What Are The Worst Things That Happened In Magic: The Gathering This Year? (2021) 

thanks prof

Great video Prof! As always, thankyou. I disagree that we want social interaction on Arena if it involves letting players actually type or talk to each other though. It'll be nothing but instant toxicity that is only outpaced by games like League of Legends.

I preffered your best things video, but I appreciate your honesty. I hope wizards will listen.

@@chadparris8892 hear hear my friend!

Arena prove that we're going to be stuck with MTGO forever, and that there will be no MTGO 2

@@altosforteaquax5083 maybe. Thanks for the reply.

@@altosforteaquax5083 I'm not sure what you're trying to say. Are you saying it is an entitled attitude to assume a publisher that a store does the favor of supporting shouldn't stab the store in the back by undercutting them?

@@altosforteaquax5083 you're pathetic

@@altosforteaquax5083 Imagine simping for Hasbro.

@@altosforteaquax5083 I might point out that while the syntax of "imagine" is not direct, there is very definitely meaning behind the words. Especially given the 14/0 reply/comment like ratio, it is clearly a piece of communication that deserves more than mere contempt Also if youre going to think purely in terms of profit, you're vastly undervaluing PR. Wizards used to support these stores, they developed a community BECAUSE of these stores, just because they have no legal obligation to support them doesnt mean it isn't stabbing people in the back to suddenly pull the rug out from under a symbiotic relationship thats been going on for years. Wizards used them to propel itself, and is now dropping them by the wayside. People feel betrayed by that, and if you dont care about humans themselves, care about how people feeling betrayed hurts profit potential. If companies introduce change in such a jarring way that the customers feel bad buying product, thats the companies fault, no matter how economically sensible it is to the investor board

Also, on a similar topic, there was a Yu-Gi-Oh game for the game boy advanced that allowed you to input a cards code into the game and you’d be able to use that card in the game even if it was just against in game players.

This is a great idea! For me the worst times are where I think I have good feedback for my opponent (i.e. I have seen them miss lethal, which happens often. It's no issue if it was subtle, but sometime it seems obvious that they're misunderstanding or forgetting something which will cost them a load of games and frustration) or worry that I might have accidentally been rude (the very worst is hitting 'oops' instead of 'gg' on a win, I did that two days ago and am still recovering). As you say though, sometimes it is just an unbelievable game that they played really well and you want to congratulate them or ask advice if they're in a deck/archetype that you like.

I love this idea!

A simple opt in chat function solves it too

Honestly, even just saying, "You there?" and them replying, "Sorry, mom came in" or "Sorry, card I drew changes everything." Would lower the assumed toxicity of roping.

Rip Eudo, played a lot of legacy there

Oh shit, this is my first time hearing about it. Eudo was such an awesome, welcoming space. The internet cafe section meant that it never felt empty (and gave me something to do there even if there was nobody around to play mtg)

Victory Point has a great magic community and is only a few blocks from Eudo in Berkeley if you ever want to recapture that feeling.

man i used to love playing Force of will (TCG) at Eudomonia

Eudo was a nice store but I always struggled to find near by parking, Endgame was a beautiful store but was poorly managed by the owner in the end(failed cafe, lack of event support, higher than Target prices on packs)

I uninstalled arena 1 month ago, its predatory garbage. Wont be returning to Arena, I've played paper like 6 times this year the game just isnt what it was due to power creep and there is no going back.

I'm in the exact same boat. Played since beta, I've been shouting on Reddit for years now about how this game is driving itself into the ground. Prof said it best back then - Arena was amazing and the only thing they had to do was not shoot themselves in the foot. Naturally, WotC took this as a challenge, went in papa Hasbro's gun cabinet, got out the 12 gauge, and aimed squarely at all 10 toes, one at a time. I'm done. I quit after Vow. I spent every last coin I earned since playing daily from Midnight Hunt's release, and then using it all to draft as hard as I could. When all was said and done, I opened over 100 packs of Vow, and when the dust cleared I barely had more vault progress (not that I'm gonna open it until they improve the vault) and I was STILL missing rares and mythics - I'm not talking about having 4x of anything, I mean there were rares I had 0 of - and that is embarassing. There is no reason it should be this hard to have THE GAME PIECES needed to play the game. In paper, sure, ,you're obtaining a collectible but you get to keep them forever, or trade them to other people. Even in MTGO you can trade with people. But since there is no trading, no turning in what you don't need, there is ZERO reason you can't more easily obtain the cards. What's WotC worried about? People enjoying their game too much? I was not buying cosmetics on principle because they eat all my card resources. I promise you, if cards were twice, thrice as easy to obtain, I would blow so much fucking money on cosmetics. But when it doesn't feel good to buy a card sleeve at higher than a 90% off daily deal, that is an absolute feelbad. So I'm done. Fuck it. Arena had their chance, and blew off 10 toes in rapid, gory succession. Get bent, Hasbro.

As someone that just loves to draft, I enjoy arena enough for that. For those constructed players, I feel terrible for. I’ve spent just a total of $200 and some change since beta, have only 8ish constructed decks to get me thru my dailies, and only enough wildcards to build 3-4 more upper tier constructed decks. The squeeze is sinful and insulting for constructed players. Real sham(e).

Making Alchemy affect Historic is so goddamn stupid from the player perspective

@@coomlaoaskeen2397 I quit using the client game on this alone. I really hope a couple make it to paper (wickerwing effigy) so that I can actually play with them and have them in a collection that matters.

I kind of want to do an analysis of the cost of mtgtop8 decks over time now to see this plotted out. I feel like modern burn used to cost < $200 six years ago, although I could be misremembering that.

@@zaneearldufour well the Kahns fetches used to be 9-15 bucks when they first came out. Now they're more expensive than the other ones.

Especially Old School is limited to a small playerbase that owns Dual Lands and Power Cards - thanks to the Reserved List.

I’m hoping the increased cost leads to more formats welcoming proxies.

7 of the most played creatures in Modern are from Modern Horizons 2 lmao. It's a yearly rotating format.

Did you play around the time of OG Theros? The Prerelease was filled with this strangely excitable ARG where we had to "solve" a poster and complete favors for our god or something. There was a PvE format to fight a Hydra deck and my god I loved that stuff. I left magic for a while and when I came back last September, I realize how... "forceful" the business model is. It turned from an enjoyable rollercoaster ride to a polluted factory machine pumping out the next content as soon as possible.

*Short-term profit. FTFY

@@bobobo7730 nah, I doubt Magic will die anytime soon

Greed is the keyword for this and last year in the overall game, video or not, industry. And it will probably continue since no matter the complaints, they are still making record profits

NFTs are on the way my friends....it's already being implemented in the video gaming industry as we speak. Have seen all of this unfold in that genre the past decade, came back to check in on MtG and possibly see what MtGO is all about and this is the same situation I have already watched unfold.....dark days indeed and the Beast is swallowing everything I can get ahold of it seems.

@@Sevatar_VIIIth Considering how hard companies and developers got trashed by the gaming community (and even backed off! That doesn't happen often), this may not be 100% certain. Then again, the TCG community and Video Game community don't overlap enough to where they're more or less the same.

I still need to make my way up there for a draft once this weather passes D:

I went there for the first time last week, it was amazing! I got to play magic while the rest of my family played board games. Great place with great people!

I started playing Magic back during Ice Age(1995), quit for a time, and came back about 8 years ago and I'm also having trouble following the deluge of products WOTC is spewing from every orifice these days. It's ridiculous when even your long time players can't follow what you're doing with the game.

arena is trash and so are you for supporting it

@@AndresColumbus Arena IS trash. Calling somebody trash, just because they tolerate playing it, is not the way to fight this war, soldier. Wizards of the Coast needs to bear the brunt of our rage.

@@AndresColumbus Wow, what a constructive addition to the conversation. Real hot take

Same here, i want to get into playing Magic but it is just so confusing and new stuff comes out all the time...

Why isn’t it a good experience to go to

I feel this on a personal level too. We had two great stores in my area (east idaho) and now the town I live in has just one, and while I love the owner the store environment is deteriorating quickly and less people want to frequent the store. Our modern community found a new place to play this year though, but with rising gas prices a long drive to a store each week will be a drain until our local store gets its stuff together.

@@jamesgratz4771 gruff employees and standoffish players. Not very inviting to new people because they are playing board games I'm unfamiliar with and don't cater to games I already know how to play (which is fine I put myself out there to try new games) but been demeaned/made fun of a lot for being a first time player. Not really a good time when your 29 and being constantly called old, outdated by high schoolers for trying new things.

My store isn't premium, and we're super pissed about it. Some arbitrary conditions decide who gets the opportunity to get up to $700 cards? Lame.

The idea of wpn vs non wpn store is to me absolutely absurd. My town is barely big enough for one lgs and he also sells comics, Warhammer, Pokémon, miniatures/models, music, retro vidya. Just a ton of stuff. We used to be wpn but someone else opened a game store here and split the community and now neither are wpn. I guess it's just weird to limit the amount of products non-wpn stores get. Like don't you want to sell your product? Why wouldn't you sell as much as possible to the stores willing to pay for it?

The local game store I go to is premium. And honestly, they’re pretty pompous and slightly predatory. If I had another option, I would go to another store.

@@DDNEV Tifton Ga is the same story.

i dont think there is a premium store in costa rica at all...

Straight facts though

My store gave everyone all 5 in a draft event

Here in central texas, we too got those old border promos which frankly I was more likely to use.

No fing way! An alt art Orb of Dragonkind? Shut the front door! Damn, I really missed THAT hit! Ugh

Those retro border foil promos are legitimately one of my favorite things to come out this year.

Our store just gave us them at fnm for weeks

Can confirm as an LGS owner that it has made prereleases WAY worse by nature. People are less awed when playing the set cause, well they have a few times in the last week already. The rush to get to that first event on Fri is gone and therefore the remaining players that still care about prerelease in store get spread out. I could go on and on but I firmly disagree with Prof that its been a better year than not for MTG. I see the red flags and, while alot of it can be due to my area, see that there is no future for LGS. I see so many people leaving the game and the issues they have will likely not be fixed. I plan on closing because its a waste of time if the game I put so much effort in just steps over you and takes profits. Hell they raised base cost this year! Hasbro is a bad company and I honestly hope they pay for basically putting MTG on the path to die.

I feel like it's more like this -- WoTC employees who care: ''Hey we'd like to engage in the community there's an upset about what we've been doing'', then Suits at Hasbro: ''Fuck em, and shut up we need to create more product.''

I wanted a TSR set cube. But the set was so underprinted and overpriced, I opted to proxy most of it, instead of buying original cards. WotC's failure to print more cards is a failure for them to print money.

@@reatter they knew what they were doing.

Yo I did this exact same thing a few months back. I stopped playing around ‘96 and I checked out Arena earlier this year. I quickly got to the point of spending real money and kind of figured, my wife might leave me but I’m going to buy real magic cards lol. Fortunately I found a few people who play kitchen table EDH and it’s just been awesome. Just like you said, I feel like a teenager again and the nostalgia hits so hard. My wife teases me relentlessly after the nerdy bois leave the house though 😂

@@flukenukeem build her a merfolk deck .. my wife began anti.. moved skeptical .. now she is a savage

Commander is the only type of Magic that I will play anymore. Because it is the only format that hasn't been so brutally swallowed up by tournament competition, that only by playing one of three or four "competitive blueprints" of deck-build can you find success. Commander, however, by its very design, is impossible to be dominated by only one or two specific kinds of decks. Every time I play group Commander, I find someone playing a whole new deck/commander combo that I've never seen before! And I've been playing Commander for more than a decade by now!

I'd much rather have the set boosters. Too bad my LGSs aren't doing that.

Isn't that a strict upgrade?

@@SonnigesDeutschland not if you want to draft with them

Wow just one? That's nuts I would've thought one would be in RI or CT

Wait, what's the premium store in MA?

I live in western Mass so yeah it's a pain 🙄

I've talked with my lgs owner, the standards are absurd. It's a lot about spending ridiculous amounts of money on appearance things like tables and chairs. Additionally WotC wanted to see his financials for the last couple years which he was not comfortable with

I looked up my local area, and the two stores that have Premium are relatively new outfits - shops that have been around for decades don't have it. So, I looked up the "quality checklist", and I think WotC intentionally targets new stores that go all-in on MTG. For instance - my FLGS, which proudly displays set boxes and posters going back years, would fall afoul of the Premium requirement that Magic marketing materials must all be from the last 12 months. Reading the rest, to my eyes WotC treats Premium as "you're running a MTG store, not a gaming store" - almost like a franchise, except without most of the benefits.

Cube is mostly the way I play anymore and I don’t think there’s much Vow offers for Cube that excites me enough to care about the set. It’s the only standard set I haven’t picked up in 25 years.

can I have your stuff?

Crimson Vow broke me (along with the fact that even in one of the most populous parts of the US with dozens of game stores, Standard either almost never fires or isn't offered at all. Pioneer is non-existent, and Modern is so expensive to get into. Commander it is!)

Vow literally just pumped dimir zombie support and control meta in standard. Such a disappointment.

Edgar is actually pretty damn good in Pioneer Vampires - he's the midrangiest of Midrange creatures, so much that the deck pivoted into Orzhov entirely for him and sideboard cards. It's maybe not the most tribal deck in the world (grindy midrange with few lords and no mechanical theme beyond type synergies), but there is a highly competitive Vampires deck in Pioneer that got a major benefit from Crimson Vow. Modern now is warped by companions and Horizons, which Vampires don't have great options for or against, and Standard is a crapshoot. One format getting a really good Vampires deck (albeit one that just needed a small push) out of a Vampire set is a success compared to many sets that failed to make any impact with their intended themes - Urza block back in the late 90's had two enchantment-based mechanics (of three total) and not a single enchantment from those sets was in any of the insanely powerful decks and archetypes it created - most have never been seen since.

They put to much emphasis on winning. Instead of playing for enjoyment instead if you lose it feels like an absolute waste of time. They should change the weekly goals from strictly winning to just be playing games in general and having fun.

This is what I used to do in hopes of getting all the cards unlocked but every time I could take my gold and make it into gems for a draft and then not be able to make a good deck I truly was sad that I was so bad but as time went on my goal slowly became unattainable so I dropped MTGA now im buying singles from my lgs playing comander and if there is a set that captivates me I spend the money on the pre release kit and play some sealed( still bad at it but hoping to get better the more I play) I realized that all the love I have for mtg is not simply rooted in the mechanics of the game but rather the social time I get to spend with other individuals who also enjoy the game I enjoy seeing store owners have a full house and truly see the fruition of all there hard work it's the people that make this game so special mtga I slowly realized is none of those things and it's a sad realization too

People never even wanted to play Magic digitally online in the first place.

Yeah, the human interaction aspect had always been a massive part of what makes tabletop gaming special to a lot of people.

@championchap that’s what I used to say as well, until everyone proved how wrong I am. And I’m not saying about what Arena did wrong either, people have been saying this paper-Magic-forever thing long before Arena even existed. I used to say how Magic would benefit so much if they had an online client just like Hearthstone is, with their own event and economy system, they would stand to make so much more money like that, and whether the players like it or not, they will spend their money into it. And then I realized no one even wants to play Magic that way, paper is still the way to go for Magic, always has been and always will be.

I think there’s a home for digital Magic, if done right. Something that would allow people to easily try out decks before committing to buying one in paper. Something for those who don’t have a nearby LGS or a play group. And I think high-level pro Magic should all be digital to prevent cheating. But it should be supplementary to paper, not the primary focus.

@@aaronreeve1414 I agree with you on your points. I don't have anything nearby me anymore but I also don't really get as much free time (not to mention most of my collection was stolen years ago...RIP) but me and a couple buddies still try to get together and play a bit and reminisce at least.

why?

I hate that damn monkey!

@@soarel325 the monkey would be fine if he wasn't a mythic rare! Like I don't knock my friends who can afford their monkeys but good lord, that set with its overpriced elementals, the monkey, and completely rotating old archetypes... Like I loved drafting it and playing the new cards I got, but in the 3 draft boxes I got, I only got 2 fetchlands and 1 darci. Almost nothing else of value.

It’s what happens when a niche becomes increasingly mainstream. Magic of ten years ago wouldn’t be doing crossovers with random IPs and Post Malone, the WoW comparison is pretty apt.

Don't forget WH 40k.....Games Workshop is doing the same as WotC and so much more

Hasbro is a toy company, and toys as a whole have been on a downward trajectory for a while. I'm not surprised they're looking to tabletop games (and related pursuits like online versions of them) as their new primary revenue stream.

See you there! Been using it since 2003, and it had some shaky years early on, but it's great now.

I always had a tough time just deciding which cards or sets I wanted to buy into. Now there's quadruple options for each one and I just can't.