WotC Hasbro CEO is going to have a Fireside Chat With Investors Over WotC

[Remathilis]

No, the defense does not rest. lol

Just looking right now, a Standard competitive deck is sub $500. There are Modern options for well....ok Modern looks like its extremely expensive right now, but there are budget options if you want to 'play'.

Or, you just go to a draft night, and play Limited.

Its all still 'Magic' after all, and you do not need (I did not for example) start with the most tricked out competitive deck in an expensive format.

You dont need that $1200 Modern deck, and you REALLY dont need that Legacy deck (UR Delver at over $4000...)

I dont eveen know how Vintage is played.

The issue is that standard deck is only good for a rotation. Then, that $500 deck is worth considerably less. You might get some cards that will see play in an eternal format like commander, pioneer or modern that retain value, but everything else will go for pennies. Imagine if WotC forced you to buy a D&D new core rules set and make a new character every time you wanted to play a new campaign and you get a taste of watching standard rotate.

The issue is the standard -> eternal pipeline is broken. Modern is too large and too solved for anyone to bring a rotated deck without significant changes, and a tremendous amount of money on cards that are deliberately under-printed. The only real format that remains budget and beginner friendly is Commander due to the fact that WotC doesn't shy away from making good onboarding sealed starting decks, cards are singleton and eternal, and The format is multiplayer. My mardu vampires worked out of the box and I can upgrade it when I have extra cash without fear it will be obsolete before I finish.

I'm with the Professor; the cost of MTG is keeping a lot of players from engaging and despite claiming otherwise, it is too concerned with the secondary market at the detriment of the game.

 

[Remathilis]

,... mono blue was always way too good.

Modern could be fixed if they just banned islands.

 

[Art Waring]

Modern could be fixed if they just banned islands.

Indeed, but then you would have the "mother may I" players screaming bloody murder and tearing their hair out.

 

[Remathilis]

Indeed, but then you would have the "mother may I" players screaming bloody murder and tearing their hair out.

x/U control is the most boring Magic to play against. I remember when Nexus of Fate was legal in standard I would literally watch whole TV shows while my opponent was playing solitaire on Arena.

Yeah, ban islands

 

[Scribe]

Modern could be fixed if they just banned islands.

This...guys please my heart.

Ux Control is what elevates the game over clones and pretenders.

 

[Dausuul]

WotC has done an amazing job of keeping MtG going for this long, but the end is not unexpected because back in the era of Chronicles they made the decision that the way to keep the game alive was keep the whales addicted and double down one what their big spending customers wanted. For 25 years MtG has been getting less and less approachable as a game, harder and harder to teach to new players, more and more expensive to get into and stay into, as at every step of the way when faced with a choice between selling smaller number of cards to more players and larger numbers of cards to fewer players, they chose to go with fewer players.

Targeting the whales has been central to Magic's business plan for almost its entire history. I don't think there's any way to dispute that; $500 for a Standard deck is way into "whale" territory. Most people don't drop five hundred bucks on a card game. (Excuse me, I've got something stuck in my baleen.)

But the idea that decisions made back in Chronicles have doomed the game today doesn't hold up. Their model was quite sustainable, as demonstrated by the fact that it was sustained for a quarter century. Far from getting less approachable, Magic has made great efforts to ease the non-monetary barriers to entry -- they are constantly refining the templating and the rules to make the game more intuitive -- and to keep the monetary barriers at a high but steady level. This is another area where Standard was vital to the health of the game. Eternal formats inevitably get more complicated as the card pool grows, but rotating formats can keep complexity within reason.

The crisis today is of much more recent vintage, due to decisions made in the last few years.

 

[Art Waring]

x/U control is the most boring Magic to play against. I remember when Nexus of Fate was legal in standard I would literally watch whole TV shows while my opponent was playing solitaire on Arena.

Yeah, ban islands

I personally wouldn't ban islands, because I like the hardest competition possible when I am playing competitively. I do however have years and years of unpleasant memories playing against mono blue control decks in standard and legacy.

The "mother may I" comes from the fact that I got so used to playing against x/U control, that I would literally go about my turn play by play, real slow like, looking the opponent in the eye after each move and wait for the nod that they are OK with what I have just cast on my turn before moving onto the next move.

I was a young competitive player that wanted to play fast because I knew the tournaments were on limited time, and I always ended up having to stay late to finish the tail end of tournaments (and the other players would get pissed at having to wait at the end for prizes, literally yelling at players to finish). I typically had my turn ready to go before it was even my turn, ready to draw, cast, and end in less than a minute (I was used to chess clocks back then).

But mono blue players always deliberately played the slow game, and i had to adapt to their preference because their counter control basically dictates any moves I can make. All in all it bogged the game down abysmally. Most local players wanted to go home on time, mono blue players just sat there spending 15 minutes on one turn, deliberating everything, casting nothing, and ending their turn. Again and again.

 

[darjr]

Live now. I've missed some of it, first 12 minutes, due to other things.

Seems all magic at the moment.

 

[MoonSong]

Ok, from what I remember

• They touched on how "everything's fine and they are not overprinting, any accusations of the product not holding value come from a misunderstanding of the business model"
• No mention of the M30 fiasco.
• They want to expand the game and reach to more players. They are proud of their strategy taking advantage of the "segmentation of the market".
• They are betting on D&D growing hard.
• They are proud of developing BG3 fully in house.

 

[Scribe]

Ok, from what I remember

• They touched on how "everything's fine and they are not overprinting, any accusations of the product not holding value come from a misunderstanding of the business model"
• No mention of the M30 fiasco.
• They want to expand the game and reach to more players. They are proud of their strategy taking advantage of the "segmentation of the market".
• They are betting on D&D growing hard.
• They are proud of developing BG3 fully in house.

They are going to get shredded if thats the case.