As far as I can tell the only formats anyone plays anymore is Commander. Players only need 1 of a card and not 4 of and there is a lot of interactive cards that are necessary for standard but are just worst than older cards so are never played in commander.
Commander is and always was for casuals.
Even cEDH is still a casual format (just for people that want to build competitive decks regardless in a casual environment).
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PowerCreep is pretty real in magic right now, what Legacy complains the most about .. as WotC doesnt really design "new" cards, they just upgrade existing ones with more and more abilities that are flat out better than the version better, so existing decks just get stronger, further pushing any remote new deck idea into the realm of unplayable in power level.
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The stores that still open a lot of packs sell them online and are quite competitive with each other.
For customers it doesnt matter if there are 100+ of retailers selling them cards, or just 1 giant company that does it.
WotC sells cards directly by themselves with SecretLairs , and that business model is disgustingly profitable for them, as they quite literally produce almost nothing and sell it for massive amounts of money.
Long gone are the times the game and its boosters where a means to draft and play.
The entire argument for booster packs not being illegal gambling was that the cards themselves have no actual value, and the Boosters are sold as "Draft" packs to play with.
Now they sell packs that are not for playing at all, they are just massive gambling for money, open the crazy expensive card and keep going, or fail and lose money ... Magic mutated into a massive gambling addiction for some people that still buy sealed product (the whales that spend actual big money on sealed packs), while the vast majority of people cannot effort that (especially not children without a monthly allowance of 100+ bucks).
Even the LGS have trouble selling sealed boxes, as the margin of profit is so low, you need to flip a lot of them to make it worthwhile (or sell single booster packs in large quantity, to make more out each box, but thats all very very little profit for the time and space investment).
Selling singles has a larger profit range, if people buy a lot of them, and selling singles online is as simple as ever.
Any LGS that wants to keep its head above water is basically forced to sell online and flip large amounts of stuff. Problem is, that requires also large amounts of investment, and if people dont buy it up in the first week or month, you cant just sit on 10000$+ of investment , you have to pay rent for the store and such, so prices are further pushed down, as people need money back.
WotC is not helping any of these issues, they just keep making it worse ... and increase the prices of all product continually (for an eternity the prices for booster packs was the same, minimal increases in large time frames, and LGS could cover the increase and keep the price for packs the same, but now its extreme).
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Super expensive singles of really old cards are a market that just a few can really do, as you need knowledge, a store cannot just take a low-payed dude to sell high value product, its way too dangerous (even for theft, these super expensive things need to be put in a secure safe, its a risk to just have a store with that much expensive stuff without proper security, thats a heavy cost for a LGS, while just a storage for online sellers its not an issue, as people dont run around in your storage).
----
Yea, its a rough time, LGS are in a bad place and theres really no light at the end of the tunnel, just more misery and hellfire.
If the LGS die out, the game will most likely slowly bleed out and fizzle away, at least in paper form.
Commander is and always was for casuals.
Even cEDH is still a casual format (just for people that want to build competitive decks regardless in a casual environment).
----
PowerCreep is pretty real in magic right now, what Legacy complains the most about .. as WotC doesnt really design "new" cards, they just upgrade existing ones with more and more abilities that are flat out better than the version better, so existing decks just get stronger, further pushing any remote new deck idea into the realm of unplayable in power level.
----
The stores that still open a lot of packs sell them online and are quite competitive with each other.
For customers it doesnt matter if there are 100+ of retailers selling them cards, or just 1 giant company that does it.
WotC sells cards directly by themselves with SecretLairs , and that business model is disgustingly profitable for them, as they quite literally produce almost nothing and sell it for massive amounts of money.
Long gone are the times the game and its boosters where a means to draft and play.
The entire argument for booster packs not being illegal gambling was that the cards themselves have no actual value, and the Boosters are sold as "Draft" packs to play with.
Now they sell packs that are not for playing at all, they are just massive gambling for money, open the crazy expensive card and keep going, or fail and lose money ... Magic mutated into a massive gambling addiction for some people that still buy sealed product (the whales that spend actual big money on sealed packs), while the vast majority of people cannot effort that (especially not children without a monthly allowance of 100+ bucks).
Even the LGS have trouble selling sealed boxes, as the margin of profit is so low, you need to flip a lot of them to make it worthwhile (or sell single booster packs in large quantity, to make more out each box, but thats all very very little profit for the time and space investment).
Selling singles has a larger profit range, if people buy a lot of them, and selling singles online is as simple as ever.
Any LGS that wants to keep its head above water is basically forced to sell online and flip large amounts of stuff. Problem is, that requires also large amounts of investment, and if people dont buy it up in the first week or month, you cant just sit on 10000$+ of investment , you have to pay rent for the store and such, so prices are further pushed down, as people need money back.
WotC is not helping any of these issues, they just keep making it worse ... and increase the prices of all product continually (for an eternity the prices for booster packs was the same, minimal increases in large time frames, and LGS could cover the increase and keep the price for packs the same, but now its extreme).
----
Super expensive singles of really old cards are a market that just a few can really do, as you need knowledge, a store cannot just take a low-payed dude to sell high value product, its way too dangerous (even for theft, these super expensive things need to be put in a secure safe, its a risk to just have a store with that much expensive stuff without proper security, thats a heavy cost for a LGS, while just a storage for online sellers its not an issue, as people dont run around in your storage).
----
Yea, its a rough time, LGS are in a bad place and theres really no light at the end of the tunnel, just more misery and hellfire.
If the LGS die out, the game will most likely slowly bleed out and fizzle away, at least in paper form.
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