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Comment by vaylian | Hacker News Reader

A bit more context:

* Wizards of the Coast (WoTC) has been tasked by Hasbro (which owns WoTC) to drastically increase profits over a few years.

* WoTC has been aggressively increasing prices on Magic the Gathering (MTG) and drastically increased the diversity of products. This overwhelmed even people who follow and produce MTG news. Wallet fatique is rampant and people are disgruntled.

* WoTC releases the 30th aniversary edition for MTG, which is 60 random cards for 1000 $ which are officially marked as non-tournament legal. The MTG community is furious and for once people from all corners of the community come together to boycott this product. The rage is great and enduring.

* WoTC fails to meet expectations and the stock prices plummet

* To do damage control, WoTC/Hasbro annouces a "fireside chat" for their shareholders where they try to explain the situation but basically just say "we did nothing wrong and we are trying to extract a lot of money from Dungeons and Dragons next"

* Unlike the MTG community, the DnD community is very good at organizing a unified response and the shitstorm came swiftly and took WoTC by surprise. (Don't mess with Dungeon Masters who know how to call together a group of people)

The real problem is the managers at WoTC that don't really care about the games. They only care about money. I expect more bad things in the future.

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> The real problem is the managers at WoTC that don't really care about the games. They only care about money. I expect more bad things in the future.

The same seems to be true with Games Workshop and I've never understood this. The products from both companies have huge markups (painted cards and pieces of plastic) and I'd assume that they could actually have a far larger market and profit by concentrating on scale rather than treating their products as luxury items. There's a clear reason that a lot of people are printing miniatures (pirating) from both franchises. I wouldn't be surprised if open sourced alternatives to these games soon spike in popularity as more people get fed up.

I think a lot of people have had the following conversation (in either direction)

Alice: Do you play Warhammer 40k?

Bob: No, I play MTG. I'd love to play 40k but I can only afford one addiction.

This just doesn't seem like it makes for a sustainable business practice. Even if we might consider that the total cost of entertainment isn't that extreme (there is low diversity for these games compared to a videogame or sports habit), people have a hard time justifying those prices for playing cards and plastic models because they intuitively understand that there is a huge markup.

> I'd assume that they could actually have a far larger market and profit by concentrating on scale rather than treating their products as luxury items

I'm not sure that's true. The actual bottleneck with these games is not money but time and interest: you have to have a group of people who all like the same game, and you have to be able to get the group together regularly to play it. There are plenty of people who are interested, but I suspect that the vast majority of them are already players of whatever game they favor (if they haven't switched to something like World of Warcraft--see below), so I don't know that there's a lot of untapped market share.

As for getting the group together to play, when all of the players are teenagers in school or college, that's relatively easy. It gets a lot harder when people are adults and have to work, pay mortgages, deal with various curve balls that adult life always throws at you, etc. And if you know you're not going to be able to devote the time to it that you used to as a kid when you learned the games (I started playing D&D in eighth grade, and spent far more hours playing it between then and graduating from high school than I have in all the years since--and my 40 year high school reunion is this year), it gets a lot harder to justify spending money on game materials.

Another factor is the availability of online games like World of Warcraft, which I mentioned above. These games solve the time and interest problem in a way that can't help scaling much better than in person tabletop play: you can play from your computer at home and there are always other people online playing. There are also limitations, of course: for example, you can't make up your own adventures and you can't have house rules, which were both features of every D&D campaign I have ever encountered. But it's another factor that I think tends to limit the size of the available market for games like D&D.

All of the above factors seem to me to indicate that there is a natural limit to the size of the market for games like the ones WoTC is producing, and the actual active market is close to that limiting size. If that's true, then the option of trying to make more money by scaling instead of markup simply isn't available to them.

I’m still holding out hope I’ll be able to have a D&D renneisance after I retire (or maybe when the kids are old enough).

I've had the same thoughts. :-)

I know 10yr olds were getting in to it about 5 years ago. That feels like the seeds are planted

You absolutely will. I just got back into it after a 25 year hiatus, and playing with young people that weren't even born back then, and having a blast in the process.

There's a thriving comunity out there, and so far I've been welcome with open arms every time I've reached out.

look for “D&D Encounters” in your area. This is very common in game stores and they’re designed for drop-in players or first timers to try out D&D. This is how I got back into D&D 10 years back after not having played since the early ‘90s.

Haha, I have no issues finding people to play with, but trying to find a solid block of a few hours of time is impossible.

You don’t need to wait. I run a group with a schedule specifically designed for parents of young children. (virtual, short sessions, immediately after bedtime). There are others!

I will add that sites like Roll20.net solve the problem of online gaming for D&D (and many other TTRPGs), but your points still stand.

I left the game as I got older. At the end of the day it just didn’t make sense to spend what magic cost if I could only play a few hours a week. It’s easy to spend over $3600/year on M:TG if you want to play competitively and that just doesn’t make sense to me if I’m getting roughly 100 hours of play in. I could do far better things with over $30/hour for hobbies.

(will try be a bit verbose here so that people who are not MTG fans will still be able to follow sorry if it's a slog to get through!)

I was in a similar boat, though for a long time during university I shared a collection with a friend and we did a pretty good job at selling off stuff to keep the effective costs down.

Since 2016, I stopped playing heavily rotational formats like Standard [for those unfamiliar, there's many different formats of MTG which are played and 'Standard' is one of the most popular ones in which you can play "all the mainline cards released from the last X sets", normally ~2 years worth], and moved to Modern [all cards printed since mid-2003 are playable]. My hope was that because of the longer (and growing) availability of cards, Modern would be more affordable in the long term - since decks would remain viable for long periods of time (perhaps with small adjustments with new cards coming out) and would retain value as a result.

Then over ~20 months, that view changed a lot. First Wizards banned Oko & Mox Opal in January 2020. Firstly, these cards lost value directly - but they also caused quite a big shift in the metagame to the point where entire decks got awful, and hence less valuable. Then in mid-2021 they released the Modern Horizons 2 set, which had a massive impact on very many Modern decks (per MTGGoldfish, 8 of the 10 most commonly played creatures in the Modern metagame at the moment are from Modern Horizons 2). Once again, this totally decimated the value of many existing cards.

I hate the sort of "MTG Finance" approach to the MTG scene, but like you say - it's hard to justify $30/hr for a hobby, and its clear that Hasbro will print whatever it takes to maximize their profits (even if it has a significant negative impact on existing customers).

Is there a format that's "only commons"?

That would seem the biggest way to stick it to WotC: devalue their artificial scarcity while still enjoying the game.

There are, such as pauper. I’ve also heard of playing with a total $ limit per deck, at time of construction.

The main limiting factor is what you can convince folks to play. Game stores have the main formats, and unknown amounts of money spent, but you can do whatever with your friends!

I've always enjoyed the limited formats. I've periodically checked back in and played in prereleases or leagues or whatnot, without ever committing to building something preconstructed.

I think I may be done, though. The power and complexity creep has gotten to me in the past few years. I can understand that cards need to be rebalanced, or that new rules get introduced over time, but the complexity of the current version of the game has gotten out of hand. The cynic in me says that the power creep is there so that people playing formats like modern will pay for new sets, and since the new cards are more powerful and have more abilities, it drags down the game.

I've enjoyed 3d printing. I'd say it's on par, maybe less. 3d printing miniatures in resin is not that expensive anymore, frankly.

But there is something to be said about games produced by companies that don't rely upon a constant revenue stream (MtG, e.g.) to enjoy.

I bought a bunch of cards and play Modern, I never need to buy anything new and I can play as much as I like.

> I'm not sure that's true. The actual bottleneck with these games is not money but time and interest: you have to have a group of people who all like the same game, and you have to be able to get the group together regularly to play it.

For campaign based games like DND and other RPGs I'd agree, but with the specific examples of MTG and 40k I highly disagree. You do not need to meet regularly for MTG (card) or 40k (miniature) style games as they can easily be played as one-offs. While RPGs have one-shots they are far less common and the overhead is quite high compared to MTG/40k (just show up with your deck/army). In addition to this, games like MTG and 40k are often played 1v1 (though can expand) and this makes the scheduling problem easier since you only need to find compatible times for 2 people rather than 3-5 (or more).

Typical MTG and 40K players sing vast amounts of time into the hobby aside from the time actually playing. It's most obvious with 40K where you can spend weeks painting an army, but for both people also read the books, rules and supplements, spend time on forums, going to meetups and conventions. They're both massive time sinks. Says he that's been obsessed with 'tabletop' RPGs since the early 80s.

Most products start off fueled by passion and love, but once the original masterminds move on the people left are the beancounters who are more interested in the fruits of the product rather than the product itself.

We see this happen basically everywhere with almost no exceptions.

I play chess and also follow it as a professional sport. I suck at it but it's fun anyway, it costs nothing unless you play in money tournaments, costs very little unless you play in BIG money tournaments, and as far as I can tell it seems to offer everything that video games do in terms of skill challenge, social connection, and all of that. I'm sure these expensive video games have a reason to exist but I haven't figured out what it is.

I played D&D in high school when it consisted of a few (often xeroxed) rulebooks, some funny looking dice, some graph paper, and the players' own imaginations. The current version sounds awful by comparison.

Now get off my lawn.

Videogames are expensive when you are young. It might be more expensive than chess, but it quickly becomes one of the cheapest hobbies of most adults. It's sure cheaper than going out drinking an extra night each week.

Fair enough about the cost, but the thing is, chess isn't under any company's control and it has history and traditions going back for centuries. There is a sense of grandeur when you move a pawn even as the lowliest patzer, that no amount of GPU-enhanced videogame graphics can replicate. You almost feel the blood of Lasker and Capablanca running through your veins.

One of my favorite movies is a biodoc about a Soviet-era player from Kazakhstan, on youtube (1st of 3 parts, around 15 minutes each: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_Io7jbHsYs ). I can't imagine someone making a movie like that about a Warhammer player. But, that's just me.

There's plenty of reasons not to like abstract games.

Abstract games are highly, highly dependent on memorization and repetition. In lower tiers a Go or Chess player that's played more games or memorized more positions will handily beat a player who hasn't. The sheer hours needed to get to high level chess play, where memorization doesn't matter as much anymore, is insane. There's a reason most great chess players start out young.

Abstracts are also perfect information games. I like games that simulate aspects of real life, and anything with perfect information immediately breaks my immersion.

Exactly this. As an avid board game player this is one of the things that has always frustrated me about chess. Those that like to play have been playing for a long time and there is a steep learning curve. Even the parent was throwing off vernacular. This is not just intimidating to many newcomers but will likely put them off because it is difficult to see yourself make progress. On the other hand, most board games have luck elements in them and have a wide range of luck-skill balances. You'll find that how people are introduced to board games (and videogames) depends on what game they try first. If that game requires a high skill level (or worse, high skill and high dependence on opening actions, like Catan (unfortunately is a common "intro game")) then people tend to not like "board games" in a general sense. But once people are comfortable with the space and patterns (there's only so many concepts in gaming) then they are far more open to more complex rule sets and more skill based games. Chess and Go's killer problem is that it is difficult to get started. Ironically we're on a form of mostly programmers and this is analogous to the "Python before C++" argument, but with less benefits to the C++ side.

If you are new to chess you will probably be a bad player, but it is still fun. I've been at it for decades and I'm still a bad player. I don't mind. I don't memorize much of anything. It's more like math puzzles. I suppose if I studied the right way and had more chess ambition, I'd be stronger than I am, but I don't try to be competitive, so it's fine. It's easy for me to find opponents at about the same level and have enjoyable games. That made a good way to relax after a busy week of work or school, meet other nerds, etc. That was all I wanted from it. I had no dream of becoming a grandmaster or anything like that, so I was happy. YMMV.

Added: Look at some of the PogChamps tournaments on youtube. The players are youtube streamers who are chess beginners and they play horribly, but they are still a blast.

I prefer playing games with my friends in real life than with strangers over the internet. That’s the biggest reason I don’t play abstract strategy games much.

Chess is not a great shared game for a group of friends. You all need to be somewhat close in skill to each other (or else the outliers will get bored of playing chess with the group). That also means that you all need to progress at relatively similar rates.

The board games I like to play are thematic, introduce a bit of luck, and are engaging for players of all skill levels. They don’t allow for nearly the same level of mastery that chess does, but that’s exactly what makes them so fun to play as a group.

I've never played chess on the internet. I went to chess clubs, played in cafes, and that sort of thing. There were players of every level from beginner to master. I got to know several people there and became housemates with one for a while. I stay away from such things these days because of the pandemic, but maybe I'll get to take it up again someday.

Besides playing, watching chess videos is interesting too. I like the youtube PowerplayChess channel for updates on top level events and historical games. There are lots of other channels too.

I'm pretty sure thats still how most people engage with RPGs, at least, I'm fairly whippersnapping and that was my high school experience too.

Are there any “open source” games like Warhammer 40k worth playing where 3d printing miniatures is possible and encouraged?

Not true Open Source, but One Page Rules is close in spirit with what you're talking about and has a community of people who actually do play it.

Battletech generally has no official problem with proxies or alternate models.

And is a significantly superior game

Mantic Games Deadzone... it's not open source but they don't require you to use official models, the box comes with all the army lists, they don't change the rules every 10 minutes and the factions are all suspiciously... familiar (without breaking copyright) and you can just drop in most of your existing 40k miniatures

For all their faults, Games Workshop is really a miniatures company that has a ruleset, rather than games company that sells plastic models. I recall seeing a statistic that the majority of their customers don’t regularly play, and a shocking number have never played a game. Those customers are buying models because they think the models are neat, and are deriving fun from the act of assembling and painting.

From that perspective, the business is as sustainable as Star Wars or Marvel: as long as this Thor offers a better fantasy than generic Thors, the brand will last (and accumulate the advantages of a deep, lasting history), and therefore will outlast competitors.

It's interesting to see that particular segment of the "build and paint models" universe survive and thrive when you see contraction in a lot of other areas.

I'm fond of model railways, and it's discarded lots of that heritage. You look in a '70s or 80s magazine, and the projects are "here's a new (inflation-adjusted) $50 kit" or "assemble bits and bobs from three different $20 kits following a detailed article". Today, the equivalent model is only sold fully assembled and painted at $200.

> Wizards of the Coast (WoTC) has been tasked by Hasbro (which owns WoTC) to drastically increase profits over a few years.

Why can't things just exist and be profitable enough to continue? Why must EVERYTHING be ruined by the drive for high but short-term profits?

Overoptimization, especially on a single or a few metrics, leads to fragility.

If they started teaching this to MBAs, the world would be a much better place.

Getting more money now rather than later allows you to reinvest it sooner, amplifying the compond interests of all your investments. It's about rate of return of investment.

The problem occurs when a business is successful because it moves slow, a critical aspect of modular products. Squeezing blood out of a modular product by manufacturing an inferior run may return investments faster, but it also kills the company.

In keeping with the wizard theme, it's definitely Moloch :)

"What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination? Moloch!"

"Moloch the incomprehensible prison! Moloch the crossbone soulless jailhouse and Congress of sorrows! Moloch whose buildings are judgment! Moloch the vast stone of war! Moloch the stunned governments!

Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose blood is running money! Moloch whose fingers are ten armies! Moloch whose breast is a cannibal dynamo! Moloch whose ear is a smoking tomb!"

https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/

>The real problem is the managers at WoTC that don't really care about the games. They only care about money. I expect more bad things in the future.

WOTC is notorious for paying around 50% of the market rate and giving a bunch of free product to employees and generally convincing them that working for poor wages is worth it because of the games. I think senior management doesn't give a shit but middle management and below definitely cares about the games, they just lack the power/ ability to make major decisions.

I’d say the real problem is that WoTC is a lifestyle business that should not be owned by Hasbro.

WoTC (and really, Magic The Gathering specifically) is actually the profitable bit of Hasbro. They were hoping to get similar levels out of Dungeons and Dragons.

This is the company that once sold an ancient Roman weapon of war (plumbata) as children’s toy. At least one child died when hit by the dart.

The company should be shut down and its valuable brands spun off!

Unrelated to DnD, but I still have a 2002 email from Alan Hassenfeld the former CEO of Hasbro (HASsenfeld BROthers) in reply to my sending my protest of them moving factories to China. (I know, kind of quaint/futile in hindsight)

> I know, kind of quaint/futile in hindsight

It's not at all quaint and futile; don't believe that crap, meant to shut you up. It's awesome you sent that email.

It's futile if your standard is that, as just one person, you will achieve 100% success. Then everything in the world is futile, because nobody ever accomplishes anything significant alone (really - name anyone doing anything) or 100%. (Let's realize also that it would be wrong if one person had that much power. There are others with legitimate, conflicting interests, who should have a 'vote' too.)

But you are part of a larger community, and I promise Hasbro listens to the signals. If they switched manufacturing to China and there was silence, that would be a powerful signal. If all they heard was their shareholders or Wall Street analysts, that would be a powerful signal.

It's not all or nothing, the same goes for most other issues (such as elections). People shift positions based on the response. Maybe less work was shifted to China, then or on a future date; maybe they decided to keep customer service in the US or make the investment more flexible or short term. Maybe they mentioned at Davos, 'wow, we sure heard a lot of complaints about moving the manufacturing', and others heard it and shifted their positions.

Keep talking; the people who say it's futile are the people who want you to shut up.

At least 3 children died.

That said, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that heavy pointed metal darts aren’t the safest of toys.

Knifes aren’t safe for children either, but we haven’t banned those.

WoTC is a fairly stable evergreen business. So are most of Hasbros. In fact, WOTC tends to be one of their more dependable units (prior to this fiasco).

Hasbro itself is just a stable stead business. It shouldn't be trying to get hockey stick growth on games.

For context, selling toys to kids is no longer profitable, so Hasbro is going all in on making and selling toys for adults. This is a massive pivot for the company, and lots of the existing staff will ultimately be laid off. That’s why everyone there is behaving erratically.

Why would selling toys to kids be unprofitable?

Since much of your market is actually parents, you're in a more secure place than a lot of other businesses: people are going to be more willing to pay for a trusted brand. There's always going to be various FUD of "off-brand toys might be unsafe".

There's probably a risk factor-- you may not have THIS YEAR'S HOT TOY,--but I'd think the exact same problem applies to an adult audience, who is probably even more fickle because they don't have to get Mom and Dad to gatekeep their purchase decisions.

There's only so much water in the well, though, and they might well be close to that limit. It's not an infinitely growable market, it's a niche product. True, the niche has gotten quite large in recent years, but at this point it's at least as likely to shrink as to grow.

> It's not an infinitely growable market

This needs to be said more often about more markets.

One would think that it would be true of pretty much _any _ market. I know it's not being meant literally, but even so, there are only so many people in the world, and people only have so much money. Even something that's essential for everyone like food is going to be limited by that; eventually you'd need to wait for there to be more people if you want to be able to sell more.

Myself I have never been a fan of D&D, particularly I can't stand running a D&D game, character progress so far that it gets in the way of meaningful storytelling. I much prefer the next generation of games such as Paranoia or Call of Cthulhu because you really can kill players off. Either that or games that are very simple to run like Toon. In D&D I think the game dynamics get in the way of the improvisational acting aspect that Gygax encouraged.

Never understood why players are up in arms about this. Just print proxies if you want a particular card.

That only works if other players accept that you play with proxies. I personally am completely fine with proxies, but I know that not everyone is. And game shops that allow people to play with proxies can get in trouble with WoTC.

Interesting how people describing MTG are basically also describing free to play video games.

Just turn the tap until blood comes out.

> Don't mess with Dungeon Masters who know how to call together a group of people

Don't mess with Dungeon Masters who have converted their campaign into 2 seasons on Amazon Prime. Just sit back and collect the checks for the free advertising.

Killing the goose to try to get more golden eggs is what idiotic companies do.

I actually think the attempted changes were because WoTC didn't get a cut of the Amazon money.

That’s just bad accountants. CR sells a book through WotC’s publisher. That’s bank. CR is sponsored by D&D Beyond. THEY USE IT ON THE SHOW. That’s subscriptions. Every book or miniature that people buy because they were inspired to want to play is money Hasbro earns off of their success. It’s all advertising.

Promo codes usually give money to the person shilling the code as a fraction of the promo derived sales. If the company is paying you for advertising, like on YouTube channels, that’s how it’s usually done. But people with established advertising channels can run that the other direction: we’ll promote your stuff and you give us 5% of the gross.

I think WotC could be promoting Dwarven Forge without cannibalizing their own sales, for instance. They make different kinds of miniatures.

> Don't mess with Dungeon Masters who have converted their campaign into 2 seasons on Amazon Prime.

I’m out of the loop. What does this refer to?

Critical Role, a web D&D show that has had its stories turned into animations. The one that has been released is named The Legend of Vox Machina, after their first campaign's troupe.

There speculation that the godkiller in the third campaign is there because Matt was privy to the new OGL under NDA and the main thing that ties the world he built to D&D is the pantheon. He makes his own monsters all the time, but he still has Vecna, the Raven Queen, the Wildmother, even though he gives them different names in some regions.

Sure would be a shame if something happened to that copyrighted material…

Cleverer still, in C2 and EXU he established that there is forbidden knowledge of ways that a mortal can become a god by replacing one. And when you kill a god, memory of your predecessor fades amongst mortals. Nobody human remembers the dead gods (I think it’s implied the other gods remember).

So if you can rewrite history such that only the gods remember the real story, but all of the gods are dead, you either have no pantheon or a new pantheon.

CR also still has modified versions of Sarenrae (Rae) and Taldor (Taldor'ei) from Pathfinder, so it's also possible they just do nothing or only use the non-copyrighted alternate names from now on.

(some more background)

Critical Role is a bunch of voice actors who are geeks (said affectionally and consider that these are the people who were in the acting club and comedy sports back in high school... they're still geeks today) and get together and play D&D.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_Role - click the links to the cast and then look at the filmography. And they're fairly dedicated to playing ( https://youtu.be/Ou-0Lj-gOt8 )

They filmed/streamed their sessions and that has brought in a good chunk of money. They did a "let's try a kickstarter for doing it as an actual animation series" and had a $750k goal... and got $11M. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/criticalrole/critical-r... // https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/19/critical-role-vox-machina-ki...

> In March, the folks behind the “Dungeons and Dragons” webseries launched a Kickstarter campaign to create an animated special based on its first campaign. Within an hour of its launch, it raised more than $1 million in funding.

This is the reaction video to that first day on kickstarter - https://youtu.be/oAF2ZNcYBok

And it got made... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Legend_of_Vox_Machina

And renewed for a second season... and a third season...

https://www.amazon.com/Legend-Vox-Machina-Season-Trailer/dp/...

And you can see that there is a lot of money there... but there's also a "these people have a sizable following and even those who are second hand consumers of D&D and don't sit down at a table are now aware of what is trying to be done to it."

And they got greenlit this week for doing a series for their second campaign.

>WoTC releases the 30th aniversary edition for MTG, which is 60 random cards for 1000 $ which are officially marked as non-tournament legal. The MTG community is furious and for once people from all corners of the community come together to boycott this product. The rage is great and enduring.

Yet somehow the product completely sold out in under an hour. I really don't understand the outrage on that decision, would you prefer that everyone can buy their useless commutative coins?

Also - why are people upset over a product (that doesn't affect the game) being sold to people others? I feel like important context is missing here over why anyone would be upset by this.

I think that there was a sense that WotC was going to do something special for Magic's 30th anniversary - something for the community at large. Instead, they released a mediocre, $1000 product.

My guess is the feeling that if the product is successful, then the corporation might create similar products that are less optional. Or they may neglect or discontinue their less customer hostile products.

It's also probably reasonable to be upset that they are pricing a significant portion of their community out of a product that ostensibly celebrates the success of the community.

Imagine a game with 30 years of history, genre defining, that has die hard fans and then take some cards, make effectively "fake" versions (not tournament legal) and charge $1000 for 60 of them.

They could have done a LOT more cooler things and passionate lovers of the game wish that they did.

Why not make them tournament legal? It’d cut down on some of the insane prices for these things (like house prices, sad for those who just bought at a huge premium, but ultimately good for the rest).

Long story but there is a list of cards called the "reserved list" and WoTC promised to never reprint them. So they got cheeky and said "well, we didn't really reprint them because they aren't legal, see?" Oh, and pay us $1000 for these cards.

https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Reserved_List

One of the most famous cards is on the RL:

https://scryfall.com/card/leb/233/black-lotus?utm_source=mw_...

And the new "not legal" version:

https://scryfall.com/card/30a/228/black-lotus

This is a segment of geek culture that has all sorts of ego/identity stuff tied up with these brands. So when they don't "act properly" it feels like it reflects on them and they take it personally.

That's the downside to having that market segment as your customers, the upside is that they are fanatically loyal and are not remotely picky or discerning as customers/consumers.

You don't understand why people who own what was supposed to be a limited edition collectible/in game power up got upset when more were released? Cards that they bought for large amounts on the secondary market because WOTC promised they would never be reprinted.

WoTC says it sold out, there's no actual proof of that (in fact, some insiders are saying that it was taken off the market due to the bad publicity)

Ironically, removing them early from the market further increases their value.

They have never claimed that it sold out, just that the sale concluded. Stores are actually on the list to get allocation for M30 product to sell.

The gp is saying that the set sold out within an hour and that is what the parent is responding to.

Neither the GP nor the parent to my original comment were correct. Nobody said anything sold out, they ended the sale - which is very different. In fact, there is a lot of evidence that it didn't.

> I really don't understand the outrage on that decision

What decision are you claiming people were outraged?

Because the actual reason people where outraged is the very existence of the magic 30th edition in the first place. It is one of the clearest and starkest examples of a company disrespecting it's customer, ever.

Also the fact that WotC has promised over and over that these cards would never get reprints, not even non-tournament legal reprints.

As of at least 2016, I'm not checking older ones, non-tournament legal reprints have been acceptable under their reprint rules. https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/announcements/official-rep...

>. It is one of the clearest and starkest examples of a company disrespecting it's customer, ever.

Why?

Compare it to some other fanbases. With music, printing a super pricy limited edition of an album with extra non-music content is a normal decision. With sneakers, that's like the entire market. With comic books limited edition posters and figures are commonplace.

So many fandoms have outlets for the rich megafans that the average fan can just ignore without any real issue. Why is it disrespecting the customer? I can understand disliking the side sets having chase cards that are necessary for some formats, and could see those as disrespecting the customer, but not these.

"We had to create an experience for fans new and old that would be worthy of three decades of the original trading card game." doesn't fit a 250 dollar pack of non-cards.

If it was real very rare cards, there would be upset but they could have made it work.

If it was non-cardlike collectibles, it would have been fine.

But to sell non-legal cards at such a high price is so much the opposite of the community celebration they were pushing for overall.

And the last time they sold something like this, it was the entire set and it wasn't expensive. Even if that was a long time ago.

And wizards constantly pretends that all their pieces of cardboard have similar value, so it's extra obnoxious whenever they price something like this. But this one in particular is an order of magnitude worse even if we forget for a second they aren't legal cards.

And various ways of playing the game are actively dying because it's so hard to get cards like this, which just adds salt.

It's honestly not so much that set. It's the sheer amount of new supplemental sets that they're throwing out, many of which are cards that you basically _have_ to but to remain competitive.

Formats like legacy and vintage are no longer things you can buy into and play a similar deck for a long period of time. Instead, they're things where you have to buy new cards once every two to four weeks to remain competitive. That's a big change from a few years back when those formats tended to be relative stable for 1-2 year periods.

That's the real thing that folks are frustrated with. The 30th anniversary packs are just something that's easy to point at and go "this is a money grab". If it were just those, it would really be a "to each their own".

Having the creator of the game say "..keep focused on this idea that this is a game first. As if you treat it as a collectible first then you are not doing your game players any favors" during the same event before they announced $300 for 60 proxies threw gas on it.

> It's the sheer amount of new supplemental sets that they're throwing out, many of which are cards that you basically _have_ to but to remain competitive.

That’s literally been going since around Mirrodin. It’s why I gave up on the game.

Now I just have a massive set of only commons that everyone can build their decks with and I don’t have to deal with the insane power inflation.

I think the problem has always existed, but to a much lesser extent than it has in the last 3-4 years. Vintage has always had the bulk of deck's value in Power 9 and lands, and the only recent changes there have been things like Mystic Sanctuary ($1 card), Cavern of Souls ($10 when it came out in 2012, now $50), Urza's Saga ($40), etc. Legacy & Modern also rely on an expensive but versatile land base, but in terms of staples they've both been hit hard by stuff like Modern Horizons 2 where stuff like Ragavan, Urza's Saga, and the elementals (Fury, Endurance, Subtlety, etc) are so pushed that they warp the metagame drastically. I can't think of a time when that was case in a way which impacted so many different decks. Some cards were problematic (Oko!) and made specific decks that included it much better for a time, but I've never seen a single set impact modern in such a big way.

https://i0.wp.com/onlyontuesdays27.com/wp-content/uploads/20...

Thanks, that kinda kames it abundantly obvious how the releases have evolved.

I was talking mostly about power inflation of the cards themselves though.

Read the sale ended early [1], not necessarily sold out.

[1] https://dotesports.com/mtg/news/magic-30th-anniversary-editi...

Shutting it down for publicity after starting the sale makes no sense, you're pissing off both those that want them and those that hate them.

The product didn’t sell out. Sales were merely stopped after 30 minutes.

Gotta protect that exclusivity.

Isn't there a youtuber who just buys this stuff all up to sit in his garage?

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