My impression from the people who are disappointed with the set is different from yours though. I think people are complaining that buying a low number of boosters is much more risky than in regular sets, which you point out in the end:
This means that for people not to lose when buying masters 25 they have to cash out on a box (or something close to that), which is already a high entry barrier for what is supposed to be a celebration set.Buying individual packs is much more of a gamble, given the higher price, but booster boxes will pay out their expected value.
I don't know, just leaves a bad taste in your mouth knowing that WoTC is basically forcing you to spend a lot of money for you to get a decent return on your investment. Not to mention that I'm a bit skeptical about the value retention capacity of many cards from the mythic and rare list after the market gets flooded with more copies. Anyway, I think the conclusion is that if you have the money to buy a box and wants to, there is no harm in doing that, but don't try to gamble on individual packs.
It is funny that before I posted the 'corrected' version there were some people that agreed with me in the matter of being childish, etc. And after I posted my alterations there was a lot of nitpicking and criticism saying that the original was better, oh well... Arguments in the internet are hard man.
If everyone likes the way Jace and Liliana were depicted, fine. To me it looks bad, not bad to the point that I will stop reading, but just inappropriate. I gave examples why it is bad, examples that I took from good literature from books that depict characters from less modern times. No one needs to agree with my standards, but if people disagree with them they shouldn't throw such low punches going as far as to say that 'my examples were bad' when they are clearly from good books by good writers. It is just sad to see that.
You did point out something relevant: different planes SHOULD have different languages. Heck, even different races would have different languages to use among them, and the planeswalkers apparently speak all of them. Is there any sort of explanation for that? And you said it jokingly, but if the creative team put some effort to create different accents and expressions for different planes I would find it amazing work as it would give consistency to the multiverse of magic, individualizing more each world. And magic started as a game basically inspired in Dungeons and Dragons that was inspired in medieval fantasy. Nowadays it can be a different monster, but it still has roots in that, so I think the writers could show it by having more care with choice of words.
That being said, they also have the Orzhov, who work pretty much as the Church did in the Middle Ages, asking for tribute from the followers and thinking of themselves as the big deal. We have the selesnya, druids and mages connected to nature who are very similar to some cultures that lived in the Middle ages or even before that in Britain, we have the Gruul, animistis and mages of nature related to some northern european cultures and we have plenty of other examples. I can't extend too mUCH without doing deep research, but Ravnica is somewhere in the middle ground of a truly antique medieval setting and a steam punk culture, specially because the guilds are so different from each other. Remember that we also had strong urbanization in the Roman Empire, and that went from the classical antiquity to the late middle ages, so just because we have big cities doesn't mean we are in a modern era.
Two things are of note though:
- "Modern" era doesn't mean our era (we are the contemporary history, that some consider a part of the late modern era, whatever). In the onset of the modern era people still talked pretty differently from how we do nowadays, and you would expect yet a very different vocabulary from the one used in uncharted realms. Jace and Liliana talked like teenagers from our time, from our decade, and that is bad to me, because we are positioned in a completely different time. If you think they sounded like adults, they still sounded like adults from OUR time, no wonder everyone said 'well, that's how I would have a conversation like that'. Precisely, you, a living being from the year 2015, not two mages from a completetly different setting. Unless you want to argue that Ravnica is similar to the cities we have nowadays, and I would be amused to see you trying.
- They are not citizens from Ravnica. Although Jace lived a pretty long time in Ravnica, he has visited other planes of existence, and Liliana comes from Dominaria, a plane as inspired in medieval times as you can get. They have visited many planes and plenty of them will look even more similar to the medieval ages. They are planeswalkers, Liliana in particular old and powerful, they should have a more robust vocabulary and they should talk in a more refined way, different from the colloquialism I've seen so far, one that is so similar to OUR way of speaking.
Do I really care about that? A little. Not absurdly, it will not keep me from reading the URs, but it is something that I think should be adressed.
It is very interesting to discuss writing style though, because most people care only about what a story is saying, while ignoring that how it is saying is truly important. Just from this small discussion on the forum I've found that most people here are fine with a modern way of depicting conversation, even if the characters do not live in a modern era. To me that makes the work of the creative team easier, because they can write in a 'sitcom' style as someone pointed out before and the story will sound solid.
Extracted from Maze of Bones, by Rick Riordan (same guy who wrote Percy Jackson):
Extracted from Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman:
Now let's take a look at two historical novels:
Extracted from The Winter King, by Bernard Cornwell:
Extracted from the Iron King, by Maurice Druon:
The firs extract I took from a speech from Merlin, considered to be a powerul wizard/druid. The second I took from two lovers talking to each other, one of them (Marguerite) having a personality very similar to Liliana's in some respects. Please compare and tell me which one do you think the uncharted realms is more closely related to, the first two or the last two. In my opinion clearly the first two, the use of 'hmph', casual colocations such as 'just a rat or something' that make the text sound too modern or too out of place, while I wanted it go in the direction of the last two extracts, that sound less childish and more mature, without seeing 'wooden' or 'formal'.
That said, this is my last attempt to point out this matter. If everybody thinks that the text is fine, great. There is nothing I can do to argue otherwise. I think we could uphold higher standards for writing, but if people think my standards are inappropriate or innacurate, then patience.
And are you and any of the people that you know mages that live in a fantasy world inspired by medieval times? The problem in the conversations is exactly that they sound too 'modern' and 'immature' for the whole context of their lives and situation. They sound like teenagers from our modern era, and that is a problem in the writing style, if you don't think so, great, we move on. If you think that they sound exactly as they should, then there is nothing more to argue.
Again, not any kind of adult people, two powerful mages from a fantasy world inspired by medieval times. If you are really bothered by it I can grab some fantasy books and historical novels that I have where people have conversations very different from the one that Jace had with Liliana. Being lovers or not, the way they talked with each other was childish, if you don't think so fine, I could show you examples of conversations taken from good medieval/fantasy books for a really long time and you wouldn't find a 'oh that' in them.
Finally, I would say that magic is a fantasy world based on our medieval times in general, but with some liberty taken in one aspect or another, that is why the characters would sound more formal to me, or would use different words. In any case english is not my first language, which can stop me from delivering the lines the exact way I wanted to. But all the criticism is appreciated, I do think they sound less childish, maybe the dialogues could be tuned so they would sound a little bit more familiar with each other.
Of course, there is always room for improvement. If you think that I couldn't make my point then maybe I could try something different in the future.
next one:
Last one:
and also:
And also that:
This is not bad writing per se, the problem is that it doesn't seem to fit any of the two characters. Liliana in particular is a century-old all powerful necromancer, while Jace is a telepath that embodies a treat that keeps a whole world from falling apart, you would think that they would talk in a more refined or interesting way, even considering that they are acquaintances. The way it was written looks like an extract from a book for children and teenagers. Maybe this is just the creative team trying to capture the younger public, but to me it feels very out of place.
The story from this week was not on the same level. I think it was still good, the relationship between Jace and Liliana struck me as genuine and I could care for them enough to have a good time reading. That being said, it was a story with 3 of the 5 new protagonists from Magic's new era... if it was a bad story than they could pack it up and give up on writing. It is like when you have Batman and Superman in the same storyline talking to each other, if the dialogues of the greatest faces of your story don't hold up, you can't expect anything to hold up. I do think that the dialogue was a bit too careless in some spots, in the way that the characters acted and reacted, it felt too childish, with the 'nope', 'I'm too strong', 'That', and other lines such as these. Gideon sounded much more sound to me than Jace or Liliana, who looked like teenagers talking to each other (and Liliana is at least centuries old if I'm not mistaken). I can overlook these details given that the content of their conversation was interesting though.