I joined a bit over 10 years ago and quickly became an avid Sourcer. I've seen users like myself come and go.
Now that I'm chiming in much less frequently than in the past, I'm viewing things (meta, deck development, etc..) more from the bird's eye perspective. It's still nice to drop by once in a while and follow the discussions.
However one thing strikes me every single time: When I don't visit THE SOURCE for 1-2 weeks, or more, I don't seem to have missed much, both quantity- and content-wise. A few years ago I would have missed much much more it seems.
Anybody else got that impression?
What are the implications?
What are your thoughts?
I think its fine. This forum never was super active. I mean IF something happens like the Hulk Flash combo, things go wild fast. Im still kinda dissapointed about this spoiler season - really not much to talk about.
“Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.
I think some of the discussion (among higher tier players of certain archetypes) has shifted to private Facebook groups or other media. Also maybe the popularity of Legacy is decreasing.
My impression is that discussions have moved to various deck threads rather than there being articles on general topics or meta trends. Years ago, there used to be more articles linked to from outside sites. Part of this change has to do with paywalls for content now; part of it has to do with Star City changing the two-day Standard/Legacy format; part of it has to do with avid Legacy writers being pulled away from the game due to other responsibilities. Now that Team Trios-style events are being adopted, such as GP Santa Clara, Legacy will be getting more camera time for a large audience. There's also a Legacy GP in Seattle in a few months, so that will be a big stage.
Sean Brown was linking his excellent weekly digest for a while. He's still writing. People might not be aware of that, so here's a link to his most recent articles:
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/articles/search?author=81
Here's a roundup of Legacy articles from SCG's recent select-side archives:
http://www.starcitygames.com/tags/Se...-07/2018-01-07
And here's one from SCG's premium side. The premium articles become free/select-side after 30 days:
http://www.starcitygames.com/tags/Pr...-01/2017-12-01
Some threads have died due to discord channels or Facebook groups. That's a bit sad because then the discussions won't be documented
They are in Discord, you can search a server.
I have noticed this too, that The Source is slowing down. But that feels like a reasonable change as technology changes. A lot of the Australian legacy scene left the site we had for it and moved to Facebook.
The thing that this site offers though is still a place to network, a place to find the DTB for those who care and a place to gather and console information. Like the list of Discord servers and stores that offer Legacy.
It is better to ask and look stupid then keep your mouth shut and remain so.
Originally Posted by Spam
I hope your afterlife is filled with eternal torment.
Fuck. Which one of my quotes do I drop for this?
I haven't playing as much...
Life getting in the way. Still have my decks. Elves, Dnt, Czech Pile, Miracles, Grixis Delver...
Next step is teaching my 3 boys Legacy starting with my 6 year old.
Legacy just isn't a particularly interesting format right now. The power level and efficiency of DRS, Brainstorm, Force, whatever else decks has pushed out the ability to really do anything actually interesting
Without looking back at your past posts I'm relatively sure you've hated the format for some time. How often do you post here...? There's just a saturation of forums and TheSource is not the most user friendly. Also, many newer players are probably already familiar with FB and don't scour the web for a place to chat about mtg. I prefer TheSource rather than FB, reddit, discord, etc.
I stop by to read certain threads, but generally I am among those who visit the site less than I once did. I started to get annoyed about the constant whining (even when it was legitimate). I also just sorta got tired with regards to the way that R&D designs the game. They have been doing it about 10 years now at least and it has ruined Legacy in my opinion. I now just enjoy the Old School variants, whereas prior I enjoyed both. I have kept a Legacy deck however and am not opposed to playing it once in a while, it's just not my jam.
Last edited by Teluin; 01-13-2018 at 08:21 AM.
For those interested in the latest Ancient decks (and the format in general) visit: http://ancientmtgdecks.blogspot.ca/
Discord / chat tools seem completely out of place to me. It's true that direct discussion is better to confront opposite views/ideas and reach a conclusion... when there's only a couple potential people in the discussion. What's being said/discussed is lost to anyone who's not currently connected. That would already feel ill-advised if that only meant that newcomers had no way to catch up to the last days/weeks of discussion, but the fact that the audience is global - meaning only a small fraction of users will ever be connected at the same time - makes this painfully inefficient and counterproductive. With users across all the globe, anything that's being said is lost to the 90% that aren't currently connected. What if you have a question ? Do you interrupt the current discussion ? Do you come back later and hope someone will be there as well (hopefully someone that will be able to answer correctly ? how do you know the answer you got is not shit ?) ?
On a side note, does anyone enjoy having to be 100% available to the discussion taking place and/or suffering random dudes with weird voices or badly set up micros babbling in one's ears ? Ignoring a post or even a user is extremely easy in a forum. In an oral discussion ? Not so much.
If a team has its own discord channel, then sure, that seems logical. They might want to discuss some topics privately or only between themselves knowing they're all on the same level / page entering the future discussion. Otherwise, for discussion with strangers from all over the globe (be it sharing new ideas or answering questions or debating whaterver), this trend, if there's indeed one, baffles me. It's a great tool for a lot of jobs - this jusn't isn't one of these.
As a quick aside; will legacy statistics from team trios be integrated into DTB @DiceBox?
For me, most of the fun of magic was building crazy decks and fine tuning them to be able to take down specific metagames. Legacy used to be a wide open format that enabled my tinkering. Over time it's just become harder to do anything out of the box and have it perform well, so I've stopped following it.
I also used to be a lot more into the competitive MTG scene, but refuse to police my opponents for cheating for 1-2 day tournaments, which you definitely have to do if you want to win. It's just too draining for me to do it anymore, especially when there are enough other games out there that can fulfill my competitive drive.
I imagine this site lost a lot of traffic from people who enjoyed the age of rogue decks, but that time is pretty much over.
I think message boards in general are less popular than they were a decade ago due to social media, reddit, etc.
So I think this trend is mostly unrelated to the state of legacy - it's not like mtgsalvation is particularly active, especially considering how popular modern is in comparison.
Personally I check out the site almost daily to check up on my favorites decks and the pimp thread. I stopped adding comments on most pages for a few reasons.
~Aluren: I play with Imperial Recruiter, that version never has discussion and I'm told I shouldn't be playing certain cards even when I explain my reasoning and not being given reasons in return as to why it shouldn't be played.
~D&T/Imperial Taxes: I've shared my ideas about trimming certain cards and been laughed at (I was the first on here to suggest 3 SFM for example) and I am told that I play the deck wrong (3 Magus, 3 Imperial, Ghost Quarters over Ports by choice as I have sets of both). Also no one talks about the Imperial Recruiter anymore, it's all Recruiter of the Guard.
~MUD: I haven't seriously played the deck in a long time, so I lurk there to keep somewhat up to date with development, but a lot of it deals with the Locus mana base that I don't enjoy using.
~Enchantress UG and GW: I like to try lots of different things, but also haven't played in a serious tournament for along time with the deck.
~Couple random other decks that I haven't gotten around to putting the cards together and playing even though I have the cards and the decks look like fun.
Cockatrice: EMFry
I used to play Legacy (and by extension, use the site) religiously, but then the format ossified and Miracles became the Obvious Best Deck and I cashed out and switched to just playing Limited and EDH.
I think there's a few things at play here:
1) Bulletin board-style forums are on the downswing as tools allowing for more immediate conversations grow in popularity. This is mostly because the loss in long-term record keeping is more than made up for by the immediacy of chat and the ability to coordinate in real time. Most people have no particular desire to go back in time and read posts from six months ago, even in a format as static as Legacy.
2) The format is stale and defined by power level mistakes. Brainstorm and DRS are so much better than anything else you could be doing that your options are basically reduced to playing Brainstorm or trying to play to beat Brainstorm. Furthermore, because the power floor in the format is absurdly high, most of the cards that make it in from new sets are just incremental improvements for extant decks. When was the last time a new deck even cropped up because of new releases? Eldrazi MUD?
3) Modern has supplanted Legacy as a diverse format with a broad card pool. This is partially because it has way more tournament support, partially because it's way cheaper, and partially because WotC's astonishing train of fuckups in Standard drove people to the next-biggest format en masse. For the people like me who are brewers rather than iterators, Modern is a much, much more interesting format. For people who want to play competitively but don't want to drop $1k on a manabase alone, Modern is a much more accessible format. Legacy had its moment when Extended was in its death throes and players were looking for something more interesting than Standard but less daunting than Vintage, but now Legacy isn't markedly cheaper than Vintage is.
4) Many of the old guard players have moved on from Magic or aren't playing competitively. Just speaking for myself for a moment: my Magic habit turns 21 this year, and I haven't played the game in any capacity in months because of a combination of work, shifting interests, and a lack of engagement with or enthusiasm for the game. I imagine there's lots of guys out there who used to be active on the site when they were in college, or just out of college, who got married, started a family, and now don't game at all anymore, or just barely do so.
I suppose you could also argue that MtG being thoroughly outclassed online by games like Hearthstone means you're not getting the same kind of traffic growth you got five or ten years ago. Players looking for games on the internet aren't landing on Magic and, by extension, aren't landing on Magic forums as much anymore. Also, as mentioned above, the growing importance of social media as a forum for discussion about everything was bound to hurt other venues.
I haven't posted in months myself.. but I agree with everything Aggro said. I love playing oddball legacy decks.. and I got a point where being beat by brainstorm week after week made me lose alot of interest. I'm now on my offtime just building oldschool 93/94 decks that I grew up with... even though I don't have a lot of people to play it with.
Well my post count suggests that I have no life (and it's correct) and join date was probably a few months after I started the format. But yes I have not enjoyed the format for at least a year now, maybe more. It was fine to me really until Khans and the Delve spells showed you should really just try to be hyper efficient to the best deck.
The format is totally boring imo...sorry to say, and its been this way for quite some time.
I've also been dissapointed more or less and can see how certain types of eternal players could feel more so. I can respect a land destruction enthusiast
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