Subject: Re: Is Magic completely Dead right now? Date: Wed, 23 Sep 1998 02:28:30 GMT From: bensmith@series2000.com Newsgroups: rec.games.trading-cards.magic.strategy In article <6u944e$196@news-central.tiac.net>, sagrillo@REMOVE2REPLYtiac.net wrote: > "Jamie & Mare" wrote: > > >Hiya - > > >Just a quick note. > > >No one in Middlebury is playing any magic. > > Personally, I think the main reason Magic goes downhill to the > point of dying in an area is that it is just too expensive in dollars > for the average gamer to keep up (let alone the average casual gamer) > and just too expensive in time for the average gamer to keep up (let > alone the average casual gamer). Buy a couple of starters, build a > deck, show up at a tourney and, boom, you are so incinerated that you > have no chance to learn, have fun, ease into the game. You either > rise like the phoenix (spending tons of money and time to do so), or > go elsewhere. When you get no new people into the game, the farm > system dies and the game dies. This is an excellent point. I, too, have noticed a marked drop in interest in playing Magic at the shop I go to... and I think of lot of it stems from WotC. Don't get me wrong, I love this game; it consumes alot of my time and thoughts and dollars. But I think there has been some serious mis-management here, or directions the game has taken to help prop up the existing players and pros, and make it more difficult for the newer player to get into the game. First off, the dwindling of "events." Sure, there's Pro Tours, PTQ's, and Grand Prix's. But the "good ones," the ones with the good prizes, the multiple slots, the fun formats, seem to be few and far between. I'm sorry, maybe Sealed helps boost Magic sales, but from what I've seen around here, it's a zero draw for the average Joe Magic player. Most players want to take the deck they've made with the cards they've already purchased and go have fun with it. I truly think more Constructed events, especially Type 2, which is supposedly "designed" so the newer players can compete, would help raise interest among newer players (and old players like myself). Also, the prize support has been pitiful lately. I don't know if WotC has made it more expensive to run sanctioned events or qualifiers, but the people running these events, with a few exceptions, are giving away little of interest, including slots on the PT. I think dropping to 1 slot qualifiers is a *huge* mistake. At least with 2 slots, I can delude myself into thinking, with solid play, a little luck, and some good matchups, I can make it into the final 8 with a 25% chance of qualifying. Now, I have to walk into the PTQ confident enough that I can beat anybody and everybody there. That's abit daunting, and, minus decent prizes to try and shoot for, make PTQ's hardly worth it. Second, Type 2 has become all about rares, especially the decks featuring cards from Rath. Jamie posted something about a month back mentioning how it seems all the recent decent, tournament worthy cards were all rare now. I took a look at my DDT deck and was staggered. Oath of Ghouls, Recurring Nightmare, Survival, Tradewind, Verdant, Spirit, City of Brass, Undiscovered, Spike Weaver. I was floored. The dollar value of this deck rivaled a decent Type 1 deck. How are new players supposed to compete with that? Even WW, which always featured cheap weenies and removal with a handful of rares, requires Tithes, Moxes, Cataclysms, Paladins to compete. This sort of reckless "elitism" of tournament worthy cards is harmful to the new player who wants to be competitive without spending hand over fist right off the bat. Sure, Magic is an expensive hobby, but you shouldn't have a startup fee of 3-4 boxes of Magic right away to be somewhat competitive. Third, WotC has squandered their prime farming ground-- Arena. Arena has turned into a joke. It seems to be little more than a way to push more product-- every other season (at least) seems to be either Sealed/Modified Pre-Constructed decks, or brand new products (ala Unglued). Used to be, Arena sported formats concurrent with what was being played or coming up on the pro-tour, so you could bring your experimental decks, play and tweak, have some fun, and at the end of it all, win some decent prizes-- the alternative art! A prize truly worth dueling for as it was a showcard you could put in your deck and, as you played it, "show off" a little without being a jerk about it. I used to love Arena and play games with experimental decks without the pressure of trying to win a tournament that particular day. According to my friend who runs the game shop, the Arena people really don't care what people think about how they are running it. They know we'd rather have the alt. art, but they're giving us oversized cards anyway. They're also making it more expensive to run Arena without offering any kind of product support or prizes worth playing for. I've been trying to get him to write up an article for the Dojo to try and stir up some debate on this, but that's another story... ... wow, this has become a rant of Wakefieldian proportions... ;) But this really burns me up, because I love this game and I hate seeing it decline at all, especially over stupid things. Maybe WotC needs to change their policy about letting employees compete; maybe the folks there have lost touch with what it meant to have fun with the game. Maybe it's just a job to them now, something to make money and boost profits. Of course, I could be wrong. It might just be summertime sucked away players; it might be people tired of the same format and are awaiting Urza's Saga to shake things up. I, personally, am looking forward to it. But it seems to me WotC has made some bad decisions lately that have caused this game to drift in the wrong direction. Somebody needs to take ahold of the rudder. > > To stay viable, I think Magic needs to have all types of people, > skill levels and cards stocks be playable somewhere very near by on a > daily or weekly basis. There aren't many places that is true (except > where magic is brand new and just being introduced). > > - DeAnn (your garden variety mage) > > --- > Your garden variety mage, > DeAnn Iwan Again, excellent points, DeAnn! Bennie Smith Guerilla Tech Mage -----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==----- http://www.dejanews.com/rg_mkgrp.xp Create Your Own Free Member Forum