed
Or in the words of that crazy kid in We're Back! A dinosaur tale:
Let no bad happen!
.....
*twitch*
I think my brain just melted. I don't know what to believe anymore.
HE'S BREAKING THE FOURTH WALL!!!!
Yeah, time for bed for me. That had BETTER be a joke.
Edit: On the other hand, Aaron Forsythe just made a joke directed squarely at me. I feel important.