I've been lurking for a while, but I finally have a topic to talk about.
Recently, Mtg has been burning down for the past couple of days due to the new Secret Lair. Usually it was just reprints with a new wacky twist, but is now actually new cards that are NOT from Mtg, but from The Walking Dead. Everyone's pissed, from it being new cards in a limited product to the addition of non-Mtg properties to Magic. This isn't the first time there were non-Mtg cards made, but those were silver-border(non legal cards made for fun times).
That sucked, but what really made me post was reading a post about how some PlayEDH group banned the Negan card not for its stupid concept, but because it depicted a rapist in the artwork. A fictional rapist in the artwork. They were near on the mark and they missed it by a mile. Considering this is Mtg, there are plenty of characters that have done way worse things than rape that are depicted on cards. This reminds of when WOTC did the "racist" card bans in June.
Here's the post I saw: https://archive.vn/LVTYV
What I'm trying to say is that everything is boring and broken now. I've played this game for 7 years now, and the first 6 were pretty alright. Now it feels like the game sucks, the story sucks, and the players sucks. Maybe I spent too much time on the subreddit, maybe I though that I could weather WOTC being woke, maybe I got too attached to a bad portion of the game. All this seems like something fun just got ruined, even if the ruin started years ago.
What I came here for is to look for an avenue to talk to other people about something I cherish, or cherished, very deep in my heart. What are other Mtg players' thoughts about all this? If there are no players here, then what are the general observances of the people here?
WotC is ass cancer.
I'm a former MtG player - I hated that they had the Phyrexians come and ruin Mirrodin, the Eldrazi come and ruin Zendikar and the Eldrazi come and ruin Innistrad - and this sounds like the kind of foot-shooting I expect from modern WOTC. They even ruined a game they weren't even making by revoking the Netrunner license a few months after the second edition released.
I've played Magic since Ice Age and I have no idea what your'e talking about here.
Yeah, I sound a bit rambly, but this is the feel I've been getting from the subreddit and the general "famous" personalities. I could be stupid for assuming their hatred is anything big and for even listening to them, but I needed a jumping off point. If it's about the Secret Lair stuff, then WOTC has been milking the "whales" for money ever since December of last year.
Still have no idea wtf.
Is secret lair some some dumb shit like mini-crate?
How about I just show the wiki page: https://mtg.gamepedia.com/Secret_Lair
The whole idea is some pretty dumb shit, I'll give you that.
Not seeing the point of its existence.
Magic is standard. Everything else is just people playing with cardboard.
I'd wager it's just about money.
There seems to be the "whales" (essentially anybody who buys whatever the company throws out) who eats this stuff up, then there is the social justice minded or manchild people who, while possibly just a minority, are very vocal and thus get listened to. The whales buy, the normal people throw out questions of why this is needed, the company soothes them, or at least the vocal minority, with specific products to their tastes, and then everythings okay. At least that's how I see it.
That, and the fact that WOTC thinks that the Commander/EDH format is the new hot thing, so there has been a push towards cards that can go well in EDH. In this case for Secret Lair, people will do anything to pimp out their decks. This can also apply to any format that's not Standard, like Modern or Legacy, maybe even Pauper. The limit now seems to be new cards, not reprints, featured in this product.
As someone who played M:tG back in the mid-late '90s, I can't imagine why it would have a story now, or what would possibly compel someone to care about it if it does.
If ever there was an unnecessary job, it would have to be "writer" for M:tG.
Writers for most geek media are painfully/hilariously incompetent. Probably why my favorite games are dark souls and bloodborne - because minimalist story (bordering on no story) 100% trumps shit writing.
One of the most glaring examples is pillars of eternity. People actually like the writing in that game. It’s crap lol
Agreed, if I play Magic: The Gathering, it is not about story, couldn't care less about it and I suspect many people don't care beyond funny and interesting quotes and images.
I remember I played back when they were first doing Mirrodin and you had all the little robot dudes, artifact creatures, and that whole little world.
It was basically just a collection of cool shit loosely thrown together and made to work in a card game. Nobody gave a shit about the overall lore because the thematics of the world was cool and the game was fun to play.
Now it's a massive jumble of writers pet projects that all clash and don't mesh together at all. It makes no fucking sense and they retcon everything constantly.
It takes a lot of effort to fuck up something so simple but they did it.
r/freemagic is what you're looking for. I'd love for them to have a .win.
Oof, I'm sorry to hear that. You missed the golden era. If you have a computer with an old enough OS, get a copy of the single good mtg videogame, Shandalar.
I started mtg around 4th edition. We had physical rulebooks back then - boy, those were a chore to get through as a kid. My friends all made up BS rule interpretations so it took us years to even learn to play properly.
I think Weatherlight was the death knell for the game. That's when they started their new narrative focus. And don't get me wrong, the game had loads of story told before that in the flavor text, but the narrative style got all jacked up and definitively linear, whereas it was disjointed so you could learn about the world and characters from seperated excerpts and events and cultural clues. Though maybe they went back in that direction some? I haven't paid serious attention for over 10 years. Ice Age was the absolute pinnacle of the game's strategic depth.
I spent years trying to fix the game. EDH is a great joke. Here, take my better fix for free: strict 60 card count for deck size, only the 5 primary basic land types permitted for land, no more than 1 copy of a spell (that includes all the spells that were made to bypass the 4 copy limit by having same cost/effect with only a different name). That's it. 'Course, I wasn't a tourney judge and had no clique or sway over "the scene", so everyone jumps into a bloated ruleset for their fix now.
WotC has been doing poorly for some time. You'd have to hit up a /tg/ (not 4chan) board for the details, it's more than I could memorize.
Former whale here. I played Commander obsessively for about 8 years, played Modern for two years, and could buy a nice car if I sold all my decks. Magic is garbage now. This might get a bit long, but here we go.
So starting in about 2015 WotC began to get more and more woke. The storylines on their website started to take a socjus bent with a lot of "diverse" writers and "diverse" characters that made little sense in the setting. They started to ship gays into the storyline. In early 2016 a clique of literal SJW trannies started orbiting WotC's social media presence. Bloggers, journos, small gaming channels, and some of the more "diverse" (read bottom rung) pro players wormed their way to the company's ear due to Mark Rosewater being a literal cuck with a literal Tumblr. This same clique then pushed tons of fellatio material for WotC on places like the official MtG subreddit, and became even more ingratiated with the company. One excellent example of this filth is a blog called, unironically, "Hipsters of the Coast" and one of their flagship writers, a TDS stricken tranny named Jess Stirba who left the site to become an ANTIFA activist. Yes, really.
When Trump got elected, this clique went nuts and their influence began to have more and more impact on WotC. The company started chasing the "whore's gold" of untapped SJW market at the expense of their existing fanbase. Among other things this lead to a split in their subreddit and the creation of r/freemagic after thousands of people got banned for muhsoggyknees, Rosewater himself embraced intersectionality and when called out for creating cards and characters just to tick socjus boxes replied "some boxes need to be ticked" to the response of thousands of upvotes. It has changed everything, from player bans to online conduct to what kind of sleeves you can use and the art on your playmat, to what kind of decorations a card store can display. For me the final straw was the recent banning of several classic cards due to "racist" artwork or name connotations, like the cards "Jihad" and "Invoke Prejudice", the latter of which I actually owned a 400 dollar copy of. Since I only played it in Commander I wasn't initially concerned, but when the Commander Rules Committee came out and banned the same list of cards "in solidarity" with Black Lives Matter it was the final straw.
Fuck Magic, fuck Wizards, and fuck all their product lines. Do not give money to people who hate you.
story was fine until the gatewatch got the permanent spotlight and gameplay wise it's still fine, except for standard's state of perpetual brokenness
That is your first mistake: Spending too much time on Reddit. We all known for years that Reddit is a toxic echo-chamber of hate that will suck in your soul if you linger around for too long. I suggest that you cut yourself off from Reddit for an extended period of time and not even think of going back. You will find that your mood and soul will improve quite a lot.
I am curious on why did you think the game and the player base suck though. Can you elaborate?
Are they going to render the Black Lotus card worthless because the word "black" is in the title too?
only a second, because thats all those POSs deserve