-
- Onering
- Registered User
-
Member for 11 years, 6 months, and 23 days
Last active Sat, Dec, 26 2020 16:13:54
- 1 Follower
- 2,550 Total Posts
- 1005 Thanks
-
May 29, 2019
Onering posted a message on The End of an EraThis sucks, but I'm going to try to look on the bright side. A new site is being developed it looks like, so this presents an opportunity for a reboot that ditches some of the problems inherit in the current incarnation. A leaner site without being attached to curse, which has always sucked, a chance to finally fix the browser hijack problem, etc.Posted in: Articles -
May 3, 2018
Onering posted a message on All Sets Are Good: LegendsPosted in: ArticlesQuote from Gerrard"s Mom »hyalapterouslemur broke the mechanics down well, but interestingly, the flaws we might find with Legends are almost all due to the incredible shifts in game literacy and game design theory that we have seen in the decades since this set came out. There are many cards here that are not fun because they slow down play, hose really specific strategies, or seem cool but are not efficient enough to play in most formats. Many cards break the current color pie and there are not really any cohesive themes that make the cards play together in fun ways as a set. Sure it's a bit of a fallacy, but it's totally valid to look back and say this set was all over the place if we accept a modern design standpoint.
Nobody is denying that there are powerful cards, flavorful cards, or design innovations that had a big impact on sets to come - this article is talking about what is good about the set, after all. In the spirit of this article series, please feel free to share what you love about Legends, but recognize that the article's point is not to say that Legends is "bad".
Anyway, I'd say Born of the Gods is probably your next best bet for sets people like to dump on. Maybe Dragon's Maze.
Dragons Maze for sure. Born of the Gods as well. Avacyn Restored gets some guff, but a few key cards keep it from getting trashed outside of its limited format. And, of course, Homelands and Fallen Empires. Was Battle for Zendikar poorly received, or was that just me?
And yes, I think we are all well aware that this isn't a series meant to argue that sets are bad. The "all sets are good" premise, however, works much better when focused on sets that were considered outright bad or at least underwhelming. Legends is, well, a legendary set known mostly for its flavor hits, its introduction of two of the most popular game mechanics, and several powerful, and $$$, cards (and eventually spawning EDH). Talking about Legends is less about saying "Oh, by the way, here are some neat things it did well mixed in with its missteps" and more about saying "Oh, by the way, here are some wacky mistakes the set made while printing all that gold." -
May 3, 2018
Onering posted a message on All Sets Are Good: LegendsPosted in: ArticlesQuote from Crazy Pierre »Well, people saying Legends is a bad set...it's not really playable in limited or sealed. A lot of the creatures are very expensive to play. When your best limited beater is Thunder Spirit at 1WW and that's a rare card, yikes.
I do have a casual Jasmine Boreal deck that's based on destroying evil, peace prevailing, nature and the odd Shuriken, because I had thought for a long time she held a shuriken in her hand, whereas someone pointed out that she's holding a snowflake. Cards such as Fyndhorn Pollen, Northern Paladin, Southern Paladin, Penatarch Paladin, Cleanse, Shuriken, the meld Gisela and Bruna and so on. YOu get the idea, it's not very good but it's fun!
Legends is one of my fave all-time sets, but I always sucked at pack wars. My best card an Elder Land wurm and his? A Mana Drain lol...
Only by reading this post did I realize that wasn't a shuriken. -
Apr 30, 2018
Onering posted a message on All Sets Are Good: LegendsI've been a fan of this series, but at no point do I remember anyone claiming Legends to be a bad set. A bad limited set, yes, because limited wasn't a concern back then, and a set where a number of decent to good at the time spells, and especially creatures, have gotten power creeped out of the game, but never bad. Hell, a single PACK of Legends sells for more than an entire box of Homelands or Prophecy. A lot of that has to do with Legends being much more rare, but a lot has to do with quality as well.Posted in: Articles
Still a good read going over the set, and it is a set that has some pretty maligned aspects, but the set overall was always a smashing success. -
Dec 2, 2017
Onering posted a message on If You Can't Take Criticism of Jeremy Hambly, You're Part of the ProblemPosted in: ArticlesQuote from Negator_402 »One major difference, and I hope you can appreciate this: heterosexuality is, FAR AND AWAY, the norm. Your analogy would make more sense if women (lets, for the sake of argument, make them all unattractive women) continually asked me out this poorly at a card tournament. It would be sad. If men hit on me, that would be very creepy, because they are presuming interest in homosexual activity, which is a minority. That would be like me handing out Planned Parenthood fliers in Iran, and wondering why I am getting shot.
There is also a public policy issue. We want humans to live in the US, interestingly enough. For that, we need people to, you know, mate! Unwanted advances are sad, and when made repeatedly, are in fact harassment. One-off failed pickup attempts are not, and punishing them will lead to more introversion from an already-introversive group. Should we not be encouraging players to date each other, rather than making women at Magic events sacred cows??
I can accept a middle ground: flirt with tact. At a bar, grossly creeping at a girl results in a drink tossing. At a card event, perhaps a shove? But banning that behavior is wrong.
So, its ok when men creep on women with cringy pick up lines and unwanted ocntact, making them extremely uncomfortable and causing them to leave the store or game, because heterosexuality is the norm, and wrong for gay men to do the same to straight men because gay is icky?
Then, to make it worse, you try to argue that unwanted sexual advances in an inappropriate setting is a good thing, because nerds need to mate. I'm almost at a loss for words, this is so stereotypically cringy that its more of a slur against geeks than the Big Bang Theory. Let me put it this way, you need to walk before you can run, and firing off pick up lines like that is like a baby trying to run a marathon. -
Dec 2, 2017
Onering posted a message on If You Can't Take Criticism of Jeremy Hambly, You're Part of the ProblemPosted in: ArticlesQuote from Hawk7915 »Quote from Negator_402 »What you just mentioned (that pickup line) is not harassment, and I fear for a world were that is considered such.
Context matters, so consider my post to be "unsolicited pick-up lines that clearly make the recipient uncomfortable" since sure, you might be flirting and it makes sense to drop old gems like this - but also, if all your pickup lines relate immediately to sex with someone who's just there to play Magic, perhaps you should find a few new ones. THAT's the overall point, really, of my thread here - many here are saying "just let me play cards, this is a game, leave politics and identity out of it", then defending dropping cheesy pick-up lines and trolling for sex with their female opponents who are also just there to play cards. You can't have it both ways. It can't just be a game when it makes you comfortable, and be about your out-of-game needs and wants when it makes you comfortable too.
I opted for a clean example in the interest of not getting a warning or infraction.
Or, more simply, many of the people complaining that "just let me play cards, this is a game, leave politics and identity out of it" are getting upset when women say ""just let me play cards, this is a game, leave my ****** out of it". -
Dec 2, 2017
Onering posted a message on If You Can't Take Criticism of Jeremy Hambly, You're Part of the ProblemPosted in: ArticlesQuote from HolyProxyBatman »Quote from hyalapterouslemur »Yeah, it's "Keep your politics out of here. Now let me tell you all about how horrible women are. #MAGA!"
And yet, all these Hollywood abusers are what? MAGA fans? Nope. True-blue liberals. EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM.
But but but Hollywood! You know they are getting outed and fired, and its a pretty big deal right? That its wrong no matter who does it? We aren't saying all the abusers are Trumpers, but it seems those defending the abusers are. -
Dec 2, 2017
Onering posted a message on If You Can't Take Criticism of Jeremy Hambly, You're Part of the ProblemPosted in: ArticlesQuote from secretgiant »This article is wrong to characterize anyone with sympathies to dimensions to complex problems as Nazi-lovers. Freedom of speech is a legal right, but harassment is sometimes illegal. People who say things we disagree with should be countered in a principled way or ignored. If speakers are mercilessly harassed (I don't know if Hambly was genuinely harassed) for their speech, that is not ok. I believe Sprankle has been insulted for sexual and gender reasons and I don't respect Hambly's position on how to characterize women. Behavior like Hambly's is known to exclude women from all kinds of environments, so I don't doubt that sometimes women avoid MTG because they don't want to be treated like animals. But harassing him as revenge accomplishes nothing good. It reveals that the friends of women in our community agree with these methods. The way deal with things we don't agree with are as important as our beliefs. Men in our community that hate women are harassers, it seems, and some of the men that defend women are harassers too.
People like Hambly and his speech and behavior should be condemned by the community and members of the community must stop tolerating an anti-female environment.
This is a good point. Doxxing the ******** isn't the way to go. But pressuring those that give him a platform to spew his filth to withdraw that platform is a different story, as is writing negative reviews based on what he has said. -
Dec 2, 2017
Onering posted a message on If You Can't Take Criticism of Jeremy Hambly, You're Part of the ProblemPosted in: ArticlesQuote from Negator_402 »Type less, read more. The quote from me you yourself quoted above states "the 4th Amendment applies to government." I then went on to discuss the concept of the burden of proof in the public sphere.
I do not need you to believe I am an attorney. Your approval is not important to me, or to many other people, I venture.
"If they are in fact "abusers" and you have no proof...welcome to the 4th Amendment."
Yeah, that's what you lead with, and backtracked when you got called on it, like I said.
And when you, on an anonymous internet forum, try to score points in an argument by claiming authority without proof, it does seem quite a bit like you are seeking approval. Nice job making another personal attack though, I'm sure that wins you a lot of cases in "court". -
Dec 2, 2017
Onering posted a message on If You Can't Take Criticism of Jeremy Hambly, You're Part of the ProblemPosted in: ArticlesQuote from Negator_402 »SJW is in fact a term. Its a term adopted by the people who are labeled it.
And the difference is, the word "bigot" means "no matter what his opinion, it does not count to me, regardless of the topic." I do not label someone a "socialist" when I argue with them about police or immigration.
So is alt right, but I'm not even referring to that, or how you misuse it, I'm referring to your laughable contention that you "have tried to avoid terming any opinion I do not agree with as "Socialist" or "Islamist" or "Intersectionalist Nonsense"" when you did that during this discussion. -
Dec 2, 2017
Onering posted a message on If You Can't Take Criticism of Jeremy Hambly, You're Part of the ProblemPosted in: ArticlesQuote from dos_rogue »wow is this what Mtgsalvation has become? another political tabloid?
Does that make you feel less welcome? -
Dec 2, 2017
Onering posted a message on If You Can't Take Criticism of Jeremy Hambly, You're Part of the ProblemPosted in: ArticlesQuote from Negator_402 »You quoted me (an attorney, no less) and then stated "only stupid people think the constitution..." Surely, you are joking?
You know, when you have to use ellipses to take out the relevant part of the quote, you might be reaching. If you actually are an attorney, you should know that the 4th amendment only applies to the government. You then corrected yourself when called out on it, but i guess it still must sting so you had to quote the first half of a sentence while cutting off a point.
I also believe you are an attorney, just like my Canadian girlfriend
-
Dec 2, 2017
Onering posted a message on If You Can't Take Criticism of Jeremy Hambly, You're Part of the ProblemPosted in: ArticlesQuote from Negator_402 »Unfortunately, this is the new normal. I have tried to avoid terming any opinion I do not agree with as "Socialist" or "Islamist" or "Intersectionalist Nonsense" to not fall into this trap myself.
Bull*****, you do that in this very thread! -
Dec 2, 2017
Onering posted a message on If You Can't Take Criticism of Jeremy Hambly, You're Part of the ProblemPosted in: ArticlesQuote from jball_2k »Literally nobody wants racists and bigots playing this game with us. I don't know what your point is.
My point is conflating conservatives with alt-right/Nazis is just wrong. It's extremely dishonest. It's bad for the game and the community.
I don't think that's what she was doing, but that is the group that is active in most of this. Conservatives don't jump in on a troll army and harass people for having a ******. -
Dec 2, 2017
Onering posted a message on If You Can't Take Criticism of Jeremy Hambly, You're Part of the ProblemPosted in: ArticlesQuote from Negator_402 »ISIS is a self-claiming "state" which calls for the destruction of the West. We are at war with ISIS.
Nazi Germany is (thankfully, thanks to people like my grandparents who fought in the Red Army) a dead state. The alleged "Neo-Nazis", of which there are actually quite few, do not swear allegiance to this state because it is not in existence.
There are in fact people in the US who advocate for a race-based fascist state. Some of them are Neo-Nazis and other "Alt Right" factions. Others still are BLM, various Islamic proliferation movements, and all sorts of Socialist groups. Socialism, as advocated by Bernie Sanders and such, is support of a form of governance alien to ours. Does THIS not bother you?
It bothers me that people can post so much while knowing so little. Lets work backwards through your delusions.
Bernie Sanders does not support a system of government alien to ours, he supports our system of government. He supports an economic system that is different from ours, which he refers to as Socialism but which is more of a hybrid of Socialism and Capitalism known as a welfare state, in which the economy is driven by private industry and the government undertakes to solve the shortcomings of Capitalism with a robust benefits system and higher, progressive taxation. Such a system is seen in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and to a lesser extent places like Germany, all Democratic governments with strong constitutional systems.
Nazi Germany is defeated, but Nazism is an ideology, closely related to fascism but with racialist elements. There are several, self avowed Nazi groups, as well as several white nationalist groups that aren't Nazis, ranging from neoconfederates who espouse a democratic form of white nationalism to theocrats, and fascists who are authoritarian but not race based. They all have banded together under the alt right label and run in the same circles. They identify with Donald Trump largely because of what he says and how he acts. Many of these groups actively advocate for enslaving or exterminating other races and religions. They all want a form of government that is, in fact, alien to ours, with the exception of the neo confederates who mostly want a pre 1860's United States. Despite there being no nation state we are at war with, (and ISIS never really was, they were a militia that took territory and has lost almost all of it), but these non state actors espouse and commit violence based on hatred of non whites, non Christians, and liberals/moderates. You got hung up on the ISIS comparison, so how about Al Qaeda, or a start up Jihadi group? No, I still think you'd hold a double standard, based on your posts. I hate Islamists as much as I hate Nazis and Kluckers, but it seems you're a bit more selective in which hate groups and terrorists you denounce. - To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
This makes more sense.
I don't have a problem devaluing cards by printing them. The health of the game depends on accessibility, and for older formats and commander being too expensive is a bigger issue than LGS availability. Yes, LGS (and online stores like SCG) rely on the secondary market, buying cards at below market value and selling at a profit. The risk of that strategy is that it's speculation. Usually they make money from it, but there is always a risk that cards will drop in value, either due to rotation, the hot deck that needs it going out of fashion, or reprints. The LGS business model needs to adapt to where the secondary market is a supplement to their business model rather than an integral part of it. Not for any moral reason, but because doing so will make their businesses more stable and resilient to market shocks.
Why WotC thinks at home play is the majority: surveys. They do a fair amount of market research to determine how people play the game and what players like and want so they can target products to them. The reason you see premium products and stuff like that is because their market research told them a significant enough portion of the player base wants those products. You see the major commitment to EDH because they found it was the most popular format after 60 card casual, and they built brawl in the hopes of building on that. They know that at home play is still the most common way people engage with magic, with casual and EDH leading that. At home players tend to spend less on cards than FNM warriors, but there are more of them and they tend to buy packs. I think Wizards isnt about to abandon the LGS because they make money from them, tournament engagement increases the amount people spend on magic, and limited moves packs. Getting people who play at home into their local LGS makes wizards money by getting them to spend more. They want both market share and dollars per player, so both groups are important.
As for long term LGS viability, it was a struggle before COVID. Stores in big cities with a younger population do well, as do stores in college towns, because they have a large customer base to draw on. Stores in more rural areas, or smaller suburbs, struggle because there just aren't enough customers. You need a certain concentration of nerd culture involved people to serve for a nerd culture exclusive business to thrive, even when your pretty diversified within that culture and selling comics and games in addition to running DND campaigns Warhammer tourneys and Magic, Yu-Gi-Oh, and Pokemon events. I think a plausible business model for these areas where LGS struggle is to run it as a combination business with some other sort of thing, like a bowling alley or skating rink. Most such places have sizeable party rooms that can host events, and areas that usually have pool tables and arcade games that could be retrofitted as the sales floor for product. Or a diner, I have a couple in my area that have large banquet areas that they use to host gaming clubs during the day and are usually empty at night. And by gaming clubs, I mean just old people playing bridge and stuff. One even has an area thats basically a couple chairs and some decorations that's as large as the sales floor in most LGS and off to the side. Imagine running FNM and having players order their food from you instead of bringing McDonald's. There's potential here, it just requires innovation, something that has been really lacking in the LGS sector. It's still operating under the model that worked in the 90s,
Oh, hi Mark
I don't think Hasbro is actually meddling in what they print, but I do think they are putting pressure on WotC to keep costs down and revenues up to an aggressive degree. A lot of Hasbro's other divisions aren't doing well, and Magic is selling more than ever. Sometimes when that happens, a company will lean harder on the successful division to make up for poor performance elsewhere, the simple logic being that you are most likely to make more money quickly by focusing on what you do well rather than what you are struggling with. Unfortunately, is sales targets are too aggressive and cost cutting too deep, you end up with something that resembles what we are seeing in Magic right now: too few employees being paid too little to do too much, and trying to hit unrealistic sales targets. The tried and true method of selling packs is to push cards, but its always risky and with a system undermined by cost cutting its more likely to result in broken cards that need bannings. But not only that, mistakes get through that aren't a result of cards being too pushed on their own, but from the environment not being balance. Cards like Felidar Guardian and Reflector Mage would have never been banned in the past, but also would not have been as much of an issue in the past because it is unlikely the environments that made them problematic would have been allowed to exist in the first place. Guardian for instance would have never seen print alongside Saheeli, and if they even appeared in the same Standard one would have been printed in the spring or summer set before the other rotated out, so it would be a short period of a combo deck doing something. Its cheaper to simply ban cards more aggressively after they become problems than to prevent them from becoming problems with tweaks in design or changing the environment around them.
Hopefully this puts you a bit at ease. Sometimes its hard to have a good perspective on events. Human beings are predisposed to binary thinking, which unfortunately leads to difficulty reacting appropriately to medium threats. Plague is a very dangerous disease but also very treatable and reasonably containable based on how quickly it presents and how it spreads. If you get it, and you don't treat it, you will die, but its very unlikely that you will get it, and if you do its very likely that you will go to the hospital early enough to get treatment that will not only save you, but make it not horrible to get through. Most deaths come from poor rural areas in poor countries because people don't have access to health care and thus don't seek treatment until its too late. COVID-19 is a moderately dangerous disease. If you catch it, you are actually pretty unlikely to die from it without treatment unless you have certain risk factors, but its still dangerous enough that it is cause for concern. A death rate of 1% is a strange thing. It means that if you catch it, the odds are greatly in your favor to live (and if your one of the lucky 30 percent you may never even know you had it), but if EVERYONE catches it the world is looking at about 70 million deaths, and the US would be looking at about 4.5 million dead, which are unacceptable numbers when the means exists to reduce them, and they are large enough to wreck economies. Thus, its in our interest to take extreme measures to prevent and control it, but yet we should not be individually afraid because of the low individual death rate and the effectiveness of these measures at preventing us from catching it in the first place. Unfortunately, calm but cautious is not what we are set up for, so you have the extremes of "we're all gonna die" and "its a hoax" get far more play than they should, and the less extremes of fear on one end and recklessness on the other be widespread.
As for LGS, many do not have the ability to do outdoor events its true, but some do. Most LGS that I have frequented use those plastic folding tables and chairs or something similar, so simply moving them outside accomplishes the task. The big issue is whether the LGS has an outside to move to. That really depends on the location. In a city, the answer is no, yet city based LGS also tend to have a bigger audience they serve and are more likely to be able to be in decent shape, especially if they are near a college. Getting creative by reserving space at a park for events is a great option. That's usually free, but it depends on availability. Some more rural LGS, which are usually the ones that struggle the most due to a smaller player base, have access to yards or their parking lots are large enough to section off an area for the event. FNM conveniently takes place when many businesses are closed, so even LGS that share parking lots may be able to use the entire thing because their neighbor isn't open at the time. Its not a solution for everyone, but its worthwhile for any LGS that can do so to try it out.
Except Peterson isn't insightful. He's blaming young adults for not moving out of their parents homes as early as their parents did, and ignoring the major financial challenges facing young people their parents didn't face. 20 somethings don't live with their parents because they want to, or because of Peter Pan syndrome, they do so because they start adult life in a financial hole due to college tuition, and use the money they save living at home to start working on the principle and saving for a house, which costs a lot more in today's dollars than it did when Peterson was in his 20s. Its simply good finances to live at home during their 20s instead of throwing money away into rent. Most of the people who do this have college debt because their parents didn't pay their tuition. Peterson types look down on these people but not on people whose parents paid their tuition, allowing them to graduate debt free and put their post college earnings directly into rent while also being able to save for home ownership.
I get the appeal of Peterson. Its mostly the same as any other hack life coach. When people are in a rough place and unsure of themselves, he's a voice giving simple answers. He packages this in an archaic worldview and a get tough message. Sometimes sucking it up and making sacrifices is the only way to get by when life hands you a crap sandwich, but Peterson plays that as a virtue and the right way to live generally instead of a necessary evil to survive in the face of adversity. He supports the very systems that cause the problems he claims to solve for people (and makes worse long term, like encouraging 20 somethings to make sacrifices to move out and pay rent as soon as possible which delays actually being able to own a home versus living at home and saving up buy a house). He fetishizes austerity and a mythical spartan masculinity that is as immature as overindulgent hedonism. Peter Pan syndrome is an old hot take that was simply a repackaging of the same complaint old curmudgeons have had about the next generation since Plato (literally, Plato made the same complaints). Its not real, its just old people railing against the young because they have an idealized view of their own life narrative and think the next gen aren't living up to it. Its why boomers rail against Millenials being lazy or profligate when they actually work more hours, are more productive, and more austere in their lifestyles than boomers were at the same age. You know The Peter Pan Syndrome book you reference was written in the early 80s, about Peterson's generation (Boomers), and now Peterson (and Boomers more generally) are crying about the same wolf with Millenials and Z. Its garbage pop psychology that serves to make the old feel superior to the young and any young that listen to it feel ashamed for being human.
Do not feel bad about liking magic, nor liking playing at an LGS. Don't think that liking games or anything considered "childish", and don't be ashamed about asking for help and support. Growing up isn't about posturing or signaling, its about being responsible. That's it. If people can rely on you, and you can basically take care of yourself, that's it. And taking care of yourself can mean understanding when you need help or support and having the humility to accept it. It also means self care, and that's different for everyone. For a lot of us here, playing some magic is self care. For others, its meditation, or watching the game, or going to church, or sitting around watching cartoons all weekend every once in awhile. And there's nothing wrong with that.
You're verging into conspiracy theory thinking here. So you're saying its not that COVID is the new normal, its that somehow people will make the jump in logic that they should be afraid of bio terrorism. First, that wasn't what you were saying before, nor does it support your previous arguments, so nice try. Second, to jump from COVID to fears of bio terrorism would require a paranoid, ill informed, extremely risk averse mindset that would lead to failed businesses regardless of how rosy the economic outlook is, so again, the only people who would be kept from opening an LGS due to bio terror fears are people who aren't fit to run a successful business anyway, so at least they won't be throwing their money away.
Third, and this is where I'll go slightly off topic, but no terrorist, government, mad scientist, or super villain would ever try to weaponize COVID-19, because COVID-19 sucks balls as a bio weapon. Bio weapons are most useful in causing terror in a target population or as an area of denial weapon. COVID-19 lacks the qualities that make it effective for these roles, or any bio warfare role. First, it simply isn't deadly enough. A 1% fatality rate is high enough to necessitate the sort of government reaction it has, as if we tried to get herd immunity just by infecting people the US would see about 35 million deaths, but its far too low to be effective as a bio weapon. You are going to do more damage, more reliably, with conventional weapons. Second, Its slow as hell. It takes 2 weeks for symptoms to show, and bio weapons need to act quickly for the desired effect. Third, it spreads too easily. Effective bio weapons kill your enemies but don't come back on you. For all the reasons COVID-19 has proven uniquely difficult to contain it would also prove a poor choice for bio weapon, as any state or group that carries out a successful attack is going to be sure it will hit them as well, possibly even worse than the target. Fourth, it is most dangerous to the elderly, while bio weapons are most effective, both in war and as terrorism, when they hit the young, specifically fighting age adults, at least as hard. The death rate among the younger generations is significantly less than among older populations, and the people most likely to be soldiers (young and in good health) are also most likely to not only survive COVID, but to have mild or no symptoms. Lastly, there a plenty of diseases that have been around for years that would make far superior bio weapons both for terrorism and warfare, including COVID's relatives SARS and MERS. Biological weapons are expensive and unwieldy, which is why they have rarely been used, and most of the time where used before the existence of Germ Theory. There are just too many easier, cheaper, more controllable, and more reliable ways to kill people, and even among bio weapons COVID-19 wouldn't make the cut.
Rather than letting your mind run wild with worst case scenarios that aren't based on fact, take a breath and educate yourself. And Jordan Peterson repackaging decades old self help pablum doesn't count.
This isn't anything new. Excising racist cards and cutting ties with controversial artists might be new, but draw the characters getting it on and your gone has been a long standing thing. That's not about morality or anything, it's about controlling the IP.
That said, after seeing the pictures she claims prompted this, I'm having a hard time finding the issue. While they are beyond what wizards allows for their product, only one of the pictures actually features anything directly related to magic. And even then it's using a couple of cards as pasties. Assuming that this is the extent of it, she should have got nothing more than a warning not to use cards in semi nude photos.
Yes, lots of LGS will go under, as will lots of bars and restaurants and other service sector business that rely on people going out in crowds. LGS aren't the only businesses with these issues. Like LGS, bars and restaurants run pretty small margins and can get wrecked by something like COVID-19. Lots of them won't be able to weather this storm. But nobody is predicting that the restaurant or bar industries are going to die out, and people will open new bars and restaurants once the pandemic is over to replace the ones that close down. The same will happen with LGS. So long as there is demand enough to support a business, there will be businesses to meet that demand.
I hope most LGS can find a way to weather the storm. I hope their regulars stop in just to purchase product, and I hope they have landlords who willing to take a write-off on missed rent to retain a good tenant (more likely if they don't have people interested in the space). I hope the same for my favorite local restaurants. And just like with local restaurants, people who can afford to continue to support them during this time should. But retail is a fickle business in good times, especially retail that relies on people hanging out in the establishment like a bar, LGS, or restaurant, so some will invariably close.
I'm rambling a bit, but anyone who would avoid going into business because or the risk of an event that happens once every hundred years or less shouldn't be going into business at all, because they are too risk averse to run a successful business. Running a business requires a stomach for risk taking, because everything you do entails risk, and growing a business requires more risk than simply maintaining one. Certain businesses, like LGS, bars, restaurants, are often a few bad months away from closing even when they are successful. Most restaurant owners fail the first few times they open a restaurant. When you ask "who would open an LGS if a global pandemic could ruin the business" the answer is the exact same sort of people who would open an LGS if they weren't thinking about the risk of a global pandemic.
Dude, the inflation rate is DOWN this year. This is understandable if you know anything about how inflation actually works, because when the economy loses money inflation goes down. The stimulus checks were a drop in the bucket and did little to counteract the severe downward pressures on inflation. That doesn't mean that the prices of certain products that are experiencing bottlenecks haven't gone up, but they haven't gone up do to inflation (the relative devaluation of currency over time as the amount of currency grows) but due to scarcity and the resultant price gouging. Many things that add to costs have gone down, such as the price of fuel which reduces the price of shipping, raw materials as producers of those materials are forced to sell for less money as demand plummets, etc. There's no evidence that magic, or the sort of products lgs' sell, are being impacted by scarcity pricing. Neither are rents going to go up as much as they usually do, because landlords face the problem of finding tenants to fill the space at a time when tenants are having trouble paying. Landlords have an incentive to wave rent and write it off as a loss rather than leave the store empty and still not get rent, because they at least keep a tenant that has proved reliable until the pandemic.
This is going to be a hard year and many stores will go under, but it won't be THE END. Also keep in mind that COVID is a perfect storm virus that can be spread easily, is hard to contain, and is dangerous enough to matter. Something like SARS1 or MERS doesn't spread as easily, is quickly noticed and easy to track, and can thus be contained without these kind of measures despite both being far more deadly. These kinds of diseases aren't the new normal, COVID-19 is best though of as a century disease, the sort of thing that will show up about once every hundred years. Medical advances mean any given disease is less likely to be a century disease (flu used to be a great candidate but our knowledge of it and ability to quickly develop targeted vaccines means that even a flu like the Spanish flu is unlikely to rise to the level of COVID-19), but increased exposure to animal sources means our exposure to new diseases has increased and spread is easier due to globalization, so things sort of even out.