For those who missed the drama, there's going to be a special Ravnica set that is only sold in the U.S. over Hasbro's website and contains 8 special versions of some planeswalkers and 24 RtRtR packs - for the low, low price of fucking 250$.
More info here: https://magic.wizards.com/en/article...ore-2018-09-04
Massive outrage on the social media aside (leaving LGS out, the price itself, only being available in the US), Jesper Myfors, the original Magic art director was on point with his commentary which reflects the current state of MtG rather well:
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Well, a couple years ago (I don't recall when exactly, since I am getting old) the "push" from Wizards was to "grow" the game. This meant getting new players to play. I believe this was when they made numerous changes, as in, New World Order, simplified Core Sets, playable decks out of boxes, and so on. Well, it worked for a good bit, but at some point plateaued. Necessarily. The game is only going to appeal to a certain number of people, just by virtue of it's very nature.
So, once that happened, it was time to change the growth strategy to what I've heard used in business lingo as "organic growth." That is, less growth by bringing in new customers, but rather, how to get already paying customers to simply buy more. This is not intrinsically bad, as a strategy, in fact, it is very smart and done correctly, very benefecial to the customers. However, Wizard's implementation of it has been atrocious in places. There is good, like the Commander pre-cons, Master's reprints (even if the price point is bad) and probably a couple things I am forgetting. However, such "gimmicks" as this limited edition box, the Buy-a-box fiasco, and "Masterpieces" are simply too transparent a "cash grab."
The failure of Standard's marketability though is going to probably dictate further pushes like this. The "correct" answer to selling more product is in introduce and present greater value at the same price point. I.e. if you want to sell more $4 packs, make it so the perceived value of said pack is greater, since if those packs are not selling, that value is perceived as lower. Introducing higher priced packs (that might have greater Customer Perceived Value) really isn't going to solve the "problem" of the CPV of the $4 packs. I can't imagine how it is that I can deduce that and Wizards can't. But I think they do know that, but dictates from Hasbro corporate likely don't care and are willing to cannibalize (almost) anything to please shareholders.
"The Ancients teach us that if we can but last, we shall prevail."
—Kaysa, Elder Druid of the Juniper Order
Wizards is run by a bunch of moronic idiots. The game would have been alot more successful if it had been run by competent people at the helmet.
Shareholders always demand higher revenue, so WotC is forced to deliver, whether they like it or not. But your analysis is correct - once growth from increasing player numbers vanished, they kept releasing more and more products to the point where it became blatant, like the infamous 1-2-3-4 punch of Eternal Masters - Eldritch Moon - Conspiracy 2 - Kaladesh within four months. Now that pushing out more product doesn't even work anymore (see: revenue loss in 2017), their new strategy is heavily pushing those promo cards.
Right, I mean, we can only hope that this gimmick's failure leads to something better, but in reality, it probably leads to something worse, short term. That's the pit of being a private company. You can't really have long term growth plans, because everything is focused on revenue now. Long term, our best hope would be that Hasbro jettisons Wizards to someone who would take it private, but that is very, very unlikely.
"The Ancients teach us that if we can but last, we shall prevail."
—Kaysa, Elder Druid of the Juniper Order
The problem isn't that WotC is trying to turn a profit, it's that they're run by incredibly incompetent dipshits.
Maro made a blogpost response about the fallout of this new Masters Set that I think sums up WOTC's feelings; it's all about the collectors.
This is a product that is not meant for players. After all, if WOTC makes a set that is terrible to draft or a standard season becomes solved then players won't buy the product. By marketing towards "collectors", they don't have to worry about making players happy. This set is simply to recapture some of the hard core collectors that want to have EVERY PROMO that WOTC makes. These collectors are of course mostly after old staples now and don't care about shinny promos that will curl up in a year but hey, it’s worth the experiment right?
I think as Eternal Format enthusiasts we all know that card availability is often pointed to as the problem behind our 'dying formats' and some of us probably place the blame on “collectors” but the blame is on WOTC and the Reserve List. I think if this set sells out (which it probably will) then we are only going to see WOTC double down on making “collectors” happy.
mise 'miz v alter. of might as well (1997) 1: to win when you don't deserve to 2: to top-deck the "tings" you need 3: to be rewarded by an opponent's bad luck 4: to coin a phrase that spreads through the tournament scene like wildfire 5: to fling a monkey 6: to split firewood using a sharp instrument 7: To burn
There's no reason not to make collectors happy. Many of them are completionists by nature and so will buy basically anything you put in front of them so long as it is unique in some way.
Also, let's not forget that a lot of the "collectors" aren't really collectors at all, but MTG Finance guys who will buy product like this in bulk, sit on it for a while, and then liquidate it. Not all of them have the bankrolls to buy into the safer old cards, so stuff like this is perfect for them because the full-art walkers will be in demand from casual players and pimpers for years, assuming the planeswalkers themselves stay playable. Whether or not RtRtR turns out to be a dud is irrelevant because you can open the whole box now, move the cards to Standard players, and then just pray your planeswalkers follow the long-term price pattern of the good SDCC planeswalker promos.
The number of "experiments" they've done recently, plus the massive delta between advertising hype and actual product for sets over the past year, has me pretty worried. I'm not usually a pessimist about these things, but it definitely seems like they're flailing a lot more than they have at any time I can remember. It's especially bizarre because a lot of the experiments they're trying now were either left alone for being obviously bad ideas (direct-to-player sets undermine LGS support and slow pack sales as LGSes drop your product for things that will net them more revenue) or were tried and failed in other games (unique promos had issues in the WoW TCG and dominated the competitive scenes in the original L5R).
WotC used to be noteworthy for not doing any of the obvious low-effort cash grabs, and yet here we are. I wonder what went wrong. I imagine the game has shed players from the peak during the growth period of Innistrad-Khans, so either new player acquisition is in trouble or player retention is in trouble. A compelling digital platform would help with both of those but Arena is an ugly Hearthstone ripoff that's late to the marketplace and MTGO continues to be much better for grinders than it is for random casual video gamers. In the interim, it feels like they're trying really hard to milk existing players dry until they can break into new markets with digital.
This makes a lot of sense. As far as gaming goes, digital is the best way to play any game. Being able to play from your home in your underpants without fear of cheating, fake cards or having your binder stolen makes Arena the perfect place to play. The only people who will still care if WOTC prints physical cards are collectors who still want to be able to own something physical.
mise 'miz v alter. of might as well (1997) 1: to win when you don't deserve to 2: to top-deck the "tings" you need 3: to be rewarded by an opponent's bad luck 4: to coin a phrase that spreads through the tournament scene like wildfire 5: to fling a monkey 6: to split firewood using a sharp instrument 7: To burn
Eh, I wouldn't go that far. Magic is designed from the ground up to be a physical game. They'd have to strip a lot out of it to get it to the point where it's truly digital-friendly, and then it wouldn't be MtG anymore.
They've shown, basically since the first Duels of the Planeswalkers, that they want the digital side of the house to be an entryway into the physical game. Physical games build communities much more strongly than digital ones do, which increases player retention and gives WotC more to work with from a marketing and product development perspective (EDH is the big example here). There's a real gap for players between "this is a game I play on my phone while I take a shit" and "this is a game where I spend time with my friends." It's in this gap that, for example, pretty much every board game more complex than Settlers of Cataan lives.
I don't think the business model of digital as a gateway drug for paper is necessarily flawed, but I do think that Magic is not a great vehicle for it. There's just too much baggage with the game - too many new cards every year, too much room for interaction and flexibility (instants make the complexity of the game rise exponentially), too many strange rules interactions. The game definitely has a learning curve that is too high for most casual game players.
I assume it is the same thing that happens with a lot of games where most of the people that spend (lots) of money on the game are whales and those with poor spending habits, which inevitably becomes what the game will then cater to as that is where the bulk of the sales comes from. This in turn further alienates the rest. They are trying to reinvent the game into something more mainstream (NWO, streamlined art direction, supplemental and promotional products, accessible story/ characters) but I think by its nature it is supposed to be a complex game which already puts it at odds with the mainstream. At its extreme it would be like going from Chess into Candyland to make it more mainstream and popular. Hasbro only sees Blizzard printing money with hearthstone and asks 'why arent we doing that?'
I played L5R CCG for a long period of time after dropping MtG. The differences are most of the Promo Set had a fix price of approx a box and you could share it with friend because clan affiliation. So it was easier to split a promo set. Unfortunately the game does not exist anymore. I think a similar situation happened with WoW TCG.
We will see if MtG will follow a similar path with the player base slowly declining or they will really try to move to Arena, the same way WoW TCG moved to Hearthstone.
Cool, after the Nexus of Fate (the dumb reshuffling Time Walk) fail, endless US market exclusive cards like the Comic Con promos, they release another limited and somewhat region-exclusive product. Hey, WotC! Why not put chase rares of certain sets ONLY in US boosters at this point?
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I think it's that the Nexus of Fate thing already had people rankled, now this so quickly after builds upon it. That being said, it's always hard to know just will strike people's ire, specifically. Most are very willing to ignore all sorts of things, so it's almost impossible to know just what might transgress the invisible "line."
"The Ancients teach us that if we can but last, we shall prevail."
—Kaysa, Elder Druid of the Juniper Order
6 of the 7 Guilds of Ravnica spoilers today
planeswalkers. PLANESWALKERS. did we mention planeswalkers. you should play with planeswalkers. planeswalkers are awesome
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