Legacy Grand Prix - 2009

[Bardo]

From Wizards' Question of the Day (http://wizards.com/default.asp?x=mtgcom/askwizards/0708) today:


Q: Hello WotC:

My name is Cesar and I'm a member of the spanish Eternal community. What I want to know is, Why did you choose to remove the Legacy Grand Prix that was being celebrated once a year? As a player, I was confident that if you said that you were going to improve the format by celebrating Legacy GPs my money was well invested in buying cards for playing that format.

The first year it was celebrated in the USA, and then in Europe, thus we were thinking that you were choosing the most 'Eternal' regions in the world. Then it was celebrated again in the USA, and this year was time to return to Europe. Then, the last question is, What is the official position about Legacy for WotC and are you still promoting the format?
–Cesar, Madrid, Spain

Answer...

A: From Scott Larabee, DCI Program Manager:

Wizards is committed to support of the Legacy format. While we have had a Legacy Grand Prix for the last few years, this year we will not. Each year we will evaluate whether we will run a Legacy-format Grand Prix. We are currently working on our Grand Prix plans for 2009. The formats for the 2009 Grand Prix will be announced later this year.

About time. :smile:

[BKclassic]

Ugh. I really despised the answer to this question. Cesar asks a why question about the decision process behind choosing GP formats and Scott Larabee responds by saying what everyone already knows ands says that there is no Legacy GP this year and that each year they choose whether or not Legacy will have a GP. I was actually really interested as to what the decision making process would be. Apparently Scott does not have basic communication skills.

Awesome.


Edit- Sorry this isn't positive. I just get really upset when Wizards almost throws Eternal Players a bone and almost explains how they make decisions that effect them.

[Volt]

.

[scrumdogg]

Scott's a good guy, but that 'answer' provided no answers at all. I wish that the decision-making process at WOTC was a bit more transparent and accessible to the consumer.

[Bardo]

Yeah, you have to read into it. My assumption, which is just that, is why would they even bring up the question just to crush our spirits? I don't feel like being witty here -- that would simply be fucked up.

Edit - Edited out my "please be positive" comment in the OP.

[Finn]

Mr. Larabee demonstrates all the necessary skills to be a politician. He said nothing, Dan. Any meaning you glean from his remark is of your own making. But I hope you are right nonetheless. Orlando - fingers crossed.

[Pinder]

The boiled down version:

Cesar: Hey Wizards, I like Legacy. Are you going to have another Legacy GP?
Scott: Maybe. Every year we might have one, or we might not.

[freakish777]

Heh.

The big question is:

"If there is only 1 Legacy GP in 2009, and it's in Europe, will there be a US & Canadian MTGTheSource contingent going?"

:smile:

[Zach Tartell]

"If there is only 1 Legacy GP in 2009, and it's in Europe, will there be a US & Canadian MTGTheSource contingent going?"

Well, depending on what time of the year it is, I might have switched to a European user.

[Illissius]

If there's a Legacy GP in Europe, I may be forced to scrounge up a deck, travel many kilometers, and attend. I'm not sure whether to look forward to it. (If it's in Budapest or even Vienna, I'll have no excuses whatsoever, but I'm guessing the chances of that aren't high.)

[arsenalpow]

Just go to GenCon, its got a large legacy tourney and other big tournaments to boot.

[Bardo]

Mr. Larabee demonstrates all the necessary skills to be a politician. He said nothing, Dan. Any meaning you glean from his remark is of your own making.

At its face, I agree: it said nothing. But the fact that he chose that question, out of the thousands that they receive, is what struck me. Determing the GP schedule, location, formats, etc. is not a one-man job -- I'm sure a committee makes a recommendation to the higher-ups and they approve and/or revise the schedule using whatever wizardry they find useful (market data, among other things).

Still, they must be talking about the schedule so Scott knows a thing or two about possible Legacy GPs next year.

So, I took the selection of the question as: "Legacy, we know you're out there. We have not forgotten you."

[Anusien]

So, I took the selection of the question as: "Legacy, we know you're out there. We have not forgotten you."
The last time they did it, they announced a Legacy GP 6 months later.

I don't think a Legacy PT is out of the question, considering the high interest by the pros. Unlikely that we'd get a PTQ season just yet though. Maybe a PT next year and a PTQ season once Legacy gains a little more momentum (or when Extended has rotated, and become slightly more lame).


My name is Cesar and I'm a member of the spanish Eternal community. What I want to know is, Why did you choose to remove the Legacy Grand Prix that was being celebrated once a year? As a player, I was confident that if you said that you were going to improve the format by celebrating Legacy GPs my money was well invested in buying cards for playing that format.

The first year it was celebrated in the USA, and then in Europe, thus we were thinking that you were choosing the most 'Eternal' regions in the world. Then it was celebrated again in the USA, and this year was time to return to Europe. Then, the last question is, What is the official position about Legacy for WotC and are you still promoting the format?
I bolded the actual questions in the post. If you wanted to know how they choose Grand Prixs or which countries they are going to be in, you should probably... phrase them as questions!

[mercenarybdu]

If the price for a camcorder wasn't so hard, there would've been another on the schedule. Since nobody ever posts great independent eternal video coverage on the video sites, Scott and team has all the better excuse to cast the eternals aside.

If anyone wants to make the largest impact on decisions, get involved with doing video correctly. Evan has done it and it works. I already influenced the decision process the other time feeding into Worlds the other time.

So if anyone else has a camcorder and could cover their local tournies the correct way (as in the camera is focused on only the match without pingponging). Then Wizards might change their opinion about the community. Anything that is related to T2, Block and Extended are already overblown. If people want another Legacy GP, then they gotta use the camera (getting involved is only a starting point).

[Nihil Credo]

I already influenced the decision process the other time feeding into Worlds
srsly?

[Finn]

I find myself thinking about that poll one of the writers on Wizards did a few weeks ago. The fact that Legacy landed ahead of Extended is pretty significant. It is probably in no small part because this site and a few others had small campaigns to speak up, but I would gamble that Wizards will be not aware of that.

In any event, if more people like Legacy over Extended (and there has certainly been a trend in that direction), it seems reasonable to replace some of those GPs with Legacy ones.

[mercenarybdu]

srsly?

A few weeks after the events and posting of my GP videos, I asked BDM to look over them as they were feeding into Worlds. As I knew that the reporters didn't have the gut courage to ask those questions, I went to GP SJ on Sunday, asked the pros questions (Legacy mainly) and see what they would say about them. Out of Levy, Oli, and Luis (who was also the winner sparing me time), Luis was the only one out of the three who had an idea of what he was planning to play for worlds. Thus when Worlds came around Luis was in the spotlight to review his deck.

If I hadn't had done what I did feeding into the Legacy portion, Wizards would've picked Pat Chapin by default to review his Threshold deck.

Evan got the ball rolling. His issues (vol 1) video got Wizards to pay more attention to the Youtube community. Then the Cardproffessor hopped on to add more to the ever growing fires, followed by all of these little tubers (carthwolf, myself, and few others no one has ever heard of, most just cover FNM and PTQ formats).

We just need more people to cover video correctly as the numbers are just way too small (as there are a lot of terrible videos on matches on Youtube already)(some that are so bad that, they don't even deserve a full 4 star rating).