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That was arguably because of being able to hard-lock people out of the game from Turn 3, or being able to hardcast 13/13 Flying Spaghetti Mindslavers on turn 4 with some consistency, and almost no way to disrupt them effectively.Quote:
Originally Posted by icedagger
There's an upper limit to how much money they can make on a format designed to let people not constantly spend money on it. With Modern Masters, they managed to find a way to get new players into the format without crashing prices, and they've somehow gotten people to accept the idea of paying $10 for a booster pack. How else could they be making money off Modern?Quote:
Originally Posted by icedagger
There must be something dramatically wrong with WoTC's structure if selling packs of painted cardboard at 2$ isn't profitable enough. Not even going to mention MTGO.
But is Hasbro looking for profit or for growth? Sometimes raking in money hand over fist isn't enough to slake corporate greed.Quote:
Originally Posted by s&s
They can't have their cake and eat it too.Quote:
Originally Posted by rufus
Making a profit should be trivial, whether they turn that profit into dividends for the shareholders, or growth of the game to increase future profit - is their call and their call only.
I find it entertaining that they are running one of the most lucrative business models ever, and claim they can't support certain formats due to "not enough profit".
Its like being able to turn lead into gold and complaining the transport costs for gold are too high.
It's a rock and a hard place.
Entrenched players with big collections want outlets to play with their old cards. Their ceiling for investing in new cards has been reached, or slows dramatically. They cease being direct customers of Wizards, but become important customers of Wizards' primary retail outlets. But that doesn't mean they still don't want competitive games or to play for decent stakes.
If you start taking away the juice for playing with old cards, it's easier for people to just walk away when they are done with the Standard/Limited portion of their Magic careers. They aren't trading up at LGSes, or playing in those stores' events. That means you have to acquire new customers, and that's where you run into competition with other games that are a lower skill cap/buy in/headspace. And if you can't bring them in, your distribution network falls apart, and you can't get product into your customers' hands.
So WotC just showcased "Magic Digital Next" on the Toy Fair for the first time. It seems that it isn't exatly a program, but an umbrella term for various stuff. The only screenshot we got is this:
https://i.redd.it/tn3xmp74tfgy.jpg
We Heartstone now! :rolleyes:
How is it any different from Duels?
Duels is something that exists.Quote:
Originally Posted by Megadeus
Maybe it is a new version of Duels. Hard to say.Quote:
Originally Posted by Megadeus
Sorry for the double post. We got now info on Magic:
http://imgur.com/a/52mdF
For how long does MtG have a playerbase of 20 million now? The number seems to stagnate quite a bit.
All potential players went to hearthstone or shadowverse or that wrestling card game instead.
there's another screenshot of Digital Next in that imgur album. Looks a little more normal, but still features damage confetti.
I've always assumed that when a Squirrel token tanks an 8/8, confetti comes outQuote:
Originally Posted by Claymore
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Originally Posted by Barook
They really do get forever mileage out of that picture of the red head playing magic while three guys are focusing on her...
I really thought you were being sarcastic, but the numbers support it. I believe some of these "facts" were reported on earlier paged, but I'm adding some new material.Quote:
Originally Posted by phonics
Top digital CCG's in 2016 by revenue (USD): https://www.statista.com/statistics/...es-by-revenue/
Hearthstone Growth (March 2014 - April 2016): https://www.statista.com/statistics/...aft-worldwide/
On the digital front MTG cannot compare to the big 2. Even if you combine its MTG Online + MTG Duels properties.
For paper MTG, a mid-2015 article by TheGuardian "estimated 20M MTG players worldwide". https://www.theguardian.com/technolo...hit-where-next
Assuming the numbers from that 2015 article were accurate, our early 2017 investor's day numbers signal the notion of stagnant growth for the paper game.
*I'll stand by my earlier comments in this thread. The writing is on the wall and for whatever reason, WotC/Hasbro feels they don't need to compete. IMO, they're shooting themselves in the foot long-term.
My earlier post is mistaken, that new imgur album doesn't have a new picture of MDN. It's just a screenshot of Magic Duels again. That 2015 article has a very similar picture.
Which makes me wonder, are they continuing Duels? Still advertising it in over MDN at the Investor Day...
http://i.imgur.com/0ZL3Uzx.webp
@Claymore: MDN has been revealed to be the name of the entire team/project working on the future of the online Magic experience; it is not a piece of software. WotC plans on going ahead with Duels of the Planeswalkers and MTGO.
By planting Modern staples in Standard boosters ala Thoughtseize in Theros.Quote:
Originally Posted by iatee
Also Inquisition in Conspiracy, Fatal Push in Revolt, all of Karns... They make decent bank off Modern because it's a simpler format to push cards into.
There's also the whole Masterpieces shebang which can also include Modern staples.
I wish Wizards would get their heads out of their asses and started making supplementary products aside from Modern Masters that introduced new cards. But despite regularly being asked for that, they continue to come up with excuses.
I made a poll on Twitter regarding that topic - feel free to retweet to reach as many people as possible.
It's cool that they've done things like bring back leagues, and are ending the 1-2 month delay for new sets to appear in MTGO - which was just beyond insane, but a lot of this feels like too little too late.
If they're really going to push Frontier over Modern... that's a lot of people who bought into Modern and aren't necessarily going to transfer over. I dunno, I like what the new team is doing, they seem to have far less of the head-ass-insertion issues the old one did, but a lot of straws are piled on that camel's back right now, and if they decide to follow the path of least resistance - "we'll make MTG just like Hearthstone, then people will love us again!" they're going to fail, badly. If they follow the path of second least resistance - franchising MTG into other properties like TV/Comics/RPG's/video games, they're not going to have as much success as they think because story has always been something less than even half of the regular player base has even pretended to care about.
I was under the impression that Frontier is a store-created format, and has very little to no support from the mother ship.Quote:
Originally Posted by morgan_coke
This is correct. Maro has stated that his preferred "Post Modern" Format would not included fetches. (Likely stating at Origins.)Quote:
Originally Posted by rufus
They could also just ban fetches in said format to prevent the trouble of having to deal with fetch reprints in the future.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dice_Box
The fetch/dual paradigm really makes multicolor mana bases much stronger, but shuffling all the time is not great in a paper game.Quote:
Originally Posted by Barook
It also makes Wastelands much more powerful. They could help Modern with this one simple trick...
No chance in hell of that ever happening. Modern would cease to exist before that happens.Quote:
Originally Posted by Barook
I was talking about the Post-Modern format, call it Frontier or whatever silly name Wizards comes up with.Quote:
Originally Posted by jmlima
Fetches in Modern are here to stay, simply because they're guaranteed sells.
On a different note:
Hex now offers weekly tournaments that pay out 1k $ cash total. Makes me wonder why they can do it while Wizards can't on MTGO.
One of the challenges that MTGO has is that it's competing with the 'core business' of paper magic so there will always be internal tension at WotC.Quote:
Originally Posted by Barook
Well, the official reason given by WotC why they can't do cash prizes on MTGO are gambling laws. Yet Hex doesn't seem to care about that.Quote:
Originally Posted by rufus
As far as paper vs online goes, WotC sucks at maximizing profits because they're a terrible company with a good IP.
Still rings true :|Quote:
Originally Posted by PirateKingTo their credit, at least they're consistent in their incompetence.Quote:
Originally Posted by DiceBox
I... what? They do exactly this. On top of all the reprint sets, we're looking at three such products just in the last year:Quote:
Originally Posted by Barook
1. Conspiracy 2
2. Commander 2016
3. (Upcoming) Archenemy Nicol Bolas
And each year we end up with more Conspiracy / Commander / Archenemy / Planechase / whatever.
Archenemy Nicol Bolas has 0 new cards
And none of them are Modern-legal. You're missing my point.Quote:
Originally Posted by MaximumC
Modern legal supplementary sets has been the obvious choice since Modern's inception... but they just don't do it. It would make so much sense: get cards into Modern, cards that would benefit the format, without upsetting Standard.Quote:
Originally Posted by Barook
It's a real frustrating problem. WotC has this baffling duality going on in their approach to Modern.
1.) Modern is being pushed out of the spotlight.
2.) They maintain the old systems that were put in place to keep Modern approachable.
I understand they wanted Modern to be easy to understand. To keep things simple, they just said "No supplementary sets, no exceptions." That sucked, but I could at least understand it. But now that Modern is off the Pro Tour, and there will be no Modern GPTs, why the hell don't they let the players do something to improve the format?
- - -
It's like they said, "Hey, we don't like this format anymore, so we're abandoning it."
And the players are like "Fine, we'll take care of it, because we like it. Here are some things we could do to improve it..."
WotC - "NO! We give up, AND we won't let you try to fix it!"
http://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post...rn-legal-cardsQuote:
Originally Posted by T-101
http://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post...-safeguard-for
tl;dr: WotC are lazy fucks.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Barook
LOLLLLLLLLLLLL. Oh, what a comedy show they are.Quote:
Testing for Standard is a way to safeguard for Modern.
its totally unheared of the new cards may become broken, if paired with older cards. /sQuote:
Originally Posted by jmlima
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Originally Posted by Claymore
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Originally Posted by WOTC