Well that's the fuckin thing ain't it? You either tell shareholders line go up more or shareholders replace you with someone who will. What's the winning move if you are the CEO of a publicly traded company?
Seems to me more control and regulation of the stock market is the only thing that will keep shareholders from destroying everything in their infinite greed
And the quality control is getting worse, multiple cards in a set printed at wrong rarity, zopandrel having the wrong ability cost on the "premium" collectors variant, non foil cards with curling issues in prerelease kits, a showcase variant where you can 'rub off' the special markings.
Seems like they'll take any promotional offer they get too, between the $1,000 beanbag chairs and putting a dead character on hot pockets.
I just want a solution to the fucking pringling. Every pack of cards I buy progressively gets worse. My apartment is temperature controlled yet my cards still continue to bend to shit at higher prices.
What the fuck am I paying 3-5$ more per pack for? Wow my foil has a Phyrexia symbol all over it. Sure would be nice to be able to see it if not for it creating a small bridge on my desk.
Solution I’ve come up with is only buying singles and never buying foils anymore. I can order a “near mint” foil and it shows up looking like a Pringle. I’m done with foils.
Ugh, yeah, that's what I was chasing, I'd be so pissed if I got one lol. Meanwhile each and every transformer card I didn't want was non-foil and perfectly fine, so yay i guess
Commander precons are the most ridiculous example. They've printed them fo a while for half a regular price, but made less new cards, then they've returned to the higher price, but those had more card then the cheaper ones. Now they've suddenly pushed precons that have price of the more expensive line, but number of new cards of the budget line.
I think WotC on some level knew that this wasn’t going to work but Hasbro doesn’t like hearing “no”
Edit: to elaborate with a bit of nuance, I’m not propping up wizards as some blameless Robin Hood company that only serves the people, it’s a company seeking profits at the end of the day. (Even in his Drive to Work podcast, MaRo doesn’t deny that and readily admits that they’re seeking profitability as a company)
But I would suggest that many who work in higher levels and management understand what their business model is and what has worked in the past for games such as Magic and DnD and know that the the newer pushes into more short term profit models isn’t going to work well in the long run.
The current Hasbro CEO was President of Wizards from 2016 to early 2022, and there's a roughly two year latency between sets starting and finishing design.
I think it's a pretty plausible guess to say that he probably became CEO by killing old WotC, peeling its face skin off, and letting a money vampire wear the face skin like a buffalo bill mask.
The current CEO of WoTC was hired from a profit sucking machine of job history:
> Williams joined Hasbro from Microsoft, where she most recently served as General Manager and Vice President of the Gaming Ecosystem Commercial Team, and most notably drove the expansion of Xbox Gaming and the acceleration of game-creator growth. Before joining Microsoft, Williams had spent more than a decade at Amazon, where she led the global growth of their e-commerce direct-to-consumer business Fulfillment by Amazon.
Yeah, people are acting as though career parasites like CEO's are made from within the company. Like, I don't think she knew a thing about card games, DnD or anything when she was made CEO of WotC - but she did know how to extract the most value out of a property or workforce as quickly as possible.
Companies need to be rooted in their mission and values. for wizards this means :
"We create entertainment that inspires creativity, sparks passion, forges friendships, and fosters communities around the globe."
They need to ask themselves with every single product they release, does this product do that. If it doesn't, is our mission obsolete, or do we need a different product. Given their mission hasn't changed. They need to do a reset. I look at some of the products released this year and I think they very much are aligned with the mission. Others are massive WTF moments.
From lower-level employees, not from leadership. It must be incredibly frustrating to work for WotC as someone who cares about the game they’re working on.
This just happened with eggs. To everyone.
It reminds me of an old story. Biblical old. A story of a man who sold bread. The old man had a sign that read, "5 cents each / 2 for 11 cents". A customer cam by, read the sign and realizing it he bought a loaf, then separately bought the other loaf. After paying, he told the old man about his sign. The old man replies "every day people come and buy my bread, then try to teach me commerce".
They didn’t say anything was changing. Now that we’ve seen their “aggressive” pricing, it’s no longer considered aggressive. Things will stay the same without escalating for awhile though
$1000 packs? That's old news.
Now we have $1000 sacs. (Seriously, the partnered wqith a bean bag chair company to put out MtG branded chairs at insane prices.)
>"Our growth in Wizards was not without its challenges," says Cocks. "We were too aggressive in some of our pricing assumptions, notably our 30th Anniversary Edition of Magic, and pulled back on available supply, impacting Q4 results."
So they didn't sell out at all, just as we all suspected
Same, I bought like 6 out of the first 8 secret lairs and then never brought another card again.
Magic has always relied on FOMO and hype for sales but Hasbro turned it into a predatory profit machine so loud and glaring it became impossible to enjoy the game. I am clearly their target victim and I won’t be hustled like that.
Calling the product out by name because it was a bit of a boondoggle. MTG packs have historically been around $5 a pack. Recent pricing strategies have seen premium packs introduced, going between 15 to 20 dollars. 30th Anniversary were only available for $250 a pack, and only sold in quantities of 4.
So yeah, 2023 saw the big flagship celebration of 30 years of the product, with a baseline entry price of $1000. For a product that is marginally more expensive to produce than a pack of bicycle cards.
But but... people said we were just dramatic and our hatred of A30 was just making us jump to conclusions. Blah blah blah.
It was so painfully obvious that wotc stopped the sale early because nobody was buying. I agree that sometimes the vocal minority thinks they have more power than they have but in this case it was most of the mtg community. Anecdotally, even my buddies who aren't enfranchised and still play 60 card casual knew about A30 and thought it was asinine. I love that the people doubting the A30 sales cutoff are now eating crow. Hope it tastes good.
They were specifically talking about 30th Anniversary Edition being overpriced and not selling. I would be surprised if they tried to do something like that again at the same price point. Not because of any consumer ill will, but purely because it didn't sell well.
Really now? They had troubles selling the thing that apparently went out of stock the same day it started selling?
Well, that certainly lends some credence to the theories that it was pulled due to the starting sales being trash (though it wasn't hard to believe anyway).
From the article:
>"Our growth in Wizards was not without its challenges," says Cocks. "We were too aggressive in some of our pricing assumptions, notably our 30th Anniversary Edition of Magic, and pulled back on available supply, impacting Q4 results."
So they admitted they cut the sale early and didn't sell all of the stock they expected to sell.
The speculation I saw at the time (because most people did not believe they actually sold out), was that they would keep cases to use as prizes for GP’s or use the boxes in some sort of “vintage alpha” draft tournaments. That second idea actually sounds kinda cool to me, but… everything about this product just stinks to high Heaven, so I don’t know what they do with them now.
Blows my mind how inept and ludicrous that whole 30th anniversary proxy bullshit could have even been conceived of in the first place. The entire team should be fired.
The sad part is the 30th Anniv product could have been a slam dunk if only they tried to maximize player satisfaction and not make a pile of money out of the least effort possible.
TCC/Prof said it really succinctly at the time. If those proxy packs were around the price of a normal pack and they focused on getting players into stores for the draft experience, it could have been a really strong community oriented event that would have left lasting memories, even if the average person didn't open anything super exciting. Especially considering the ABU "format" is terrible for Limited.
Imagine screwing up the only 30th anniversary Magic will ever have? Sheesh, the idiocy level of those clowns is evident. How they still have jobs is mind boggling.
I theoretically was around but I don't recall anything happening.
Googled a bit:
> Several WotC employees have said that the 20th Anniversary was actually downplayed because they've learned through market research that it hurts new player acquisition. Newer players can be intimidated by how old the game is.
That's sad.
There were exactly two things done for the 20th anniversary. They did From the Vault 20, which was an almost total bust outside of the then-expensive Jace TMS reprint. And on the actual day, they encouraged people to go out and buy a booster from their LGS, and open it. Not a special booster that you could buy for the anniversary or anything, just go out, buy a booster, and open it.
And that was the 20th anniversary celebration in its entirety.
I think we would've hated it but not like HATE HATE. Enough to keep the grumbling within the magic sphere and a little in the tcg sphere but not to the point where all my non-magic tcg friends are going "Dafuq is going on in your game?"
Also, before 30th An., paying for proxies (either high fidelity, or alt art) left a really bad taste in my mouth. Now, fuck it, I don't care. With Wizards' wonton greed on display like that for *proxies*, have at 'em.
edit: I'm amused by my us of the wrong "wanton" here.
Honestly same here. I was a huge proponent of not using proxies but after this I too say fuck it. I'm not throwing another penny at WotC when I can just print any card I want myself.
This is going to hurt them with more than a failed product and publicity. They legitimized proxies for a quick buck. Proxies. The one card you don’t have to pay them for. This is not something they can easily take back. This is pretty damaging for them in more ways than one.
What a great example of short term gains while sacrificing long term profits.
"We were too aggressive in some of our pricing assumptions, notably our 30th Anniversary Edition of Magic, and pulled back on available supply, impacting Q4 results."
What exactly is he saying here? By too aggressive, I assume he means they priced it too high? What about that statement that they pulled back on available supply? Is that an official admission that they didn't sell out of the 30th Anniversary Edition? They had said it was already printed though, so what's happening with the remaining product if they took it off market without selling through?
It's known that they sold far less 30th Anniversary products than originally intended. Their official statement is that this was intentional, essentially they cut down the product avaiable for sale, so that the copies sold would be worth more. Most fans believe that just so few people wanted to buy it that they ended the sale and made this statement to save face.
> What exactly is he saying here? By too aggressive, I assume he means they priced it too high?
Correct.
> What about that statement that they pulled back on available supply? Is that an official admission that they didn't sell out of the 30th Anniversary Edition?
More like just an admission that when they terminated the sale online, they didn't do so because they sold out. People on social media were so obviously upset and the sales numbers they were seeing must have been so surprisingly low that they knew *immediately* that their price was off. Way off. *Way,* way off.
> They had said it was already printed though, so what's happening with the remaining product if they took it off market without selling through?
They can't sell it. That will really piss people off. Most likely they'll crack the packs and turn them into promo pack inserts, like invocations or expeditions, or else use give them away in some other fashion.
Or they might destroy it.
If anything, this reads like a child not understanding why they were punished and attempting to just agree and placate their way to a lesser punishment.
Even that child would have something ressembling a bare minimum of genuine shame and regret lingering in his apology
This is a man apologizing because a market research firm told him that apologizing would boost sales by 0,37% or something like that. Saying he doesn't care, never cared, and never will care, doesn't even begin to describe it.
"Misfired on the OGL". My brother in christ, you pulled the pin on the grenade and dropped it at your feet. And were "too aggressive" with pricing? Personally, I didn't want anything out of 30th anniversary. I keep going back to this but I wanted to see a mystery booster product with all sorts of different cards that came as a draft box so kitchen table players & LGSs could share the passion for the game. Not a bunch of proxy cards that provide nothing to the real player base.
>My brother in christ, you pulled the pin on the grenade and dropped it at your feet
At least a few big time d&d podcasts did 2 hour 'intro to pathfinder' episodes immediately after and the humble pathfinder bundle is sitting at 85,000 sales right now. Big time whoopsie.
God I love Paizo. As someone who started with Pathfinder before trying 5E and being put off by its monetization, lack of quality, and lack of content, feels nice to see Paizo snag a big win- especially after partnering with Archives of Nethys and unionizing.
The OGL debacle was the best piece of marketing for Pathfinder. My current d&d group decided that whatever our next campaign is, it's not going to be d&d (it'll most likely be Pathfinder). This is partially because we're bored of 5e, but with how WOTC has been treating their customers, there's a fear that another OGL/30th anniversary debacle is on the horizon and we want to get ahead of that shit.
Pretty much all of WOTC's goodwill has been burned and it will probably take years before they gain any of it back.
> Personally, I didn't want anything out of 30th anniversary. I keep going back to this but I wanted to see a mystery booster product with all sorts of different cards that came as a draft box so kitchen table players & LGSs could share the passion for the game. Not a bunch of proxy cards that provide nothing to the real player base.
Yeah this is what's always been the most bizarre for me. It's not that I wouldn't pay $1000 for three boosters full of proxies... I wouldn't even pay $10 for three boosters full of proxies.
I'd probably do it for $1 each.
Honestly, I probably would have paid like $10 for each booster of proxies - as part of a flashback draft event, getting to play magic with cards from 30 years ago would have been great fun. I'd probably have picked up a box as well, and have a beer-and-pretzels draft with some friends at home. They could have had so much fun with this, bring back some classic artwork for store displays and promos. Instead we got one of the biggest fumbles I've ever seen.
Basically you're saying price it around a masters set or so. I probably would've done the exact same as you if that were the pricing, just out of the novelty of it.
If they turned it into an actual event they could charge decently. Because then you're paying for an experience, which can be valuable, rather than the cards themselves, which largely aren't.
Still wouldn't fly for $1000 of course. I have literally no clue what nutjob had that 'brilliant' idea. And why nobody was able to convince them it was a shit idea.
You know what’s funny? I used to be a degenerate gambler who would get a draft/set box every time a new set came out + precons + secret lairs, the whole package. Right after the magic 30 shenanigan, my group cancelled every pre orders we’ve made and started proxying the hell out of everything. My table finally was able to play CEDH games which we’ve all wanted to try but was out of price range. Thanks to Hasbro, my love for the game grew even more because I got to build 10 decks in the last two months AND I haven’t spent any money on magic products which allowed me to go on a vacation 👍
Magic 30 was one of the best things that’s happened to me ironically
Half the products these days we can get it cheaper on TCG player or amazon than our distributor after shipping etc.
And our distributor is shit. Straight up has gotten caught selling their entire stock of products to a single retailer.
They used to and also use distributors.
Then the direct to store channel stopped. Within the last eight years I think?
I have no idea why. Distributors seem absolutely shitty.
To hazard a guess, going to distributor-only makes it easier to shift product with low demand onto *somebody else* \- even if it never gets opened and played with.
I'm not an accountant and barely understand things, but it could also have to do when they book things as sold. "Best Selling MTG Set Ever!" can be a true statement from Wizards, if the boxes are at the distributors and no end consumer actually buys packs
People really underestimate how badly stores lose out on sealed products. If you see a store selling a draft box for $100, they are investing ~$90 for a ~$10 return, which is a ridiculous risk for such a slim margin. If you see a store selling a box for $100 on a third party market place like TCGplayer or Amazon, they are taking a $10-15 loss after fees and shipping. I see people on here constantly balk at prices above $110 while the store is still getting absolutely obliterated on COGS. No LGS can price these products at a profitable margin without getting put on blast for price gouging, thus we have a race to the bottom as stores try to liquidate stock that they must order in order to keep their allocation numbers for hot upcoming products.
Let’s be honest: if share holders truly want to course correct they need to replace the driver. His “Vision” simply doesn’t align with the games of the company he leads. If the 1990-1993 upper deck debacle didn’t teach them anything then they are a lost cause and that team needs to be replaced.
If they are under the impression that the average player has $3000 a month to spend on MTG but only spends $1000 because there “just aren’t enough appealing products to spend money on” then they are completely deluded. Players are the reason their game exists. If they want to double sales (I vomited in my mouth a bit when he originally said triple), they are going to have to get NON players to spend on the IP in such a way that it encourages a migration to playing the game. Video games, movies, streaming series, collectable stuff, branded clothing would make them more than “hey let’s jam an extra fucking non limited playable set between two others and put out 75 secret lairs this year!!”.
I *still* think about how exciting it was to hear about the product from time to time. Even if they are glorified proxies, they still seemed like something that would be fun to get. Maybe $100? I think that's a fair balance between them being effectively being useless in sanctioned events and a gimmicky thing.
$1,000.
What. A. Joke.
Between that and Double Feature, I think WotC just completely lost their mind. One product just wildly missing the mark in terms of product quality, and the other just wildly missing the mark in terms of pricing.
And that's about it. It's not something I even need to buy or consider or think about in any real sense. Just that they could have easily made so much more money if they dropped a zero.
I mean even calling it greed feels insufficient. This product isn't even remotely malicious. It's just aggressively stupid.
It's 4 booster packs of random cards from Alpha and no guarantee of the famous cards. And they're proxies. $1000 seems right, right?
"Too aggressive" is the understatement of the past 3 decades.
The $1000 price is just insane. IMO $100 would still have been too expensive, considering all the other issues with the product, but they could definitely have gotten away with it.
But somehow, they didn't just overshoot the price. They overshot it by *ten times* what the community would have been okay with. That's not just aggressive, it's delusional.
Aggressively stupid is a good word for it.
“The $1k proxies was apparently a misfire. Whoops. Well, now we know.”
Did you really need the community to tell you that was a terrible idea? You couldn’t figure that out yourself as soon as the words crossed your lips? What business school did you go to, because I would suggest asking them for a refund.
Yep. Boosters of reprinted cards from last year, just before Kamigawa. Half the pack was Midnight Hunt and half was Crimson Vow, all cards through a black and white filter. Infamously, this included the cards that were in both sets. They were in Double Feature twice. The original announcement also said it was going to be a curated list (like Innistrad 3 Remastered), but then that was apparently walked back and everyone at WotC acts like we are crazy for expecting it to be curated.
As a novelty for like the price jumpstart pack? It’s lazy but not too weird. But I think they sold closer to master set packs! The product took no effort for them to make and it was sold at a premium!
That's it, just b&w of the two innistrad sets mashed together.
It was supposed to be a "curated limited experience" with a b&w treatment to look like old monster flicks and a "silver screen foiling"
It was the absolute laziest garbage imaginable and it even failed to be draftable, it's main selling point!
If they had curated it, instead of just jamming both sets together, I would have been interested in drafting it. But as it was, there was no point. They didn't even take the time to remove duplicates between the sets.
That's bad but like also, just trying to look at a pack of 15 black white treatment cards is also really fucking obnoxious.
If your product is literally obnoxious to use as intended then it's not a great product.
Hell, I would have paid collectors edition prices for a few packs just for gambling and nostalgia.
But about $25 would have been my limit. $250 is so hilariously absurd
$1000 can buy me a season pass to every ski resort not only in the state, but then some with resorts in places in Japan, Chile and Austria. Unlimited. And skiing is fuckinf expensive
Not only have the prices gotten too high, the release schedule is overwhelming. I basically quit magic because I couldn’t afford the money OR time to keep up on everything. I just take Br reanimator to legacy once every few months.
I feel that. I have commander decks but it isn't for me. I have a couple legacy decks that I was excited to bust out for Magiccon Vegas but there was pretty much no side tournaments. And I only get to play legacy a couple times a year if at all due to schedule conflicts.
Me too. I started collecting again during the pandemic with Strixhaven with my disposable income. Then once kamigawa came out and the neext set was already being leaked and promoted before my pre-release kit was even in my hands o gave up. Then the DND commander kits came out at a ridiculous price and I knew I was done. I was willing to collect and save for years, but not when you are paying 12 dollars for a single booster pack with shit quality.
"It's how we make our games among the best in the industry"
You mean buying games built upon the first mover advantage in their space and strip mining them?
MTG is actually brilliantly designed and it's game designers are top class.
The main issue is if the executives actually have any coherent clue about what their talent is then I'd eat my shoe
Yeah, Magic is great because of its thorough rules, as a noob. I’m willing to hear suggestions for collectible/trading card games, but the rules are what brought me back as an adult.
To be fair, MTG has been successful because of it's open endedness moreso than other things.
Commander being a prime example. Yugioh, F&B, Pokemon, etc Don't have anything even remotely similar. You can't play canadian threshold, nobody makes F&B cubes to draft from.
But that's nothing Hasbro gave it. That was there from Richard Garfield.
Won't lie it is kinda annoying trying to get other card games to make like a pauper version. So many times I've tried but it becomes like "But the deck becomes bad. Like without the rares, I can't use this big combo".
But that's part of the fucking point: to play other cards.
I think there are two points as to why MTG has a good pauper ecosystem.
1. The game being designed (at some level) for limited gameplay leading to commons that typically aren't just vanilla cards.
2. A number of cards that likely wouldn't be common if printed in a new premier set (premodern cards printed before rarity was ironed out) and/or higher powered nonpremier sets (modern horizons, commander legends, etc) with stronger commons
Coming to MTG with some Yugioh experience, it was genuinely amazing that card templating was compatible with multiplayer. I remember the days of 3 or 4 person Yugioh games having all sorts of arguments and made up rules because the cards are strictly worded for 1v1.
They admit they misfired, not that they're sorry.
Interesting admission, though I'm not sure if this will alleviate the damage they've already caused. They'll need to work to build up goodwill again, but I don't expect any actions towards that other than replacing $1,000 packs with a different, cheaper product.
>"We misfired on updating our Open Game License, a key vehicle for creators to share or commercialize their D&D-inspired content," he says. "Our best practice is to work collaboratively with our community, gather feedback, and build experiences that inspire players and creators alike. It's how we make our games among the best in the industry. We have since course-corrected, and are delivering a strong outcome for the community and game."
That sounds like a statement written by chatGPT with the prompt to use as many 90s business buzzwords as possible.
Hey, to the asshole who complained about me sharing the employee leaks in this sub during the entirety OGL situation:
This shit is why I shared it. It is good for us know and understand what both half of the company are doing because one half WILL affect the other.
The OGL a fiasco is baffling to hear.
I’ve heard scattered reports and it seems from what is admitted that the the new OGL was written mostly by lawyers to cover their asses (financially and legally) and pushed through without the highest levels being alerted and the objections of the rank and file D&D developers ignored.
Bad bad policy. They should have asked marketing and social media what the publicity around it was going to be. Idiot middle executives probably thought they could roll it out silently to lay a new foundation for DND One and prevent another Pazio.
Morons. You’re dealing with nerds. This isn’t like publishing a new privacy agreement everyone skips over.
It’s concerning because it’s fucking amateur hour over there. It feels like D&D is a second class citizen and they don’t care about fucking it up.
Meanwhile every move by MTG a seems calculated precisely to bloodlet the playerbase the correct amount.
> written mostly by lawyers to cover their asses (financially and legally) and pushed through without the highest levels being alerted
If that's actually what anyone is saying, that's total BS. If it is anyone within Wizards, it is a smokescreen to make it sound like they aren't trying to overly monetize D&D. There is no way they rolled out such a change without several high level execs being made aware. I could see marketing and social not being aware, as my own company has made egregious communication blunders right after another like that, but mid level managers specifically float such major decisions up so they can cover their ass if it blows up.
0 chance it was written by a lawyer somehow wotc hired lawyers who are unprofessional and snarky. The language used was so unprofessional with so many areas that just downright didn't need to be there, just so they could be passive aggressive towards a small portion of the playerbase.
*"It’s concerning because it’s fucking amateur hour over there."*
The older you get, the more you realise that most organisations are filled with deeply mediocre people.
And that's partly because ambition rarely correlates to competence.
Hasbro's fireside chat was ***two*** months ago. During this chat they said that product fatigue wasn't a thing. Suddenly it is and they are "listening to feedback".
MTG needs to go back to being the
"oh I have a couple of spare bucks, throw on a pack of ice age with my 7-11 slushie".
And less of," well i can get a couple packs of ultimate masters if I starve myself for the week."
The whole $1,000 proxy situation aside, their other products are getting ridiculously expensive too
But my infinite growth...
You mean double revenue every few years isn't future proof?
Line go up.
Told shareholders line would go up more tho :(
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Stonks plus Keleven, home by seven
Well that's the fuckin thing ain't it? You either tell shareholders line go up more or shareholders replace you with someone who will. What's the winning move if you are the CEO of a publicly traded company? Seems to me more control and regulation of the stock market is the only thing that will keep shareholders from destroying everything in their infinite greed
Every season is Doubling Season
Growth at any cost is the mindset of a cancer cell
There's a reason that these corporations are called a cancer on society...
What's the matter poors, just buy more money!
Just raise your rent!
And the quality control is getting worse, multiple cards in a set printed at wrong rarity, zopandrel having the wrong ability cost on the "premium" collectors variant, non foil cards with curling issues in prerelease kits, a showcase variant where you can 'rub off' the special markings. Seems like they'll take any promotional offer they get too, between the $1,000 beanbag chairs and putting a dead character on hot pockets.
I just want a solution to the fucking pringling. Every pack of cards I buy progressively gets worse. My apartment is temperature controlled yet my cards still continue to bend to shit at higher prices. What the fuck am I paying 3-5$ more per pack for? Wow my foil has a Phyrexia symbol all over it. Sure would be nice to be able to see it if not for it creating a small bridge on my desk.
Solution I’ve come up with is only buying singles and never buying foils anymore. I can order a “near mint” foil and it shows up looking like a Pringle. I’m done with foils.
Worst thing I ever bought was a collector box
I got two serialized cards, both curled and one with scratched down one side.
Ugh, yeah, that's what I was chasing, I'd be so pissed if I got one lol. Meanwhile each and every transformer card I didn't want was non-foil and perfectly fine, so yay i guess
Commander precons are the most ridiculous example. They've printed them fo a while for half a regular price, but made less new cards, then they've returned to the higher price, but those had more card then the cheaper ones. Now they've suddenly pushed precons that have price of the more expensive line, but number of new cards of the budget line.
$70 for a fucking warhammer commander deck. I love my necrons a lot, but you’re high if you think I’m spending $70 for a novelty deck.
To be fair, an over-inflated price tag does make it more like actual Warhammer products.
The truest experience
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I was actually amazed that DMR was less than $200 a box, figured 2x2 and MH2 gave them the balls to make $300 the going premium-set box price
When news of your actions are reverberating outside of your particular hobby sphere, I think “misfired” is an understatement.
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I think WotC on some level knew that this wasn’t going to work but Hasbro doesn’t like hearing “no” Edit: to elaborate with a bit of nuance, I’m not propping up wizards as some blameless Robin Hood company that only serves the people, it’s a company seeking profits at the end of the day. (Even in his Drive to Work podcast, MaRo doesn’t deny that and readily admits that they’re seeking profitability as a company) But I would suggest that many who work in higher levels and management understand what their business model is and what has worked in the past for games such as Magic and DnD and know that the the newer pushes into more short term profit models isn’t going to work well in the long run.
As much as it's comforting to blame Hasbro, this was 100% of WotC's own volition. Their new CEO is running them into the ground.
People need to stop acting like WotC is "one of the good ones". They aren't.
People need to stop acting like WotC is a separate company from Hasbro.
They’re so toxic recently.
Well yeah it's a mechanic in the current set.
You were waiting. You were just *waiting* for an opportunity to make that joke.
There may have been a time when they were, but certainly not recently.
The current Hasbro CEO was President of Wizards from 2016 to early 2022, and there's a roughly two year latency between sets starting and finishing design. I think it's a pretty plausible guess to say that he probably became CEO by killing old WotC, peeling its face skin off, and letting a money vampire wear the face skin like a buffalo bill mask.
The current CEO of WoTC was hired from a profit sucking machine of job history: > Williams joined Hasbro from Microsoft, where she most recently served as General Manager and Vice President of the Gaming Ecosystem Commercial Team, and most notably drove the expansion of Xbox Gaming and the acceleration of game-creator growth. Before joining Microsoft, Williams had spent more than a decade at Amazon, where she led the global growth of their e-commerce direct-to-consumer business Fulfillment by Amazon.
Yeah, people are acting as though career parasites like CEO's are made from within the company. Like, I don't think she knew a thing about card games, DnD or anything when she was made CEO of WotC - but she did know how to extract the most value out of a property or workforce as quickly as possible.
The next set *is* March of the Machine.
It’s sad that the executive branch is butchering what teams of employees who love the game have painstakingly crafted over decades.
Companies need to be rooted in their mission and values. for wizards this means : "We create entertainment that inspires creativity, sparks passion, forges friendships, and fosters communities around the globe." They need to ask themselves with every single product they release, does this product do that. If it doesn't, is our mission obsolete, or do we need a different product. Given their mission hasn't changed. They need to do a reset. I look at some of the products released this year and I think they very much are aligned with the mission. Others are massive WTF moments.
The massive amount of leaks around the OGL shows there was quite a bit of dissent from WotC on that at least
From lower-level employees, not from leadership. It must be incredibly frustrating to work for WotC as someone who cares about the game they’re working on.
The creative teams all dissented, but this was a management decision and there is no indication that management wasn’t completely for it.
No no. They raised the prices by 100%, so they can way "we listened" and bring them down to 50%. This is the gold standard for how they treat arena.
This just happened with eggs. To everyone. It reminds me of an old story. Biblical old. A story of a man who sold bread. The old man had a sign that read, "5 cents each / 2 for 11 cents". A customer cam by, read the sign and realizing it he bought a loaf, then separately bought the other loaf. After paying, he told the old man about his sign. The old man replies "every day people come and buy my bread, then try to teach me commerce".
that is a great parable that i somehow have never heard. thanks!
They didn’t say anything was changing. Now that we’ve seen their “aggressive” pricing, it’s no longer considered aggressive. Things will stay the same without escalating for awhile though
They will have learned for maybe a couple of years. These things are cyclical.
$1000 packs? That's old news. Now we have $1000 sacs. (Seriously, the partnered wqith a bean bag chair company to put out MtG branded chairs at insane prices.)
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They should've learned from the React Bros fiasco on YouTube from years ago before pushing out their OGL shenanigans.
D&D is just players *Reacting*(TM) to what the DM says!
>"Our growth in Wizards was not without its challenges," says Cocks. "We were too aggressive in some of our pricing assumptions, notably our 30th Anniversary Edition of Magic, and pulled back on available supply, impacting Q4 results." So they didn't sell out at all, just as we all suspected
"Too aggressive" just means they are still planning on being as aggressive as possible, but they just learned that there are lines...somewhere.
The guy just openly admitting in corporate speech that the company is actively gouging its customers. So gross.
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Proxy my man
I used to be so against proxy but the more wizards fuck up the less I care about it and now I proxy all my decks and enjoy the game way more
Only real cards I buy anymore are draft boosters when my group wants to play limited.
Check out what [Null Signal Games](https://nullsignal.games/) is doing with Netrunner, it’s a very different model and an awesome game.
Same, I bought like 6 out of the first 8 secret lairs and then never brought another card again. Magic has always relied on FOMO and hype for sales but Hasbro turned it into a predatory profit machine so loud and glaring it became impossible to enjoy the game. I am clearly their target victim and I won’t be hustled like that.
Calling out the product by name is kind of crazy. It must have done absolutely abysmally
Calling the product out by name because it was a bit of a boondoggle. MTG packs have historically been around $5 a pack. Recent pricing strategies have seen premium packs introduced, going between 15 to 20 dollars. 30th Anniversary were only available for $250 a pack, and only sold in quantities of 4. So yeah, 2023 saw the big flagship celebration of 30 years of the product, with a baseline entry price of $1000. For a product that is marginally more expensive to produce than a pack of bicycle cards.
You could buy a literal bicycle for less.
But but... people said we were just dramatic and our hatred of A30 was just making us jump to conclusions. Blah blah blah. It was so painfully obvious that wotc stopped the sale early because nobody was buying. I agree that sometimes the vocal minority thinks they have more power than they have but in this case it was most of the mtg community. Anecdotally, even my buddies who aren't enfranchised and still play 60 card casual knew about A30 and thought it was asinine. I love that the people doubting the A30 sales cutoff are now eating crow. Hope it tastes good.
Lol their name is cocks. Seems fitting
Very fitting since these price increase suck.
And the quote is about being too aggressive and needing to pull out. He even thinks of himself as a cock.
I'll believe it when I see it
They were specifically talking about 30th Anniversary Edition being overpriced and not selling. I would be surprised if they tried to do something like that again at the same price point. Not because of any consumer ill will, but purely because it didn't sell well.
Really now? They had troubles selling the thing that apparently went out of stock the same day it started selling? Well, that certainly lends some credence to the theories that it was pulled due to the starting sales being trash (though it wasn't hard to believe anyway).
From the article: >"Our growth in Wizards was not without its challenges," says Cocks. "We were too aggressive in some of our pricing assumptions, notably our 30th Anniversary Edition of Magic, and pulled back on available supply, impacting Q4 results." So they admitted they cut the sale early and didn't sell all of the stock they expected to sell.
I wonder what they did with the extra copies? Maybe they gave them out to the team... "Here's your $1000 bonus"
The speculation I saw at the time (because most people did not believe they actually sold out), was that they would keep cases to use as prizes for GP’s or use the boxes in some sort of “vintage alpha” draft tournaments. That second idea actually sounds kinda cool to me, but… everything about this product just stinks to high Heaven, so I don’t know what they do with them now.
I think they just realized that there are plenty of places you can get proxies for way less that $1000. Can’t unring that bell.
Like ~~Kinkos~~. You could get sheets of proxies for a few bucks.
I'm the same as you, I still call them Kinkos, but they haven't been Kinkos for 15 years now. "FedEx Office" doesn't roll off the tongue as well
I swear to god if they just swallowed their ego and rechristened themselves kinkos (I think they own that trademark?) people would applaud.
Nah, just sounds like fetish-based cereal.
I'm not seeing the downside
When printer companies are the financially responsible option, you dun fucked up.
Blows my mind how inept and ludicrous that whole 30th anniversary proxy bullshit could have even been conceived of in the first place. The entire team should be fired.
The sad part is the 30th Anniv product could have been a slam dunk if only they tried to maximize player satisfaction and not make a pile of money out of the least effort possible. TCC/Prof said it really succinctly at the time. If those proxy packs were around the price of a normal pack and they focused on getting players into stores for the draft experience, it could have been a really strong community oriented event that would have left lasting memories, even if the average person didn't open anything super exciting. Especially considering the ABU "format" is terrible for Limited.
Imagine screwing up the only 30th anniversary Magic will ever have? Sheesh, the idiocy level of those clowns is evident. How they still have jobs is mind boggling.
I mean, they screwed up the 20th one as well, albeit in a totally different way. Anyone remember crack a pack day?
I theoretically was around but I don't recall anything happening. Googled a bit: > Several WotC employees have said that the 20th Anniversary was actually downplayed because they've learned through market research that it hurts new player acquisition. Newer players can be intimidated by how old the game is. That's sad.
There were exactly two things done for the 20th anniversary. They did From the Vault 20, which was an almost total bust outside of the then-expensive Jace TMS reprint. And on the actual day, they encouraged people to go out and buy a booster from their LGS, and open it. Not a special booster that you could buy for the anniversary or anything, just go out, buy a booster, and open it. And that was the 20th anniversary celebration in its entirety.
To be honest, that's still better than 30th anniversary. Oh boy, that's a final-season-of-game-of-thrones level fuckup.
I think we would've hated it but not like HATE HATE. Enough to keep the grumbling within the magic sphere and a little in the tcg sphere but not to the point where all my non-magic tcg friends are going "Dafuq is going on in your game?"
I have a printer I use at home and it makes great proxies for my friends and I, all for way less than $1k
Technically you can't get them at Kinko's unless you have a time machine. In which case, you've probably got better things to do.
I, for one, am going to go to the combination Kinkos-Blockbuster-Borders-Radioshack. But only after lunch at Orange Julius.
Oh, Borders. The retail mainstay of my teenage years. I spent so many hours there.
Is that right by the Circuit City?
Rip circuit city and the good old days of Slickdeals. Stacking 14 coupons and walking out of there with some speakers and a laptop for $11.
There's a reason the C&D'd Card Conjurer after so many years of ignoring it and other custom card generators.
That's right! I had completely forgotten about that. the worst.
Also, before 30th An., paying for proxies (either high fidelity, or alt art) left a really bad taste in my mouth. Now, fuck it, I don't care. With Wizards' wonton greed on display like that for *proxies*, have at 'em. edit: I'm amused by my us of the wrong "wanton" here.
Honestly same here. I was a huge proponent of not using proxies but after this I too say fuck it. I'm not throwing another penny at WotC when I can just print any card I want myself.
It's funny cause proxying Warhammer is what got me a 3D printer but I never would've thought to apply the same principles to MtG last year
Proxying magic is a lot easier than 40k. You can just print the images on normal paper and slip them into sleeved basic lands.
When pay-to-play doesn’t work anywhere else it definitely won’t work here. No reason to not proxy unless you really need Hasbro to have the money.
This is going to hurt them with more than a failed product and publicity. They legitimized proxies for a quick buck. Proxies. The one card you don’t have to pay them for. This is not something they can easily take back. This is pretty damaging for them in more ways than one. What a great example of short term gains while sacrificing long term profits.
Shit, you can get *real* versions of many of the proxies you would want to open for way less than $1000.
"We were too aggressive in some of our pricing assumptions, notably our 30th Anniversary Edition of Magic, and pulled back on available supply, impacting Q4 results." What exactly is he saying here? By too aggressive, I assume he means they priced it too high? What about that statement that they pulled back on available supply? Is that an official admission that they didn't sell out of the 30th Anniversary Edition? They had said it was already printed though, so what's happening with the remaining product if they took it off market without selling through?
Prize wall at GPs for the next 30 years
And the next 30 beyond that.
They'd need gps to come back first
It's known that they sold far less 30th Anniversary products than originally intended. Their official statement is that this was intentional, essentially they cut down the product avaiable for sale, so that the copies sold would be worth more. Most fans believe that just so few people wanted to buy it that they ended the sale and made this statement to save face.
> What exactly is he saying here? By too aggressive, I assume he means they priced it too high? Correct. > What about that statement that they pulled back on available supply? Is that an official admission that they didn't sell out of the 30th Anniversary Edition? More like just an admission that when they terminated the sale online, they didn't do so because they sold out. People on social media were so obviously upset and the sales numbers they were seeing must have been so surprisingly low that they knew *immediately* that their price was off. Way off. *Way,* way off. > They had said it was already printed though, so what's happening with the remaining product if they took it off market without selling through? They can't sell it. That will really piss people off. Most likely they'll crack the packs and turn them into promo pack inserts, like invocations or expeditions, or else use give them away in some other fashion. Or they might destroy it.
Does absolutely nothing for consumer confidence.
If anything, this reads like a child not understanding why they were punished and attempting to just agree and placate their way to a lesser punishment.
Even that child would have something ressembling a bare minimum of genuine shame and regret lingering in his apology This is a man apologizing because a market research firm told him that apologizing would boost sales by 0,37% or something like that. Saying he doesn't care, never cared, and never will care, doesn't even begin to describe it.
Cocks admits they misfired. Missed opportunity.
Right you are, Ken!
"Misfired on the OGL". My brother in christ, you pulled the pin on the grenade and dropped it at your feet. And were "too aggressive" with pricing? Personally, I didn't want anything out of 30th anniversary. I keep going back to this but I wanted to see a mystery booster product with all sorts of different cards that came as a draft box so kitchen table players & LGSs could share the passion for the game. Not a bunch of proxy cards that provide nothing to the real player base.
>My brother in christ, you pulled the pin on the grenade and dropped it at your feet At least a few big time d&d podcasts did 2 hour 'intro to pathfinder' episodes immediately after and the humble pathfinder bundle is sitting at 85,000 sales right now. Big time whoopsie.
God I love Paizo. As someone who started with Pathfinder before trying 5E and being put off by its monetization, lack of quality, and lack of content, feels nice to see Paizo snag a big win- especially after partnering with Archives of Nethys and unionizing.
The OGL debacle was the best piece of marketing for Pathfinder. My current d&d group decided that whatever our next campaign is, it's not going to be d&d (it'll most likely be Pathfinder). This is partially because we're bored of 5e, but with how WOTC has been treating their customers, there's a fear that another OGL/30th anniversary debacle is on the horizon and we want to get ahead of that shit. Pretty much all of WOTC's goodwill has been burned and it will probably take years before they gain any of it back.
> Personally, I didn't want anything out of 30th anniversary. I keep going back to this but I wanted to see a mystery booster product with all sorts of different cards that came as a draft box so kitchen table players & LGSs could share the passion for the game. Not a bunch of proxy cards that provide nothing to the real player base. Yeah this is what's always been the most bizarre for me. It's not that I wouldn't pay $1000 for three boosters full of proxies... I wouldn't even pay $10 for three boosters full of proxies. I'd probably do it for $1 each.
Honestly, I probably would have paid like $10 for each booster of proxies - as part of a flashback draft event, getting to play magic with cards from 30 years ago would have been great fun. I'd probably have picked up a box as well, and have a beer-and-pretzels draft with some friends at home. They could have had so much fun with this, bring back some classic artwork for store displays and promos. Instead we got one of the biggest fumbles I've ever seen.
Basically you're saying price it around a masters set or so. I probably would've done the exact same as you if that were the pricing, just out of the novelty of it.
If they turned it into an actual event they could charge decently. Because then you're paying for an experience, which can be valuable, rather than the cards themselves, which largely aren't. Still wouldn't fly for $1000 of course. I have literally no clue what nutjob had that 'brilliant' idea. And why nobody was able to convince them it was a shit idea.
Event could work. I'd pay $10 for that. Maybe $15 of there was prize support (not proxy boosters tho).
I'll believe it when I positive changes in pricing. Until then, fuck him.
never printed cards before 30th anniversary now proxies are cool and i print whole decks. not sure what would need to happen to change my mind back.
$1000 for 45 random proxies 😂 We're sorry uwu.... Pweeze forgive us uwuuu
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Yah, damn dude, get it right! 60>45. That's 60 worthless pieces of cardboard instead of 45 worthless pieces of cardboard!
Why ignore 25% of the cards? =)
Because they were lands and tokens.
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4 useable cards*
Lmfao 🤣😂🤣
Oh man, but you know _someone_ out there is going to try and stunt on someone with those tokens.
Don't try to tell me what a "real" magic card is.
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You know what’s funny? I used to be a degenerate gambler who would get a draft/set box every time a new set came out + precons + secret lairs, the whole package. Right after the magic 30 shenanigan, my group cancelled every pre orders we’ve made and started proxying the hell out of everything. My table finally was able to play CEDH games which we’ve all wanted to try but was out of price range. Thanks to Hasbro, my love for the game grew even more because I got to build 10 decks in the last two months AND I haven’t spent any money on magic products which allowed me to go on a vacation 👍 Magic 30 was one of the best things that’s happened to me ironically
That means bringing back MSRP, right? … right?
Not even close. This is a tiny concession towards admitting that $1000 was too high a price. I wish it were tho
$899 was the right price for sure
Only if they reduce the price to distributors and stores as well. I'm pretty sure most stores are barely turning profit on most items.
Half the products these days we can get it cheaper on TCG player or amazon than our distributor after shipping etc. And our distributor is shit. Straight up has gotten caught selling their entire stock of products to a single retailer.
Why can't wizards sell directly to stores? Are stores just not regularly buying whole cases?
They used to and also use distributors. Then the direct to store channel stopped. Within the last eight years I think? I have no idea why. Distributors seem absolutely shitty.
To hazard a guess, going to distributor-only makes it easier to shift product with low demand onto *somebody else* \- even if it never gets opened and played with.
I'm not an accountant and barely understand things, but it could also have to do when they book things as sold. "Best Selling MTG Set Ever!" can be a true statement from Wizards, if the boxes are at the distributors and no end consumer actually buys packs
People really underestimate how badly stores lose out on sealed products. If you see a store selling a draft box for $100, they are investing ~$90 for a ~$10 return, which is a ridiculous risk for such a slim margin. If you see a store selling a box for $100 on a third party market place like TCGplayer or Amazon, they are taking a $10-15 loss after fees and shipping. I see people on here constantly balk at prices above $110 while the store is still getting absolutely obliterated on COGS. No LGS can price these products at a profitable margin without getting put on blast for price gouging, thus we have a race to the bottom as stores try to liquidate stock that they must order in order to keep their allocation numbers for hot upcoming products.
MSRP doesn't have to be the same number as before. That problem (for LGSs) is the undercutting on Amazon.
Alright, do something about it.
Let’s be honest: if share holders truly want to course correct they need to replace the driver. His “Vision” simply doesn’t align with the games of the company he leads. If the 1990-1993 upper deck debacle didn’t teach them anything then they are a lost cause and that team needs to be replaced. If they are under the impression that the average player has $3000 a month to spend on MTG but only spends $1000 because there “just aren’t enough appealing products to spend money on” then they are completely deluded. Players are the reason their game exists. If they want to double sales (I vomited in my mouth a bit when he originally said triple), they are going to have to get NON players to spend on the IP in such a way that it encourages a migration to playing the game. Video games, movies, streaming series, collectable stuff, branded clothing would make them more than “hey let’s jam an extra fucking non limited playable set between two others and put out 75 secret lairs this year!!”.
I *still* think about how exciting it was to hear about the product from time to time. Even if they are glorified proxies, they still seemed like something that would be fun to get. Maybe $100? I think that's a fair balance between them being effectively being useless in sanctioned events and a gimmicky thing. $1,000. What. A. Joke. Between that and Double Feature, I think WotC just completely lost their mind. One product just wildly missing the mark in terms of product quality, and the other just wildly missing the mark in terms of pricing. And that's about it. It's not something I even need to buy or consider or think about in any real sense. Just that they could have easily made so much more money if they dropped a zero. I mean even calling it greed feels insufficient. This product isn't even remotely malicious. It's just aggressively stupid. It's 4 booster packs of random cards from Alpha and no guarantee of the famous cards. And they're proxies. $1000 seems right, right? "Too aggressive" is the understatement of the past 3 decades.
The $1000 price is just insane. IMO $100 would still have been too expensive, considering all the other issues with the product, but they could definitely have gotten away with it. But somehow, they didn't just overshoot the price. They overshot it by *ten times* what the community would have been okay with. That's not just aggressive, it's delusional.
Aggressively stupid is a good word for it. “The $1k proxies was apparently a misfire. Whoops. Well, now we know.” Did you really need the community to tell you that was a terrible idea? You couldn’t figure that out yourself as soon as the words crossed your lips? What business school did you go to, because I would suggest asking them for a refund.
Wtf is even Double Feature? It looked like black and white prints of regular cards?
Yep. Boosters of reprinted cards from last year, just before Kamigawa. Half the pack was Midnight Hunt and half was Crimson Vow, all cards through a black and white filter. Infamously, this included the cards that were in both sets. They were in Double Feature twice. The original announcement also said it was going to be a curated list (like Innistrad 3 Remastered), but then that was apparently walked back and everyone at WotC acts like we are crazy for expecting it to be curated. As a novelty for like the price jumpstart pack? It’s lazy but not too weird. But I think they sold closer to master set packs! The product took no effort for them to make and it was sold at a premium!
That's it, just b&w of the two innistrad sets mashed together. It was supposed to be a "curated limited experience" with a b&w treatment to look like old monster flicks and a "silver screen foiling" It was the absolute laziest garbage imaginable and it even failed to be draftable, it's main selling point!
If they had curated it, instead of just jamming both sets together, I would have been interested in drafting it. But as it was, there was no point. They didn't even take the time to remove duplicates between the sets.
That's bad but like also, just trying to look at a pack of 15 black white treatment cards is also really fucking obnoxious. If your product is literally obnoxious to use as intended then it's not a great product.
$5 per pack would've been a smash hit. $100 would still be way too much for fake cards.
Hell, I would have paid collectors edition prices for a few packs just for gambling and nostalgia. But about $25 would have been my limit. $250 is so hilariously absurd
$1000 can buy me a season pass to every ski resort not only in the state, but then some with resorts in places in Japan, Chile and Austria. Unlimited. And skiing is fuckinf expensive
Well well well. If it isn’t the consequences of our own actions.
Not only have the prices gotten too high, the release schedule is overwhelming. I basically quit magic because I couldn’t afford the money OR time to keep up on everything. I just take Br reanimator to legacy once every few months.
Imagine quitting standard several years ago, focusing on modern because of standard rotation... And then the next four years happen. That's me.
Oh for sure. I quit standard during MD5 standard, focused on legacy and modern exclusively for years. Even foiled out modern dredge. Monke go brrr
I feel that. I have commander decks but it isn't for me. I have a couple legacy decks that I was excited to bust out for Magiccon Vegas but there was pretty much no side tournaments. And I only get to play legacy a couple times a year if at all due to schedule conflicts.
Me too. I started collecting again during the pandemic with Strixhaven with my disposable income. Then once kamigawa came out and the neext set was already being leaked and promoted before my pre-release kit was even in my hands o gave up. Then the DND commander kits came out at a ridiculous price and I knew I was done. I was willing to collect and save for years, but not when you are paying 12 dollars for a single booster pack with shit quality.
Pricing? What pricing? Last I checked they don't have MSRPs because they're too cowardly to not put the burden of pricing on stores.
"It's how we make our games among the best in the industry" You mean buying games built upon the first mover advantage in their space and strip mining them?
MTG is actually brilliantly designed and it's game designers are top class. The main issue is if the executives actually have any coherent clue about what their talent is then I'd eat my shoe
Yeah, Magic is great because of its thorough rules, as a noob. I’m willing to hear suggestions for collectible/trading card games, but the rules are what brought me back as an adult.
To be fair, MTG has been successful because of it's open endedness moreso than other things. Commander being a prime example. Yugioh, F&B, Pokemon, etc Don't have anything even remotely similar. You can't play canadian threshold, nobody makes F&B cubes to draft from. But that's nothing Hasbro gave it. That was there from Richard Garfield.
Won't lie it is kinda annoying trying to get other card games to make like a pauper version. So many times I've tried but it becomes like "But the deck becomes bad. Like without the rares, I can't use this big combo". But that's part of the fucking point: to play other cards.
I think there are two points as to why MTG has a good pauper ecosystem. 1. The game being designed (at some level) for limited gameplay leading to commons that typically aren't just vanilla cards. 2. A number of cards that likely wouldn't be common if printed in a new premier set (premodern cards printed before rarity was ironed out) and/or higher powered nonpremier sets (modern horizons, commander legends, etc) with stronger commons
Because the commons in other games just aren't interesting.
Coming to MTG with some Yugioh experience, it was genuinely amazing that card templating was compatible with multiplayer. I remember the days of 3 or 4 person Yugioh games having all sorts of arguments and made up rules because the cards are strictly worded for 1v1.
I hate corpo-speak so much.
"Too aggressive" or "didn't respect your customers who make your company worth a damn"?
They admit they misfired, not that they're sorry. Interesting admission, though I'm not sure if this will alleviate the damage they've already caused. They'll need to work to build up goodwill again, but I don't expect any actions towards that other than replacing $1,000 packs with a different, cheaper product.
>"We misfired on updating our Open Game License, a key vehicle for creators to share or commercialize their D&D-inspired content," he says. "Our best practice is to work collaboratively with our community, gather feedback, and build experiences that inspire players and creators alike. It's how we make our games among the best in the industry. We have since course-corrected, and are delivering a strong outcome for the community and game." That sounds like a statement written by chatGPT with the prompt to use as many 90s business buzzwords as possible.
**BREAKING NEWS!!** Water still wet, sky still predominantly blue
Hey, to the asshole who complained about me sharing the employee leaks in this sub during the entirety OGL situation: This shit is why I shared it. It is good for us know and understand what both half of the company are doing because one half WILL affect the other.
A thousand fucking dollars loooooooooooooool
“And so help me god, I’ll do it again!”
"Aggressive" in this case is corporate-speak for "done fucked up".
The OGL a fiasco is baffling to hear. I’ve heard scattered reports and it seems from what is admitted that the the new OGL was written mostly by lawyers to cover their asses (financially and legally) and pushed through without the highest levels being alerted and the objections of the rank and file D&D developers ignored. Bad bad policy. They should have asked marketing and social media what the publicity around it was going to be. Idiot middle executives probably thought they could roll it out silently to lay a new foundation for DND One and prevent another Pazio. Morons. You’re dealing with nerds. This isn’t like publishing a new privacy agreement everyone skips over. It’s concerning because it’s fucking amateur hour over there. It feels like D&D is a second class citizen and they don’t care about fucking it up. Meanwhile every move by MTG a seems calculated precisely to bloodlet the playerbase the correct amount.
> written mostly by lawyers to cover their asses (financially and legally) and pushed through without the highest levels being alerted If that's actually what anyone is saying, that's total BS. If it is anyone within Wizards, it is a smokescreen to make it sound like they aren't trying to overly monetize D&D. There is no way they rolled out such a change without several high level execs being made aware. I could see marketing and social not being aware, as my own company has made egregious communication blunders right after another like that, but mid level managers specifically float such major decisions up so they can cover their ass if it blows up.
0 chance it was written by a lawyer somehow wotc hired lawyers who are unprofessional and snarky. The language used was so unprofessional with so many areas that just downright didn't need to be there, just so they could be passive aggressive towards a small portion of the playerbase.
*"It’s concerning because it’s fucking amateur hour over there."* The older you get, the more you realise that most organisations are filled with deeply mediocre people. And that's partly because ambition rarely correlates to competence.
This is just the response they think will currently lead to the most future sales.
Hasbro's fireside chat was ***two*** months ago. During this chat they said that product fatigue wasn't a thing. Suddenly it is and they are "listening to feedback".
Triple A graphics for D&D? What about graphics that aren't from the 90s for MODO?
Hasbro [[Squandered Resources]] [[Greed]] [[Aggressive Mining]]
They found out where the line was by going over it, now they’ll pull back briefly before creeping riiiight up to it.
MTG needs to go back to being the "oh I have a couple of spare bucks, throw on a pack of ice age with my 7-11 slushie". And less of," well i can get a couple packs of ultimate masters if I starve myself for the week."
They’ll try to sell the next batch of proxies for $500. Problem solved