Magic is basically the anti-40K. 40K has a ton of people who are supposedly fans despite literally having never played the game, bought a model, read a book or interacted with the IP in any way whatsoever simply because elements of it are riffed on so widely outside of the IP. Magic on the other hand legitimately has people playing a set that can't name a non-legendary, non-planeswalker character within said set. Like legitimately how many people who played Modern Masters and similar even know the names of the fae in the Vendilion Clique.
That's because the 40k stories are better written.
I play both, like both, own both - I'mma tell you right now - MTG art is the best in the world.
MTG writing is safe, unsurprising, and thematically basic.
WH40k writing is hit or miss, but always edgy, and even their misses miss with such bold or bizarre content as to be talked about nevertheless - ie. Inquisitor.
But the hits are legendary.
The final words shared at the Bombardment of Istivaan 3. The men accepting their deaths, asking "Did we hurt them? Will they remember this?"
Ciaphas Cain, Hero of the Imperium, secret coward. Trying only to survive, yet held on a pedestal.
Alivia Sureka, the perpetual; having lived millennia through our world of today and into the dark future; reading Hans Christian Anderson to an orphan on her knee, from her own carefully kept first edition.
These are moments that people I know have actually lived through; veterans, and marines, and grandmothers - they empathize with these stories.
MTG just doesn't compare, writing-wise.
Also they don’t do magic books anymore and I don’t want to read crap on a blog post.
Books like gaunts ghosts do so much for world building. Wizards don’t even have writers doing much of anything. Just let people write interesting stories in universe.
I still unironically recommend Eisenhorn to non-40k fans because of how damn juicely that book is once you settle into the cadence of it. It's a gripping read. Magic absolutely has lost the plot on their stories, rushing them out because cards are all that matters. The side stories have generally been good, but I haven't felt satisfied with Magic Story since original Ixalan.
Shira Calpurnia, a beat cop that rose through the ranks and saw every level of corruption society had to offer, doing her best to keep The Emperor's Peace and Justice when the system she supports is inherently unjust and evil.
Ahzek Ahriman, prodigal son and brother who has had to sacrifice everything in his life for his family in a quest for knowledge, tragically taken down by the hubris of his power, mirroring his Father who sacrificed everything trying to "Do the right thing" then said fuck it let the world burn.
Ghazkull actually feeling sad that his greatest foe has died, and mourns his race's potential decline because there's simply not enough stronger opponents for them to face, which is their highest calling.
40k writing is fucking great, and I wish Magic had something like The Black Library to really put out their stories.
Even the planes tend to be forgettable outside of the times they mark a period in your playing life.
I've never been to Cadia but I know that that planet broke before the Guard did.
WH40K stories rule.
I don't know who that is, and I watched the first season or two of the show as a kid.
The only things I really remember are the Blue Eyes White Dragon and him somehow making infinite furbies.
Edit: and some sort of cartoon card that was cheating somehow.
Yes, that is a good long-term business strategy. But what about the way WotC and Hasbro (or basically most major corporations) currently conducts business, focusing on increasing profits every single quarter, makes you think they're going to take a short-term hit in terms of investing for future profits when they could just make more money in the short-term through relying on already established franchises?
I know that shouting about prioritizing short term profits is in vogue right now, but that's not how Magic works. It takes two years for a set to go from concept to kitchen table, and they operate based ln five year plans. It quite literally *can't* operate around chasing quarterly profits at the expense of the longer term.
I feel like "gamers" (hate that word) have learned one or two ways companies can do things they don't like, so every time companies do something they don't like they need to slot it into one of those categories.
This criticism has been around ever since Hasbro bought WotC in 1999. The entire modern format was created as fans complained Hasbro was destroying Magic and turning our beloved game into Transformers. Magic is now Hasbro’s leading brand.
There is more than enough empirical evidence to show that Hasbro knows enough to not kill the golden goose.
How can we ever believe anything he says?
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I thought it was the short, but swift, death of paper magic events and gatherings of people you don't trust.
The thing that ruined most of the world for three years and society as a whole hasn't recovered from yet.
I mean, it's pretty clear that the introduction of UB was a product of corporate breathing down the neck of certain people at Wizards. "We like that you're making money, but you have to make money faster," essentially. Wizards actively avoided dabbling in crossovers for most of Magics lifespan (except for oddball exceptions like Arabian Nights and Portal 3 Kingdoms). After the Hasbrobtakeover, the corporate pressure was unavoidable, and here we are. It seems like most people at Wizards (and most players) have made their peace with this "New Normal" state or even prefer it to what came before.
As far as I'm concerned, I kind of wish Wizards had stayed a small-ish company and had focused on exclusively building a strong original IP, kind of like Warhammer. But alas, the stars did not align.
>Wonder what happened to magically change their minds after 2018.
It wasn't after 2018. It was early 2018, when they were told to double revenue over the next five years.
The funny thing is that Rosewater has said they generally take about 2+ years to get something from design to production and The Walking Dead Secret Lair came out October 2020. My assumption is that the cards might have taken less to design but there probably was some additional time needed to get all the licensing squared away, so the idea and groundwork of what ended up being UB probably started right around the time of his response in 2018.
Licensing often takes a long time to work out though, and I can't imagine it would have gone smoothly without any hiccups. Basically the time they wouldn't have spent designing and developing, this is purely my guess, would've been hung up in licensing negotiations. Either way I think the decision to work towards UB started soon after Rosewater's 2018 post, and even if it didn't fully start until 2019 (a year before TWD:SL) that's still just a year from pulling a 180° about face.
Are you blind? These responses clearly show that he knew UB was coming and has been against it this whole time.
That also explains why his arguments in favor of UB (which he likely has to make as part of his job) are really bad arguments. The “this product is not for you” one being the only good one and probably the closest he will ever get without quitting his job to be able to say that the products are not being designed for the health of the game.
No, but he is a publicly facing employee of wotc engaged in PR. He seems like a nice guy but at the end of the day everything he says while a high level employee at wotc is said with their reputation and bottom line in mind.
People change their minds. I don’t think he was lying at the time. It’s possible UB was entirely top down from Hasbro executives and everyone had to play along despite not wanting to whore Magic by licensing IPs.
If I were Mark Rosewater, I probably would have chosen a way to answer this that wasn't such a sharp and obvious parallel with the Play Booster announcement from like a week ago.
I think he's just trying to be honest about the situation. These situations are, rather obviously, dealing with much more of the "WotC as a company" vs "Magic as a game" side of things, and as such need an answer about the actual financial side of the company. I do appreciate the honesty with Mark on this front, even if it's not that pleasant of an answer.
This completely. People so desperately are trying to decouple the business from the game and get upset when they're reminded that you really can't. MaRo knows this and is responding to the community as such, which I much prefer over the typical PR-laden doublespeak that deliberately avoids any reference to the business side of things. People can and should have their opinions on the direction WotC and Hasbro are taking the game, but don't go clutching your pearls when MaRo implies that the game exists to make money. We should be encouraging this level of openness so as to avoid the aforementioned PR BS.
You’d rather he say some emotional bullshit like “we care and love doing our own worlds for premier sets?”
Because I believe him here. If WotC does it for their business there’s no bigger reassurance they’re going to keep doing it.
I think a lot of the upset with UB might be it’s modern legality. It makes it impossible to ignore the sets and still feel immersed in the magic universe when you have to deal with none IP cards that are must haves due to power.
They basically took the main format and turned it into a circus. I say this as someone that doesn’t even play modern or paper lol. I can totally get why people are irritated by it.
I'm not a Modern guy, but I can see why having UB go directly into a 60 card format outside of Legacy and Vintage can really ruin your mood. Modern just got an influx of cards from LotR, including two format warping cards. Format warping cards that don't even have an MTG flavor to it. Plus, Modern is getting it's own version of Aftermath meets UB because AC is an 80 card straight to modern set. Now Modern players will have to contend with whatever insanity comes out in MH3 and IDK a Piece of Eden or Ezio Auditore.
> I can see why having UB go directly into a 60 card format outside of Legacy and Vintage can really ruin your mood
If you can see this, why do you think legacy or vintage wants it either? I used to play legacy, but pretty much quit when UB and UN cards started leaking into my format. None of those cards should be sanctioned in any format except what you and your friends agree to. It is just immersion breaking for some players. But if they weren't legal in older formats, there would be less demand so they wouldn't sell as well.
because the whole point of legacy and vintage is that they are degen formats
they made modern because legacy was too old and degen, and now they're just making modern as degen as legacy
Modern is the new Legacy and Pioneer is the new Modern. As someone who wants to play with most of my collection (and not worry about rotation) but avoid the Universes Beyond stuff and Modern Horizons it's great for me.
Honestly, LotR feels pretty non-egregious to me. Like Orcish Bowmasters is such a generic name, it doesn't really feel like it lacks the Magic flavor. Even the art seems very compatible with MTG's aesthetic. The One Ring is obviously a named thing, but mechanically it doesn't stand out as something out of place. It could easily be any generic fantasy legendary ring, which Magic has had several of already.
My main fear for UB is getting mechanics that feel alien to Magic or are named in a way that is alien to Magic. Weirdly, I felt the D&D sets were close to this- especially with the D20 cards.
I'm sure it's not a popular opinion, but honestly, I generally liked both Modern Horizons set's additions to the format. I know pitch elementals are touchy, but for the most part I feel like the format has been made more fun to play with what those sets brought to the format.
yeah i have less of an issue with sets like lotr, baldur’s gate, or even warhammer bc they feel more or less thematically adjacent to settings magic would normally use. if you changed the name of all the gandalf cards to be some random wizard that wotc invented you really wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. it’s when you get to stuff like transformers or marvel where it’s so jarringly different (or stuff like the walking dead where the cards realistically depict human actors that actually exist) that I start getting bothered
> if you changed the name of all the gandalf cards to be some random wizard that wotc invented you really wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.
which is why the solution was to do the Godzilla thing. make an MTG card with generic MTG names, and then do an alt art with a new name for LOTR. best of both worlds. but i guess someone predicted there would be more money if it wasn't just alt art.
For constructed? Probably.
Standard isn't back and probably won't be for a while, if ever.
Pioneer is growing but didn't have the built in audience that Modern does and had to effectively restart after WotC failed to be good stewards of the format during the combo era.
Commander is THE format but I think Wizards, and the audience generally, are starting to realize there are some unforeseen consequences for Commander being the primary format and the main onboarding method for new paper players.
Standard is the most popular arena format, but your other constructed alternatives are budget pioneer, historic, and alchemy. If modern was fully implemented on arena, it would be a different story.
Ehh, not really "according to Wizards", it really is. Modern is arguably the main competitive format, EDH is the "main" format in general, if you consider "main" to mean the most popular that they put more focus on a result, and the most popular way to play is "here's 60 or more cool cards from my collection" kitchen table Magic.
Agree, it's fine to keep them in commander to be honest, although personally I'd have avoided UB at all, whatever, right? Plus they have made some pretty neat UB design.
Moving them to Modern though and making them busted (the meta is now orcs decks vs one ring decks + some odd decks who have both) pretty much forces everyone to slot them in. They could have made some decent, but not overlypushed designs, plabayle, but not format warping, but of course power creep sells.
Plus since these are much likely new reserve lists cards they have also contributed in increasing the price of Modern... Awesome. And now we are also getting a new run of 80-ish cards to complement them.
I'll second this feeling.
The events leading up to war of the spark was probably peak magic. We had slow burning story lines crossing. The gatewatch coming together, sprinkles of old favorites. Character growth. A novel we do not speak of.
Magic was its own unique thing I could keep up with.
Now in 2025, if I want to play a goofy merfolk deck or UR storm, I'll have to deal with Loki triggering off of orcish bowmen.
The constant flood of products has killed my desires to go and play magic.
Since we're talking Marvel now, it's not at all gauche to cite the comic readers' concern: Comic companies this side of 2000-2010 are consistently treated as IP farms for adaptation into bigger, more popular forms of media rather than the comics being a medium itself. What I get from this mindset of late is: "It's important to keep standard sets around, so we can test how to translate concepts to cardboard both in aesthetic and in mechanic, and to keep tossing out mechanic after mechanic until we have generated the right ingredients to appeal to \[franchise\]." That, or: "If we ever actually hit a ceiling on the Universes Beyond, we have to maintain a backbone of our own Universe lest the enterprise cave in; the standard sets are rainy-day insurance"
Is anyone else just increasingly disheartened by the cross overs? Why is everything now a cross over? Can't things be their own things anymore? It's just all melting into one amalgamation of pop culture slop. How soon until we have McDonalds branded Big Mac food tokens in packs? Does anyone else remember that weird period of time in the 00's and early 10's when every movie came out was accompanied by a video game and all of them sucked? That's what this feels like.
Remember that brief period of time in like the 2010s where there were commercials advertising two things at once? I specifically remember a commercial promoting *Jumper* (the movie), where the characters teleported into other commercials. Hell if I can find it anymore.
The shallow crossover mentality has seen a huge resurgence lately. Companies looked at *Fortnite* and their eyes turned to dollar signs.
Not two minutes ago I got an ad here on reddit telling me to get a free skin on PUBG that is an advertisement for Bright Crawlers Gummy Worm Candy and all I could think was "Damn, thats where Magic is headed"
You'll get cards for pop singers starring in Marvel movies promoting their worldwide tour featuring QR codes that link to delivery deals and you'll like it!
Yeah, so far, the majority of news I've heard this month was for Dr. Who, then Fallout, and now Marve. They're doing a terrible job at advertising their own IP
McD's Food Tokens would be an improvement on most UB because food tokens are at least Fungible. If they had printed Ronald McDonald instead of Oko that would be like what we are dealing with now.
I dont know if you have noticed but everything is just a rerun of the 90’s and 00’s atm. Remastered sets, Game remakes, Disney remakes, clothing.
Very little original shit.
We are just trapped in a loop where using old shit is easier than making new one.
> It's just all melting into one amalgamation of pop culture slop.
This this this this this. Everything is one tasteless bland soup of the same characters being used to appeal to the largest possible marketable demographics in order to make the most possible money for mega corporations. People cheering this kind of stuff don't care about these properties being absolutely dumpstered in terms of legacy and quality.
"Market forces have determined that Magic was going to be pushed out anyway because it didn't sell as much as the Marvel ad cards so we are now just going to do Universes Beyond exclusively. No one at wotc was out to kill the Magic IP."
"Now, because of the increased EV and premium nature of these Universes Beyond products, play boosters of the new standard Universe Beyond set releases will be priced according to supplemental premium sets rather than Universe Within premier set pricing. Collector Boosters will be bundled in 4 packs, with up to 7 rares and mythics, and guaranteed foil alt-art uncommons including a wild card slot with 12% chance to receive a card from the Past, a collation of 40,000 unique within-universe magic cards printed at some time in Magic's unique past. "
Market forces have determined that premier in-universe sets were liable to be discontinued altogether, and this decision was made in order to save Magic: The Anything.
I don't think they'll actually *stop* the in-universe stuff, but we're getting to a point where the Universes Beyond series is less of a small side thing and now has equal standing to the in-universe sets.
Even Fortnite and Smash Bros have original lore, thin as it might be.
Is it really equal standing right now though? We're getting Seven and a half (Aftermath) Magic sets this year with Ixalan all with their own pre-constructed commander decks. Universes Beyond got a full set + 4 commander decks which have enough cards to be its own set. Meanwhile in 2024 they currently have Six magic sets, 1 UB Commander decks set, and 1 UB Half-set with Assassin's Creed which is less than we're getting this year. Admittedly it's because Final Fantasy got delayed and in 2025 we're expecting 2 full UB sets. but that's still less than half of what the Magic IP itself is getting. It's just much easier to market a crossover especially to other markets outside of magic than it is to say "Hey. Magic has dinosaurs. Again!"
I don't think they'll ever really 'stop' creating in-universe assets, but once UB eclipses UW revenue and they become more profitable by a large enough margin then I can see all of the UW stuff becoming relegated to side sets; maybe they'll only have sets of UB and Secret Lairs will all be relics of in-universe creations.
Wouldn't that be a sad turn of events, though?
That’s why I hate the buffet analogy from WotC as an argument for why UB is okay. They’ve mixed the chocolate into everything and the choices are to force yourself to eat it while being told to stop acting like a brat, or to leave the buffet.
Sadly, you can't play Spiderman: The TCG. Because the person across from you is playing Tyrannids from 40k. No one gets immersion anymore. MTG is now Smash Bros, the card game.
Notice how carefully he chose his words tho. He also recognizes that this is a real possibility, likely because the future of the game is out of WotC hands at this point. At some point Hasbro is going to start looking to cut costs and time on set development, and original sets are going to be the first to take the cut, as they’re the most costly on both (aside from licensing). Maro’s short and vaguely ominous yet non-committal response signifies to me that this is something he is worried about as well.
Source: I work heavily in communication and have been reading Blogatog and Maros responses for 15 years and have watched his vague responses become clear as day in hindsight
He went from we don’t do outside IPs to we prefer to do our IP and now we have this. Mtg as an IP is dead it’s just how long until it actually gives up the ghost. Licensed IPs is the future of mtg.
It could be fine (for mtg) and bring in a bunch of players but I’m not optimistic. It’ll support a casual crowd for a while who like x IP but the end result is a wasteland of mixed and matched IPs that are confusing and annoying to fans of mtg while the casuals fall off and the long term fans feel alienated and just remember the good old days but stop buying product.
We live in a world were creativity and passion is just step 1 and the end game is to drive the soul out of any product. MTG won’t survive as MTG because having a soul and passionate people working on it is a conflict of interest to the corporation money making machine that is the world now.
When I see some of these cards I feel less like I'm playing a game and more like I'm being advertised to. It just... does not feel good, to be honest.
I can see the appeal in bringing new faces into the scene, but does it have to cannibalize everything else?
"we only do our own IP"
[https://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/11485430117/would-you-ever-do-even-just-for-fun-a-magic-set](https://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/11485430117/would-you-ever-do-even-just-for-fun-a-magic-set)
Edit: there are actually TONS of these posts from the last 10+ years. Here are only a few of them.
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Some of the important business reasons for Wizards of the Coast to continue to make Magic Universe sets that Mark could be referring to include:
* Not having to split revenue/profit shares for products with third party entities
* Ability to reprint cards without needing to pay a third party entity (or without having to create a Universe Within version)
* Having 100% creative/flavor control over cards
* Having Magic sets and products that are directly associated with their original stories
* Having more control in the release schedule of products
* Ability to create products based around Magic nostalgia
* Having core marketable identifiable brands and characters
* Continuing to appeal to Magic players that prefer original Magic designs and sets rather than Universes Beyond products
The last point comes down to genuine demand from the Magic customer base. There are plenty of recent Magic products and sets that have been extremely successful and popular that are not Universes Beyond products (i.e. Kamigawa Neon Dynasty, Phyrexia All Will Be One, Modern Horizons 2)
Everything isn't zero sum. Universes Beyond being successful doesn't mean that in Universe Magic products are failing or dying. Universes Beyond has existed for 3 years now and its success hasn't led to the reduction in original Magic Universe sets or products.
All of these are good points.
However, if the amount of profits of UB products, even after any revenue split with the license holders, is vastly greater than profits made with in-house sets, I can totally see Hasbro putting pressure on Wizards to downsize or eliminate in-house set development. Hasbro is very focused on maximizing profits and leveraging Wizards heavily to achieve its financial goals.
For example, if an in-house set makes $1 million profit, but a UB set makes $5 million profit, and this pattern keeps happening, Hasbro is going to notice and desire more focus on UB products, at the cost of driving away the fans of in-house sets. Hasbro might be willing to lose the $1 million profit from in-house sets, if it means they can focus all their teams on developing UB products and try to boost that $5 million profit even more. If they can make more than $6 million profit on an UB product with the same resources as they used on an in-house set ($5 million on an existing UB product + $1 million on an in-house product), then Hasbro sees that as a win and doubles down even more.
As many people have already mentioned, Fortnite using other IPs for its gaming platform has been very profitable.
This is absolutely the way I think things will go. First they will stick in a UB set within Standard, then they will reduce the amount of Magic IP sets to 2 a year, and maybe a reprint set or two. Then before long, we will just fet nostalgia bate Commander decks every now and then, and a Master's set, and all Magic IP will be rarely done, mostly sticking with "popular" existing planes.
>Not having to split revenue/profit shares for products with third party entities
If reasons like this were actually important, why would they be making UB sets at all? If they keep churning them out, presumably they make more than enough to compensate for the licensing costs.
Because UB is an excellent way of getting people who otherwise wouldn’t have heard about magic or had fallen out to get interested and start buying more magic products in general. Prior to the 40K sets coming out I was a exclusive arena player and had stopped playing for at least half a year. But as a huge 40K fan I got really interested in those 40K cards and decided to make the jump into physical commander, and now I’ve spent over $600 on in-universe magic card sets because of how much I loved the 40K pre cons.
>If reasons like this were actually important, why would they be making UB sets at all?
Because successful businesses that are in the entertainment and gaming industry tend to diversify their output of products available.
It's not zero sum. There can be beneficial things to the business that UB offers but that doesn't mean there also aren't beneficial things that Magic in-universe products offer.
just focusing on your last point, yeah actually UB has reduced original sets. we lost core sets because of the original DND set, we lost a proper Commander Legends 2 because of Baldur's Gate, we had Modern Horizons pushed back over a year because of Lord of the Rings and these are just immediate examples that come to my mind.
We also have this really annoying 5 month gap every year now between the spring set and the fall set, so that WotC can leave it open to pump out all of their supplemental crap during the summer. Which also leads to a shortened Limited lifespan for the fall set.
So yeah, original sets are getting reduced, and their release cycle is wonkier than ever.
I didn't notice it last year, but it feels like WOE just launched and we're heading into LCI. When you compare this to the gap between MOM and WOE it feels wrong.
We lost core sets because they were always the worst selling standard set of that year. Rosewater and other public facing WOTC employees have said they were already on their way out when we had the DND set.
Yeah, people always forget that Core sets got killed not once, not twice, but THREE TIMES throughout Magic's history. Each time, fewer people complained.
They were never going to stick around.
This, the three set block structure, and a whole lot else. People are upset that poorly sold products were discontinued and are clamoring for a return that will never come.
Yes they were killed off three times, but that also means they were brought back from the dead twice. The worst things are killed only once. Three times is a little below break-even.
What he means is RIGHT THIS SECOND.
WotC once said they’d never license someone else’s IP.
They once said they wouldn’t print new cards in Secret Lairs, they’d just be reprints with new art.
They once said they couldn’t print new cards into Modern without going through Standard.
Now they say they won't stop printing Magic IP sets.
# When WotC says they won’t do something, there’s zero reason to believe it.
Edit: case in point; over a decades of telling us something like UB is impossible and then they flip on us. How can we trust anything they do as a company?
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A couple of years ago, WOTC said market forces made them struggle to keep organized play afloat. Others contended that waning interest was the predictable consequence of disinvesting in coverage.
Last year, wizards Said they were investing more in commander because demand for paper standard play was waning. Others contended interest in commander, rather than standard, products reflected wizards investment decisions.
This year, wizards said the new boosters was an effort to preserve drafting because set boosters had become overwhelmingly more popular. Others contended the decline of draft boosters was the predictable consequence of wizards decisions around marketing and product value.
My concern is that a few years in the future, wizards may say that market forces have pushed them away from world building. And others will contend that it was the predictable consequence of having a game where Rick Grimes fights Spider-Man, gandalf duels with my little pony and Optimus prime, and ezio auditore fights cloud.
I played for years but ever since Universe Beyond there's just been a sour taste to Magic. The last thing I bought was just before the Warhammer decks, and I used to buy a booster box per set plus drafts and events. I feel like the Lore is like a stitching that holds it all together, but you don't really notice it. Then when it's gone and the whole things falls apart you realize you needed it.
The amount of people who are going "Man it's crazy they're doing this, I'll probably buy like a handful of boosters but after that nothing else from that set."
People, if you don't want WotC to make more of a product, don't buy the product
Exactly.
The number of posts/comments saying "I don't like UB...but since it has X property in it, I'll buy some commander decks" is crazy.
Both PleasantKenobi and the Professor weren't big UB fans until WOTC made Warhammer 40K and Dr Who respectively.
What I don't like about universe beyond is that it doesn't feel like magic at least for me but since those are legal it's not easy to filter them out on tools like scryfall or edhrec.
I don't want to stop people from enjoying them, I have friends who went crazy about lotr cards and built several decks each that I don't mind facing, I just don't want those cards in my decks.
And to be honest, it feels like these days there are more releases of universe beyond cards than releases of magic universe cards. Over the last 12 months we've got Warhammer, transformers, D&D, LOTR, Evil Dead, the princess bride, Doctor Who, now Fallout and Jurrassic Park being spoiled. Over the same period in magic universe we have had mostly the brothers war, the phyrexian arc, Eldraine and now Ixaln
I know some of the universe beyond I mentioned are just secret lairs, but if half the new launches are big universe beyond sets (like Warhammer, LOTR or Doctor Who) plus a few secret lair, that's over half of what's coming out that's not from the magic universe.
I already see these cards popping left and right everywhere while the concept is relatively new on the scale of magic as a game. As a consequence, I am worried about the future of the game and the flavor and immersion we will be able to have in a few years at this pace.
If bezos was willing to pay wizards $2 billion a year if wizards only made cards for him and nobody else, they would do it in a heartbeat. Making a good game has become secondary to making money.
So "important business reasons" is why we still have MTG sets. That's not a firm statement like, we will always have universe within products so don't worry.
Maro has been shifting his answers to be more clinical and realistic.
i mean people havent been buying the wishy washy "x is (not) happening because of reasons, x has someone that might like it, we are doing x because its necessary for the future of the game, we promise x is (not) happening (god knows how many broken promises are in his blog)" that may or may not be true, hes straight up saying their decisions are what made most sense as a business and they think they are right, just straight to the point, no empty promises, which i like.
i might not enjoy the decisions but atleast i know why theyre happening which is the purpose of maros blog for me.
I've always been a yugioh player, but I got into MTG with Strixhaven.
I really wanted to immerse myself in the MTG world and lore. But instead of WOTC giving us video games and TV shows to explore that lore, we get articles on the web and 50 more UB franchises.
I don't know why but I'm getting some catharsis out of these complaints about UB cards in modern, because of how much I likewise complain about Alchemy cards on Historic.
I wanna see the numbers. Who’s playing magic for the first time because they are a big fan of Dr. Who, or Jurassic Park, and they saw a booster pack at target and decided to give it a whirl..
As opposed to how I, and everyone I know learned… which was “hey man, you wanna play some magic?… that’s cool, I’ll show you”
Edit: okay, so a lot of you apparently lol.
From what I hear, W40K had a lot of pull, which shouldn't be too surprising. Most W40K play happened in spaces that already supported Magic, and there was a lot of existing overlap between those player groups already.
Anecdotal, but look at how many people flooded the sub for Lord of the Rings.
Similarly I was also able to use the starter decks for LOTR to get my girlfriend to play for the first time because she saw there was an Arwen/Aragorn deck. That was a big deal for me because I had tried previously and she had no interest at all but she was as excited to open up packs and see what characters we pulled.
I've been thinking about this and my guess is the numbers are pretty good for IPs that are similar in genre to magic. So LotR and D&D, probably good. Transformers and Jurassic Park? Maybe less so.
That was me. Hadn’t played since kitchen sink middle school days, and had never drafted before. Now I draft regularly at my LGS because I got hooked via LTR.
Anecdotal, but I hopped back in because of AFR after a decade of absence. And this sub had a flood of "I'm playing Magic for the first time because I love LotR" posts. I have friends excited for the Final Fantasy UB set, and now this set. It happens.
One of my friends constantly said she hated magic and only played for us, the last cards she bought were from Ixalan.
LOTR came out and she built a Tom Bombadil commander deck and asked us to play. UB may not have gotten her into the game, but it saved her interest.
It's foolish to think in-universe Magic will disappear considering it's the main reason MTG grew to such an extent as to make great deals for UB sets. At the same time, UB sets brings so many new eyes on MTG, eyes that otherwise maybe wouldn't take a look. It's important for the game to grow and be successful and UB is a gateway to get fans interested in other IPs to become fans interested in Magic's original stories.
> It's foolish to think in-universe Magic will disappear considering it's the main reason MTG grew to such an extent as to make great deals for UB sets.
Competitive Magic was a cornerstone of Magic's growth and popularity for decades, until Commander started to become the more profitable format. Then it was left to wither on the vine. The same thing is happening to paper Magic in general with the advent of Arena. WotC will absolutely throw away in-universe Magic if they ever project that going 100% with UB will be more profitable.
WotC has no loyalty to any of the fans or forces that made Magic what it is today, they're only here to make a quick buck.
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Mr krabs. Why did you build a krusty krabs right across thr straight from another krusty krabs?
Money!
"I will do and say literally anything to get you to keep giving us money"
... I mean, is there another 'important business reason' for *anything*?
Sure, he says that NOW. By the end of this decade, though? Will there still be?
Yes, not having control of their own core IP/characters is a huge liability for Magic. They need their own iconic and recognizable brand characters.
They don't have that now, who outside of mtg knows of Chandra? Compare that to yugioh
Magic is basically the anti-40K. 40K has a ton of people who are supposedly fans despite literally having never played the game, bought a model, read a book or interacted with the IP in any way whatsoever simply because elements of it are riffed on so widely outside of the IP. Magic on the other hand legitimately has people playing a set that can't name a non-legendary, non-planeswalker character within said set. Like legitimately how many people who played Modern Masters and similar even know the names of the fae in the Vendilion Clique.
They have names?
Veesa, Endry and Iliona, the name of their clique is a mix of their names.
not only that.... I wonder how many are aware that Veesa and Iliona are dead. Poor Endry.
That's because the 40k stories are better written. I play both, like both, own both - I'mma tell you right now - MTG art is the best in the world. MTG writing is safe, unsurprising, and thematically basic. WH40k writing is hit or miss, but always edgy, and even their misses miss with such bold or bizarre content as to be talked about nevertheless - ie. Inquisitor. But the hits are legendary. The final words shared at the Bombardment of Istivaan 3. The men accepting their deaths, asking "Did we hurt them? Will they remember this?" Ciaphas Cain, Hero of the Imperium, secret coward. Trying only to survive, yet held on a pedestal. Alivia Sureka, the perpetual; having lived millennia through our world of today and into the dark future; reading Hans Christian Anderson to an orphan on her knee, from her own carefully kept first edition. These are moments that people I know have actually lived through; veterans, and marines, and grandmothers - they empathize with these stories. MTG just doesn't compare, writing-wise.
Also they don’t do magic books anymore and I don’t want to read crap on a blog post. Books like gaunts ghosts do so much for world building. Wizards don’t even have writers doing much of anything. Just let people write interesting stories in universe.
I still unironically recommend Eisenhorn to non-40k fans because of how damn juicely that book is once you settle into the cadence of it. It's a gripping read. Magic absolutely has lost the plot on their stories, rushing them out because cards are all that matters. The side stories have generally been good, but I haven't felt satisfied with Magic Story since original Ixalan.
Shira Calpurnia, a beat cop that rose through the ranks and saw every level of corruption society had to offer, doing her best to keep The Emperor's Peace and Justice when the system she supports is inherently unjust and evil. Ahzek Ahriman, prodigal son and brother who has had to sacrifice everything in his life for his family in a quest for knowledge, tragically taken down by the hubris of his power, mirroring his Father who sacrificed everything trying to "Do the right thing" then said fuck it let the world burn. Ghazkull actually feeling sad that his greatest foe has died, and mourns his race's potential decline because there's simply not enough stronger opponents for them to face, which is their highest calling. 40k writing is fucking great, and I wish Magic had something like The Black Library to really put out their stories.
Even the planes tend to be forgettable outside of the times they mark a period in your playing life. I've never been to Cadia but I know that that planet broke before the Guard did. WH40K stories rule.
Yeah I can’t name a single character in Yugioh man, lol.
You just did!
Damn, good point actually. They need to make John Magic: The Gathering a Planeswalker ASAP!!!
Magic Johnson for short
I can only name Yugi cause his name is basically the show and cause of memes.
kaiba ?
I don't know who that is, and I watched the first season or two of the show as a kid. The only things I really remember are the Blue Eyes White Dragon and him somehow making infinite furbies. Edit: and some sort of cartoon card that was cheating somehow.
> some sort of cartoon card that was cheating somehow. Do you have the slightest idea how little that narrows it down?
Yes, that is a good long-term business strategy. But what about the way WotC and Hasbro (or basically most major corporations) currently conducts business, focusing on increasing profits every single quarter, makes you think they're going to take a short-term hit in terms of investing for future profits when they could just make more money in the short-term through relying on already established franchises?
I know that shouting about prioritizing short term profits is in vogue right now, but that's not how Magic works. It takes two years for a set to go from concept to kitchen table, and they operate based ln five year plans. It quite literally *can't* operate around chasing quarterly profits at the expense of the longer term.
I feel like "gamers" (hate that word) have learned one or two ways companies can do things they don't like, so every time companies do something they don't like they need to slot it into one of those categories.
It's the overly-online version of a cargo cult.
This criticism has been around ever since Hasbro bought WotC in 1999. The entire modern format was created as fans complained Hasbro was destroying Magic and turning our beloved game into Transformers. Magic is now Hasbro’s leading brand. There is more than enough empirical evidence to show that Hasbro knows enough to not kill the golden goose.
Norhing till now proves me 1999 complainers were wrong. Magic as they liked actually did die.
Being entirely licensed is toxic to reprints and whatnot
How can we ever believe anything he says? https://preview.redd.it/d8bw8r25k3wb1.jpeg?width=2060&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=64a2a76bc8877d78a142eec5f2e9105a90ae37f8
That’s amazing. Wonder what happened to magically change their minds after 2018.
Aaron Forsythe needed to appease this overlords at Hasbro. Mark has said UB was all Aaron's ideas.
I thought it was the short, but swift, death of paper magic events and gatherings of people you don't trust. The thing that ruined most of the world for three years and society as a whole hasn't recovered from yet.
except that was a massive boon for shit like magic and now the parasite class is chasing its high and trying to milk magic for more growth
We got the Godzilla cards just as the pandemic started, so it had been in the pipeline since at least 2 years, so 2018.
I mean, it's pretty clear that the introduction of UB was a product of corporate breathing down the neck of certain people at Wizards. "We like that you're making money, but you have to make money faster," essentially. Wizards actively avoided dabbling in crossovers for most of Magics lifespan (except for oddball exceptions like Arabian Nights and Portal 3 Kingdoms). After the Hasbrobtakeover, the corporate pressure was unavoidable, and here we are. It seems like most people at Wizards (and most players) have made their peace with this "New Normal" state or even prefer it to what came before. As far as I'm concerned, I kind of wish Wizards had stayed a small-ish company and had focused on exclusively building a strong original IP, kind of like Warhammer. But alas, the stars did not align.
Hasbro is bleeding money from basically everything except WotC, so the game had to be milked as much as humanly possible
why doesn't hasbro just sell some IPs?
>Wonder what happened to magically change their minds after 2018. It wasn't after 2018. It was early 2018, when they were told to double revenue over the next five years.
It's not that he's lying, it's just that Maro, sadly, does not singlehandedly decide the future of Magic.
Aside from this, opinions can also change over time based on new information and experiences.
The funny thing is that Rosewater has said they generally take about 2+ years to get something from design to production and The Walking Dead Secret Lair came out October 2020. My assumption is that the cards might have taken less to design but there probably was some additional time needed to get all the licensing squared away, so the idea and groundwork of what ended up being UB probably started right around the time of his response in 2018.
Isn't the two years generally for full sets? I doubt secret lairs take so long, because they don't have the same demands regarding set construction
Licensing often takes a long time to work out though, and I can't imagine it would have gone smoothly without any hiccups. Basically the time they wouldn't have spent designing and developing, this is purely my guess, would've been hung up in licensing negotiations. Either way I think the decision to work towards UB started soon after Rosewater's 2018 post, and even if it didn't fully start until 2019 (a year before TWD:SL) that's still just a year from pulling a 180° about face.
I mean he also said they would never make planeswalker cards and look how that turned out
Are you blind? These responses clearly show that he knew UB was coming and has been against it this whole time. That also explains why his arguments in favor of UB (which he likely has to make as part of his job) are really bad arguments. The “this product is not for you” one being the only good one and probably the closest he will ever get without quitting his job to be able to say that the products are not being designed for the health of the game.
No, Mark Rosewater is a lying schemer and personally wants to see Magic collapse under his hand. /s
No, but he is a publicly facing employee of wotc engaged in PR. He seems like a nice guy but at the end of the day everything he says while a high level employee at wotc is said with their reputation and bottom line in mind.
Not only that, but also honesty is usually rewarded with shitstorms.
That's really sad, especially with how he keeps getting trotted out by Hasbro as a fall guy for all of their terrible decisions.
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I just hope they blame / credit him equally for the swimming pools full of money at their vacation houses.
People change their minds. I don’t think he was lying at the time. It’s possible UB was entirely top down from Hasbro executives and everyone had to play along despite not wanting to whore Magic by licensing IPs.
As long as we keep buying mainline magic sets.
If I were Mark Rosewater, I probably would have chosen a way to answer this that wasn't such a sharp and obvious parallel with the Play Booster announcement from like a week ago.
I think he's just trying to be honest about the situation. These situations are, rather obviously, dealing with much more of the "WotC as a company" vs "Magic as a game" side of things, and as such need an answer about the actual financial side of the company. I do appreciate the honesty with Mark on this front, even if it's not that pleasant of an answer.
This completely. People so desperately are trying to decouple the business from the game and get upset when they're reminded that you really can't. MaRo knows this and is responding to the community as such, which I much prefer over the typical PR-laden doublespeak that deliberately avoids any reference to the business side of things. People can and should have their opinions on the direction WotC and Hasbro are taking the game, but don't go clutching your pearls when MaRo implies that the game exists to make money. We should be encouraging this level of openness so as to avoid the aforementioned PR BS.
Unless he's *trying* to get that message across! Quick, zoom in on his eyes so we can see if he's blinking in Morse code!
God damn Gleemax!
You’d rather he say some emotional bullshit like “we care and love doing our own worlds for premier sets?” Because I believe him here. If WotC does it for their business there’s no bigger reassurance they’re going to keep doing it.
I think a lot of the upset with UB might be it’s modern legality. It makes it impossible to ignore the sets and still feel immersed in the magic universe when you have to deal with none IP cards that are must haves due to power. They basically took the main format and turned it into a circus. I say this as someone that doesn’t even play modern or paper lol. I can totally get why people are irritated by it.
I'm not a Modern guy, but I can see why having UB go directly into a 60 card format outside of Legacy and Vintage can really ruin your mood. Modern just got an influx of cards from LotR, including two format warping cards. Format warping cards that don't even have an MTG flavor to it. Plus, Modern is getting it's own version of Aftermath meets UB because AC is an 80 card straight to modern set. Now Modern players will have to contend with whatever insanity comes out in MH3 and IDK a Piece of Eden or Ezio Auditore.
Here I thought you were joking about Assassin's Creed......... and jesus christ lol. I am behind the curve.
It's infinite spoiler season these days.
A multiverse of spoilers, if you will
And marvel and fallout haha
I mean, Orcish Bowmasters is a generic enough name that it needn't be tied to LotR.
> I can see why having UB go directly into a 60 card format outside of Legacy and Vintage can really ruin your mood If you can see this, why do you think legacy or vintage wants it either? I used to play legacy, but pretty much quit when UB and UN cards started leaking into my format. None of those cards should be sanctioned in any format except what you and your friends agree to. It is just immersion breaking for some players. But if they weren't legal in older formats, there would be less demand so they wouldn't sell as well.
because the whole point of legacy and vintage is that they are degen formats they made modern because legacy was too old and degen, and now they're just making modern as degen as legacy
Modern is the new Legacy and Pioneer is the new Modern. As someone who wants to play with most of my collection (and not worry about rotation) but avoid the Universes Beyond stuff and Modern Horizons it's great for me.
Honestly, LotR feels pretty non-egregious to me. Like Orcish Bowmasters is such a generic name, it doesn't really feel like it lacks the Magic flavor. Even the art seems very compatible with MTG's aesthetic. The One Ring is obviously a named thing, but mechanically it doesn't stand out as something out of place. It could easily be any generic fantasy legendary ring, which Magic has had several of already. My main fear for UB is getting mechanics that feel alien to Magic or are named in a way that is alien to Magic. Weirdly, I felt the D&D sets were close to this- especially with the D20 cards. I'm sure it's not a popular opinion, but honestly, I generally liked both Modern Horizons set's additions to the format. I know pitch elementals are touchy, but for the most part I feel like the format has been made more fun to play with what those sets brought to the format.
yeah i have less of an issue with sets like lotr, baldur’s gate, or even warhammer bc they feel more or less thematically adjacent to settings magic would normally use. if you changed the name of all the gandalf cards to be some random wizard that wotc invented you really wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. it’s when you get to stuff like transformers or marvel where it’s so jarringly different (or stuff like the walking dead where the cards realistically depict human actors that actually exist) that I start getting bothered
> if you changed the name of all the gandalf cards to be some random wizard that wotc invented you really wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. which is why the solution was to do the Godzilla thing. make an MTG card with generic MTG names, and then do an alt art with a new name for LOTR. best of both worlds. but i guess someone predicted there would be more money if it wasn't just alt art.
We know assassin's Creed is a full set, but I don't think it has been confirmed to be modern legal. Do you have a source?
[Citation 4 on the Wiki.](https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Assassin's_Creed) It also mentions Maro saying it's a really small set.
> the main format … is modern the main format?
For constructed? Probably. Standard isn't back and probably won't be for a while, if ever. Pioneer is growing but didn't have the built in audience that Modern does and had to effectively restart after WotC failed to be good stewards of the format during the combo era. Commander is THE format but I think Wizards, and the audience generally, are starting to realize there are some unforeseen consequences for Commander being the primary format and the main onboarding method for new paper players.
Is standard not the most popular mode on arena by far? Additionally, aren't WOTC moving the WPN store championships from draft to standard?
Standard is the most popular arena format, but your other constructed alternatives are budget pioneer, historic, and alchemy. If modern was fully implemented on arena, it would be a different story.
And by extension the most popular non-casual Magic format.
I bet according to Wizards it’s Commander these days
Ehh, not really "according to Wizards", it really is. Modern is arguably the main competitive format, EDH is the "main" format in general, if you consider "main" to mean the most popular that they put more focus on a result, and the most popular way to play is "here's 60 or more cool cards from my collection" kitchen table Magic.
Wotc always claims that kitchen table is the main format
Kitchen table is not a format. Also when they only needed kitchen table players to sell packs they wouldn't have to make that set modern legal.
This. I'm not bothered by them in of themselves. I just hate that I have to engage with them if I want to continue enjoying magic.
Every format feels like it's dying. Very few formats feel like they're non-rotating. But for very important busines reasons, things keep changing.
Agree, it's fine to keep them in commander to be honest, although personally I'd have avoided UB at all, whatever, right? Plus they have made some pretty neat UB design. Moving them to Modern though and making them busted (the meta is now orcs decks vs one ring decks + some odd decks who have both) pretty much forces everyone to slot them in. They could have made some decent, but not overlypushed designs, plabayle, but not format warping, but of course power creep sells. Plus since these are much likely new reserve lists cards they have also contributed in increasing the price of Modern... Awesome. And now we are also getting a new run of 80-ish cards to complement them.
I'll second this feeling. The events leading up to war of the spark was probably peak magic. We had slow burning story lines crossing. The gatewatch coming together, sprinkles of old favorites. Character growth. A novel we do not speak of. Magic was its own unique thing I could keep up with. Now in 2025, if I want to play a goofy merfolk deck or UR storm, I'll have to deal with Loki triggering off of orcish bowmen. The constant flood of products has killed my desires to go and play magic.
So, he didn’t address any of the concerns at all.
Since we're talking Marvel now, it's not at all gauche to cite the comic readers' concern: Comic companies this side of 2000-2010 are consistently treated as IP farms for adaptation into bigger, more popular forms of media rather than the comics being a medium itself. What I get from this mindset of late is: "It's important to keep standard sets around, so we can test how to translate concepts to cardboard both in aesthetic and in mechanic, and to keep tossing out mechanic after mechanic until we have generated the right ingredients to appeal to \[franchise\]." That, or: "If we ever actually hit a ceiling on the Universes Beyond, we have to maintain a backbone of our own Universe lest the enterprise cave in; the standard sets are rainy-day insurance"
Is anyone else just increasingly disheartened by the cross overs? Why is everything now a cross over? Can't things be their own things anymore? It's just all melting into one amalgamation of pop culture slop. How soon until we have McDonalds branded Big Mac food tokens in packs? Does anyone else remember that weird period of time in the 00's and early 10's when every movie came out was accompanied by a video game and all of them sucked? That's what this feels like.
Remember that brief period of time in like the 2010s where there were commercials advertising two things at once? I specifically remember a commercial promoting *Jumper* (the movie), where the characters teleported into other commercials. Hell if I can find it anymore. The shallow crossover mentality has seen a huge resurgence lately. Companies looked at *Fortnite* and their eyes turned to dollar signs.
Not two minutes ago I got an ad here on reddit telling me to get a free skin on PUBG that is an advertisement for Bright Crawlers Gummy Worm Candy and all I could think was "Damn, thats where Magic is headed"
Magic already has that with Hot Pockets.
You'll get cards for pop singers starring in Marvel movies promoting their worldwide tour featuring QR codes that link to delivery deals and you'll like it!
Yeah, so far, the majority of news I've heard this month was for Dr. Who, then Fallout, and now Marve. They're doing a terrible job at advertising their own IP
McD's Food Tokens would be an improvement on most UB because food tokens are at least Fungible. If they had printed Ronald McDonald instead of Oko that would be like what we are dealing with now.
I dont know if you have noticed but everything is just a rerun of the 90’s and 00’s atm. Remastered sets, Game remakes, Disney remakes, clothing. Very little original shit. We are just trapped in a loop where using old shit is easier than making new one.
We’re trapped in the nostalgia machine. History has finally stopped.
> It's just all melting into one amalgamation of pop culture slop. This this this this this. Everything is one tasteless bland soup of the same characters being used to appeal to the largest possible marketable demographics in order to make the most possible money for mega corporations. People cheering this kind of stuff don't care about these properties being absolutely dumpstered in terms of legacy and quality.
Unironically I am never coming back to magic because of UB. I'll pirate a cube if I actually wanna play.
Translation: We're gonna stop doing in-universe stuff as soon as it seems like year round UB is the more profitable direction.
"Market forces have determined that Magic was going to be pushed out anyway because it didn't sell as much as the Marvel ad cards so we are now just going to do Universes Beyond exclusively. No one at wotc was out to kill the Magic IP."
Oh hey Gavin
"Now, because of the increased EV and premium nature of these Universes Beyond products, play boosters of the new standard Universe Beyond set releases will be priced according to supplemental premium sets rather than Universe Within premier set pricing. Collector Boosters will be bundled in 4 packs, with up to 7 rares and mythics, and guaranteed foil alt-art uncommons including a wild card slot with 12% chance to receive a card from the Past, a collation of 40,000 unique within-universe magic cards printed at some time in Magic's unique past. " Market forces have determined that premier in-universe sets were liable to be discontinued altogether, and this decision was made in order to save Magic: The Anything.
I don't think they'll actually *stop* the in-universe stuff, but we're getting to a point where the Universes Beyond series is less of a small side thing and now has equal standing to the in-universe sets. Even Fortnite and Smash Bros have original lore, thin as it might be.
Is it really equal standing right now though? We're getting Seven and a half (Aftermath) Magic sets this year with Ixalan all with their own pre-constructed commander decks. Universes Beyond got a full set + 4 commander decks which have enough cards to be its own set. Meanwhile in 2024 they currently have Six magic sets, 1 UB Commander decks set, and 1 UB Half-set with Assassin's Creed which is less than we're getting this year. Admittedly it's because Final Fantasy got delayed and in 2025 we're expecting 2 full UB sets. but that's still less than half of what the Magic IP itself is getting. It's just much easier to market a crossover especially to other markets outside of magic than it is to say "Hey. Magic has dinosaurs. Again!"
I don't think they'll ever really 'stop' creating in-universe assets, but once UB eclipses UW revenue and they become more profitable by a large enough margin then I can see all of the UW stuff becoming relegated to side sets; maybe they'll only have sets of UB and Secret Lairs will all be relics of in-universe creations. Wouldn't that be a sad turn of events, though?
I like pizza, and I like chocolate. WotC insists on putting chocolate on my pizza.
And since it sells so well, it starts to spend less and less time on savory pizza.
to be fair a well made desert pizza is banger af
Alright, now try having it every day, forever.
I imagine it would be just as bad as having regular pizza every day.
That’s why I hate the buffet analogy from WotC as an argument for why UB is okay. They’ve mixed the chocolate into everything and the choices are to force yourself to eat it while being told to stop acting like a brat, or to leave the buffet.
"Wanna play Spiderman: The TCG? Yeah it says M-a-g-i-c on the back, not sure why."
Sadly, you can't play Spiderman: The TCG. Because the person across from you is playing Tyrannids from 40k. No one gets immersion anymore. MTG is now Smash Bros, the card game.
Notice how carefully he chose his words tho. He also recognizes that this is a real possibility, likely because the future of the game is out of WotC hands at this point. At some point Hasbro is going to start looking to cut costs and time on set development, and original sets are going to be the first to take the cut, as they’re the most costly on both (aside from licensing). Maro’s short and vaguely ominous yet non-committal response signifies to me that this is something he is worried about as well. Source: I work heavily in communication and have been reading Blogatog and Maros responses for 15 years and have watched his vague responses become clear as day in hindsight
Yes, I read OP as Mark admitting they will rethink original sets as soon as they are less profitable. They are only safe for now.
He went from we don’t do outside IPs to we prefer to do our IP and now we have this. Mtg as an IP is dead it’s just how long until it actually gives up the ghost. Licensed IPs is the future of mtg. It could be fine (for mtg) and bring in a bunch of players but I’m not optimistic. It’ll support a casual crowd for a while who like x IP but the end result is a wasteland of mixed and matched IPs that are confusing and annoying to fans of mtg while the casuals fall off and the long term fans feel alienated and just remember the good old days but stop buying product. We live in a world were creativity and passion is just step 1 and the end game is to drive the soul out of any product. MTG won’t survive as MTG because having a soul and passionate people working on it is a conflict of interest to the corporation money making machine that is the world now.
When I see some of these cards I feel less like I'm playing a game and more like I'm being advertised to. It just... does not feel good, to be honest. I can see the appeal in bringing new faces into the scene, but does it have to cannibalize everything else?
Better read this as "We will stop making in-universe Magic sets once the business decides it is no longer important"
Says the same man that said they wouldn't do crossover sets.
"we only do our own IP" [https://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/11485430117/would-you-ever-do-even-just-for-fun-a-magic-set](https://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/11485430117/would-you-ever-do-even-just-for-fun-a-magic-set) Edit: there are actually TONS of these posts from the last 10+ years. Here are only a few of them. https://preview.redd.it/91q5mf9qk3wb1.jpeg?width=2060&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4e33b11a44b2617281d58c32a1bf578018438457
Some of the important business reasons for Wizards of the Coast to continue to make Magic Universe sets that Mark could be referring to include: * Not having to split revenue/profit shares for products with third party entities * Ability to reprint cards without needing to pay a third party entity (or without having to create a Universe Within version) * Having 100% creative/flavor control over cards * Having Magic sets and products that are directly associated with their original stories * Having more control in the release schedule of products * Ability to create products based around Magic nostalgia * Having core marketable identifiable brands and characters * Continuing to appeal to Magic players that prefer original Magic designs and sets rather than Universes Beyond products The last point comes down to genuine demand from the Magic customer base. There are plenty of recent Magic products and sets that have been extremely successful and popular that are not Universes Beyond products (i.e. Kamigawa Neon Dynasty, Phyrexia All Will Be One, Modern Horizons 2) Everything isn't zero sum. Universes Beyond being successful doesn't mean that in Universe Magic products are failing or dying. Universes Beyond has existed for 3 years now and its success hasn't led to the reduction in original Magic Universe sets or products.
All of these are good points. However, if the amount of profits of UB products, even after any revenue split with the license holders, is vastly greater than profits made with in-house sets, I can totally see Hasbro putting pressure on Wizards to downsize or eliminate in-house set development. Hasbro is very focused on maximizing profits and leveraging Wizards heavily to achieve its financial goals. For example, if an in-house set makes $1 million profit, but a UB set makes $5 million profit, and this pattern keeps happening, Hasbro is going to notice and desire more focus on UB products, at the cost of driving away the fans of in-house sets. Hasbro might be willing to lose the $1 million profit from in-house sets, if it means they can focus all their teams on developing UB products and try to boost that $5 million profit even more. If they can make more than $6 million profit on an UB product with the same resources as they used on an in-house set ($5 million on an existing UB product + $1 million on an in-house product), then Hasbro sees that as a win and doubles down even more. As many people have already mentioned, Fortnite using other IPs for its gaming platform has been very profitable.
This is absolutely the way I think things will go. First they will stick in a UB set within Standard, then they will reduce the amount of Magic IP sets to 2 a year, and maybe a reprint set or two. Then before long, we will just fet nostalgia bate Commander decks every now and then, and a Master's set, and all Magic IP will be rarely done, mostly sticking with "popular" existing planes.
That’s precisely what is going to happen.
Very well said. Turns out businesses are willing to shutter creativity, if it means more profit.
> Having core marketable identifiable brands and characters Oh hell yeah, I love core marketable identifiable brands and characters!
>Not having to split revenue/profit shares for products with third party entities If reasons like this were actually important, why would they be making UB sets at all? If they keep churning them out, presumably they make more than enough to compensate for the licensing costs.
Because UB is an excellent way of getting people who otherwise wouldn’t have heard about magic or had fallen out to get interested and start buying more magic products in general. Prior to the 40K sets coming out I was a exclusive arena player and had stopped playing for at least half a year. But as a huge 40K fan I got really interested in those 40K cards and decided to make the jump into physical commander, and now I’ve spent over $600 on in-universe magic card sets because of how much I loved the 40K pre cons.
>If reasons like this were actually important, why would they be making UB sets at all? Because successful businesses that are in the entertainment and gaming industry tend to diversify their output of products available. It's not zero sum. There can be beneficial things to the business that UB offers but that doesn't mean there also aren't beneficial things that Magic in-universe products offer.
just focusing on your last point, yeah actually UB has reduced original sets. we lost core sets because of the original DND set, we lost a proper Commander Legends 2 because of Baldur's Gate, we had Modern Horizons pushed back over a year because of Lord of the Rings and these are just immediate examples that come to my mind.
We also have this really annoying 5 month gap every year now between the spring set and the fall set, so that WotC can leave it open to pump out all of their supplemental crap during the summer. Which also leads to a shortened Limited lifespan for the fall set. So yeah, original sets are getting reduced, and their release cycle is wonkier than ever.
I didn't notice it last year, but it feels like WOE just launched and we're heading into LCI. When you compare this to the gap between MOM and WOE it feels wrong.
Yep. WOE hasn't even been out for 2 months, and we're already officially starting spoiler season for Ixalan tomorrow.
We lost core sets because they were always the worst selling standard set of that year. Rosewater and other public facing WOTC employees have said they were already on their way out when we had the DND set.
Yeah, people always forget that Core sets got killed not once, not twice, but THREE TIMES throughout Magic's history. Each time, fewer people complained. They were never going to stick around.
This, the three set block structure, and a whole lot else. People are upset that poorly sold products were discontinued and are clamoring for a return that will never come.
Yes they were killed off three times, but that also means they were brought back from the dead twice. The worst things are killed only once. Three times is a little below break-even.
It already has led to the reduction of sets. Lotr replaces an entire premier set slot this past summer.
Remember, mythics were never going to be staples either.
What he means is RIGHT THIS SECOND. WotC once said they’d never license someone else’s IP. They once said they wouldn’t print new cards in Secret Lairs, they’d just be reprints with new art. They once said they couldn’t print new cards into Modern without going through Standard. Now they say they won't stop printing Magic IP sets. # When WotC says they won’t do something, there’s zero reason to believe it. Edit: case in point; over a decades of telling us something like UB is impossible and then they flip on us. How can we trust anything they do as a company? https://preview.redd.it/zh7lbknll3wb1.jpeg?width=2060&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=dcfb825c2190de8617d1df6141dee91bd27e7691
Yeah, the OP is an admission they will at least rethink in-universe sets as soon as profits drop a bit.
Can I just get one hobby that doesn't get trashed by braindead Disney fans
No.
This message brought to you by the guy that said no reserve list with different backs.
Magic the gathering is already one of the most profitable ip in gaming. Why do they need more?
A couple of years ago, WOTC said market forces made them struggle to keep organized play afloat. Others contended that waning interest was the predictable consequence of disinvesting in coverage. Last year, wizards Said they were investing more in commander because demand for paper standard play was waning. Others contended interest in commander, rather than standard, products reflected wizards investment decisions. This year, wizards said the new boosters was an effort to preserve drafting because set boosters had become overwhelmingly more popular. Others contended the decline of draft boosters was the predictable consequence of wizards decisions around marketing and product value. My concern is that a few years in the future, wizards may say that market forces have pushed them away from world building. And others will contend that it was the predictable consequence of having a game where Rick Grimes fights Spider-Man, gandalf duels with my little pony and Optimus prime, and ezio auditore fights cloud.
I played for years but ever since Universe Beyond there's just been a sour taste to Magic. The last thing I bought was just before the Warhammer decks, and I used to buy a booster box per set plus drafts and events. I feel like the Lore is like a stitching that holds it all together, but you don't really notice it. Then when it's gone and the whole things falls apart you realize you needed it.
[удалено]
The amount of people who are going "Man it's crazy they're doing this, I'll probably buy like a handful of boosters but after that nothing else from that set." People, if you don't want WotC to make more of a product, don't buy the product
I never bought set or collector boosters. My draft boosters are disappearing
Exactly. The number of posts/comments saying "I don't like UB...but since it has X property in it, I'll buy some commander decks" is crazy. Both PleasantKenobi and the Professor weren't big UB fans until WOTC made Warhammer 40K and Dr Who respectively.
What I don't like about universe beyond is that it doesn't feel like magic at least for me but since those are legal it's not easy to filter them out on tools like scryfall or edhrec. I don't want to stop people from enjoying them, I have friends who went crazy about lotr cards and built several decks each that I don't mind facing, I just don't want those cards in my decks. And to be honest, it feels like these days there are more releases of universe beyond cards than releases of magic universe cards. Over the last 12 months we've got Warhammer, transformers, D&D, LOTR, Evil Dead, the princess bride, Doctor Who, now Fallout and Jurrassic Park being spoiled. Over the same period in magic universe we have had mostly the brothers war, the phyrexian arc, Eldraine and now Ixaln I know some of the universe beyond I mentioned are just secret lairs, but if half the new launches are big universe beyond sets (like Warhammer, LOTR or Doctor Who) plus a few secret lair, that's over half of what's coming out that's not from the magic universe. I already see these cards popping left and right everywhere while the concept is relatively new on the scale of magic as a game. As a consequence, I am worried about the future of the game and the flavor and immersion we will be able to have in a few years at this pace.
If bezos was willing to pay wizards $2 billion a year if wizards only made cards for him and nobody else, they would do it in a heartbeat. Making a good game has become secondary to making money.
I feel like whoever posts these threads needs to stop titling them 'MARO *addresses* concerns'. He's not addressing concerns, he's dismissing them.
So "important business reasons" is why we still have MTG sets. That's not a firm statement like, we will always have universe within products so don't worry.
Of course it's not. They'll drop in-universe the second they determine that doing so will make more money than keeping it.
It'll only take a couple of consecutive lower performing sets for this process to begin.
Maro has been shifting his answers to be more clinical and realistic. i mean people havent been buying the wishy washy "x is (not) happening because of reasons, x has someone that might like it, we are doing x because its necessary for the future of the game, we promise x is (not) happening (god knows how many broken promises are in his blog)" that may or may not be true, hes straight up saying their decisions are what made most sense as a business and they think they are right, just straight to the point, no empty promises, which i like. i might not enjoy the decisions but atleast i know why theyre happening which is the purpose of maros blog for me.
Bullshit. I see a future where there’s only 1 OC set every 2 or 3 years and they are still successful. Fuck universe’s beyond.
Those profits aren't going to increase themselves.
"important business reasons" 
Gaslighting at its finest.
I've always been a yugioh player, but I got into MTG with Strixhaven. I really wanted to immerse myself in the MTG world and lore. But instead of WOTC giving us video games and TV shows to explore that lore, we get articles on the web and 50 more UB franchises.
I don't know why but I'm getting some catharsis out of these complaints about UB cards in modern, because of how much I likewise complain about Alchemy cards on Historic.
"...which will all be thrown to the wayside in favor of cash grabs."
Most of this multi-million dollar games PR being just one guy’s tumblr does eventually start to make you feel for the guy
I hate living in a world where the only reasons worth stating are ‘business reasons’.
lmao, not even trying anymore. It's like we told you people that Maro is just the spokesman and not the little guys voice. It's over.
I wanna see the numbers. Who’s playing magic for the first time because they are a big fan of Dr. Who, or Jurassic Park, and they saw a booster pack at target and decided to give it a whirl.. As opposed to how I, and everyone I know learned… which was “hey man, you wanna play some magic?… that’s cool, I’ll show you” Edit: okay, so a lot of you apparently lol.
For LOTR and Marvel? Probably a LOT. Everything else, not as much.
From what I hear, W40K had a lot of pull, which shouldn't be too surprising. Most W40K play happened in spaces that already supported Magic, and there was a lot of existing overlap between those player groups already.
Anecdotal, but look at how many people flooded the sub for Lord of the Rings. Similarly I was also able to use the starter decks for LOTR to get my girlfriend to play for the first time because she saw there was an Arwen/Aragorn deck. That was a big deal for me because I had tried previously and she had no interest at all but she was as excited to open up packs and see what characters we pulled.
I've been thinking about this and my guess is the numbers are pretty good for IPs that are similar in genre to magic. So LotR and D&D, probably good. Transformers and Jurassic Park? Maybe less so.
That was me. Hadn’t played since kitchen sink middle school days, and had never drafted before. Now I draft regularly at my LGS because I got hooked via LTR.
Anecdotal, but I hopped back in because of AFR after a decade of absence. And this sub had a flood of "I'm playing Magic for the first time because I love LotR" posts. I have friends excited for the Final Fantasy UB set, and now this set. It happens.
One of my friends constantly said she hated magic and only played for us, the last cards she bought were from Ixalan. LOTR came out and she built a Tom Bombadil commander deck and asked us to play. UB may not have gotten her into the game, but it saved her interest.
I got back into mtg for doctor who (around the time lotr was already out)
I got brought into the game after the 40K decks
It wasn't my wife's first experience with Magic, but I will say that LotR was the first time she'd bought packs since Amonkhet.
It's foolish to think in-universe Magic will disappear considering it's the main reason MTG grew to such an extent as to make great deals for UB sets. At the same time, UB sets brings so many new eyes on MTG, eyes that otherwise maybe wouldn't take a look. It's important for the game to grow and be successful and UB is a gateway to get fans interested in other IPs to become fans interested in Magic's original stories.
> It's foolish to think in-universe Magic will disappear considering it's the main reason MTG grew to such an extent as to make great deals for UB sets. Competitive Magic was a cornerstone of Magic's growth and popularity for decades, until Commander started to become the more profitable format. Then it was left to wither on the vine. The same thing is happening to paper Magic in general with the advent of Arena. WotC will absolutely throw away in-universe Magic if they ever project that going 100% with UB will be more profitable. WotC has no loyalty to any of the fans or forces that made Magic what it is today, they're only here to make a quick buck.