Quote Originally Posted by Barook View Post
Thing is that they've milked the playerbase for the last few years (evident by the ever increasing amount of product they put out each year), but it appears that they've finally hit the wall, considering their revenue slightly declined last year instead of growing.
Yes, that is the danger. But organic growth isn't just about putting out more product, although that is the simplest way to try to spur it. Wizards hasn't quite realized this, or they don't want to.

Quote Originally Posted by Barook View Post
As for the EV thing - it puzzles me why they don't do more good EV sets and print the shit out of it to meet demand. Card prices would decrease, which would increase accessibility to the game, aka more people buying stuff. Instead, they have a raging boner for collectors, and by catering to them, they price people out of the game and enable scalpers left and right. It's the players that keep the game alive, not some chucklefucks with dozens of copies of high priced cards sitting in a binder. The original Modern Masters was a smash success since it provided good EV alongside being a good set. Why they didn't learn from this is beyond me. But hey, WotC is one of the most terribly managed companies on the planet (with a good game designed by Richard Garfield), so no surprises here.
Fear. Here's the thing, they have no clue about how large the collectors sector is. Organized play only leads to only a fraction of sales. The rest must be casual/collectors. Just how much is either one is really anyone's guess. And since they don't know what drastically dropping prices would actually do, they just do what they have always done. It's actually, in a round about way, a good thing for Wizards that there are scalpers. Scalpers are constant customers. Players and collectors are far more fickle, because there are intrinsic reasons why they are buying. Scalpers just want anything they can short supply on. So, it actually in Wizards' business interest to not fight scalpers, just like how here in the US, it is in ticket companies best interest to not seriously fight ticket scalpers.

If secondary market prices fall too far or supply isn't limited, scalpers will just quit buying and cracking product, because it wouldn't be worth it. If they do, players themselves will never buy up that excess. I think that is the fear. I don't know that it is actually true, but that's my best guess.