Community

This thread is for discussion of this weeks's Feature Article, which goes live Monday morning on magicthegathering.com.

"His identity is secret for now, but we will learn what role he has to play in the fate of Innistrad very soon."

*scrolls down*

..... 

I'm pretty sure there is a planeswalker other than Sorin in Dark Ascension.

My money is on Tevesh-Szat.

Jan 1, 2012 -- 9:36PM, Nakat wrote:

My money is on Tevesh-Szat.

"Having my spark purged to seal the Madara rift, and my body torn apart by the [tidal forces at the event horizon of said] rift was only a setback!"

They think things are bad now... just wait till their literally angelic Avacyn descends from the heavens looking decidedly black-aligned... although we have been due for a black-aligned good guy, so maybe she'll be nicer than I think.

But yeah, getting a backstory article before previews was a nice surprise. :D

Jan 1, 2012 -- 9:12PM, PhageRules1 wrote:

"His identity is secret for now, but we will learn what role he has to play in the fate of Innistrad very soon."

*scrolls down*

..... 

My thoughts as well.

But still, nice article with a lot of really good images. So yeah, it was worth it.

All this information about how things are getting worse for the humans of Innistrad might be a bit more suspenseful if we didn't already know Avacyn is coming back (possibly not exactly to fix everything, but certainly to put an end of some sort to the current state of affairs).  The past three years have been increasingly proving that Wizards does NOT have any idea how to build anticipation.

Finally, there is another planeswalker .... His identity is secret for now,

No it's not, not even a little.  Seriously, Doug, do you even read the website you're writing for?  It was announced in plain English that Sorin would be in this set more than a month ago.  You're really embarassing yourself with these constant displays of ignorance (many of which have been present in the column, like when you answered a letter about darksteel and said that there had never been an answer to how it was made when one had long ago been established in a source that would not have been hard to find).  Maybe you have too many responsibilities in your position and just don't have enough hours in the day to attend to them all.

Also it sounds like they're hinting at the use of some kind of "gravekicker" ability in this set.

I don't care what card has that crazy ghost-pirate and ghost-Conquistidors art (the Peter Mohrbacher image), I want a foil playset of it.

The Karl Kopinski art of the militia dude decapitating a zombie is awesome too, makes me think of Warhammer and the Empire Free Companies (which Kopinski did a lot of artwork for as well).

Innistrad may very be my favourite set in a long while, if only for the fantastic level of artwork. MOAR PWEASE. 

I love how the flavor of the set mechanics are being hinted at before the spoiling of actual mechanics. 

Fail at secret keeping XD. Otherwise an interesting piece with beautiful art.

Felt more like an ad than an article.

Although, a pretty good ad.

I hope the card with that guy with the eyepatch fits well in my pirate deck =)

Also, the art about destroying the church and "Statues of the beloved archangel are found toppled, not by the random attacks of rampaging werewolves, but by despondent humans." is a lot like en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iconoclasm which is pretty fitting for the setting. Awesome flavor all around, here's hoping for as little lamers like Balefire Dragon as possible.  

Now that I re-read it, it seems that "His identity is secret now, but we will learn what role he has to play in the fate of Innistrad very soon." means "Up to now, nobody in Innistrad knows about him or what he has to do with anything", not "The audience doesn't know this planeswalker will be in Dark Ascension."

they'll pull a marvelous land of oz and reveal that sorin is actualy avacyn who had been transformed into a man by an evil power (griselbrand?), and once that evil power is defeated (by liliana?) the spell will wear off and sorin will become avacyn again.

Pretty sure we have our art for Faithless Looting in the seventh image down (Gabor Szikszai).

I for one think that a Black/White Sorin would be absolutely amazing... maybe Solar flare might work so i can stop kidding myself as an Aggro player and play some type of control

"Where do you turn when the horrors of your waking life surpass your worst nightmares?

How do you pray when you're not sure the angels have even been listening?

What do you do when the last sanctuary is breached, the last holy symbol loses its shine, and the last candle flickers out?"

I grab my Phoenixes and Snapcasters, load up on burn and counters, and BEAT THE FLARG out of the Zombie Werewolves!

Did anyone else get really excited by the references to the unearth-like mechanic that MaRo implied was in this set?

"Now even the bonds of death no longer hold. Apparently slain werewolves have begun to stagger back to their feet, their hunger only renewed by their seeming destruction. Geists return after being exorcised by the clerics' most powerful banishment spells. Vampires laugh off stakes and fire, rising in spite of every trick and country secret known to kill them."

There's no way that Kev Walker zombie doesn't have this mechanic. 

I don't get it.
"The horrors of Innistrad have learned the weakness of their prey."

The weakness was that human defences were worth nothing, and just walkin in and doing whatever they feel like is really easy?

I am somewhat hoping that this set which is focusing on the "Horror's" of innistrad, would have a few more Horror cards.


Maybe even one horror tribal card to be nice?

Jan 2, 2012 -- 5:07AM, Shiny_Umbreon wrote:

Now that I re-read it, it seems that "His identity is secret now, but we will learn what role he has to play in the fate of Innistrad very soon." means "Up to now, nobody in Innistrad knows about him or what he has to do with anything", not "The audience doesn't know this planeswalker will be in Dark Ascension."

Well, that doesn't quite jive either, since the Markov bloodline is not exactly a secret to the people of Innistrad. True, Sorin himself hasn't been home in a while, but I don't think we can quite make the leap from there to no one from Innistrad knows about him.

Jan 2, 2012 -- 12:12PM, Tap4Mana wrote:

Jan 2, 2012 -- 5:07AM, Shiny_Umbreon wrote:

Now that I re-read it, it seems that "His identity is secret now, but we will learn what role he has to play in the fate of Innistrad very soon." means "Up to now, nobody in Innistrad knows about him or what he has to do with anything", not "The audience doesn't know this planeswalker will be in Dark Ascension."

Well, that doesn't quite jive either, since the Markov bloodline is not exactly a secret to the people of Innistrad. True, Sorin himself hasn't been home in a while, but I don't think we can quite make the leap from there to no one from Innistrad knows about him.

Consider that Sorin has been 'walking for centuries, not just a few years or so. He's quite old. It may be that the current spate of vampires are way too young to actually remember him. He may also be one of the progenitors of the Markov line, rather than just one of its errant scions. So, no one alive may remember him much at all.

"With the exception of the elder dragon Nicol Bolas, the vampire Sorin Markov is older than all other planeswalkers described here—older than all of them combined. His multiple millennia have brought him detachment and easy confidence. Unlike Bolas, Sorin doesn't concern himself with gathering power or control. He is content to follow his whims, even when those whims are cruel or deadly."

That is a quote from the Planeswalker page, it's not as though we don't know of Sorin Markov, we don't know about Sorin.

He is a very strange character, why would such a dark soul attempt to seal away the Eldrazi when he could have just walked away from the plane and had nothing to do with it, yet he even returned to the plane when the Eldrazi were released. Sorin's spark may have ignited as a direct result of becoming a vampire, maybe at one point he was a human fighting these same horrors, but he is undoubtedly far older than any creature that inhabits Innistrad, and that includes Avacyn.

Can't wait to see what happens!

I want the card for that first image! I don't care! I want it. 

Jan 2, 2012 -- 1:53PM, koRnygoatweed wrote:

"With the exception of the elder dragon Nicol Bolas, the vampire Sorin Markov is older than all other planeswalkers described here—older than all of them combined. His multiple millennia have brought him detachment and easy confidence. Unlike Bolas, Sorin doesn't concern himself with gathering power or control. He is content to follow his whims, even when those whims are cruel or deadly."

That is a quote from the Planeswalker page, it's not as though we don't know of Sorin Markov, we don't know about Sorin.

He is a very strange character, why would such a dark soul attempt to seal away the Eldrazi when he could have just walked away from the plane and had nothing to do with it, yet he even returned to the plane when the Eldrazi were released. Sorin's spark may have ignited as a direct result of becoming a vampire, maybe at one point he was a human fighting these same horrors, but he is undoubtedly far older than any creature that inhabits Innistrad, and that includes Avacyn.

Can't wait to see what happens!

I thought it was mentioned in a recent Savor the Flavor that Sorin grandfather is actually still the head of the Markov line at this point. 

Jan 2, 2012 -- 11:06AM, Mown wrote:

I don't get it.
"The horrors of Innistrad have learned the weakness of their prey."

The weakness was that human defences were worth nothing, and just walkin in and doing whatever they feel like is really easy?

Think of it as "they've learned how weak their prey truly is."

Sorin being a BW planeswalker in this set would actually be pretty sick.

I haven't gone too deep into the lore/flavor around the planeswalkers, but from what I've seen/heard, Sorin doesn't seem THAT bad.

However, I could be horribly mistaken by saying that xD

He could help the humans based off of one of his "whims" too ;P
Something like, "Vampires nowadays, I tell ya. Back in my day..." *Sorin's vengeance straight into Olivia's heart*

Also, the first piece of art looked like something of "mythic" quality A legendary creature, perhaps?

Jan 2, 2012 -- 12:12PM, Tap4Mana wrote:

Jan 2, 2012 -- 5:07AM, Shiny_Umbreon wrote:

Now that I re-read it, it seems that "His identity is secret now, but we will learn what role he has to play in the fate of Innistrad very soon." means "Up to now, nobody in Innistrad knows about him or what he has to do with anything", not "The audience doesn't know this planeswalker will be in Dark Ascension."

...Sorin himself hasn't been home in a while, but I don't think we can quite make the leap from there to no one from Innistrad knows about him.

"A while" is quite the understatement when it has been a couple of millenia. I think it's identity as in personality and motivations rather than his name. Did they mention anything about Sorin's major effects on Innistrad before? "His past is woven with the history of this world" Also, I know he's old, but is he really older than Avacyn??

 
Well, 75% of Jason Chan's art is Rares and Mythics.

Jan 1, 2012 -- 9:36PM, Nakat wrote:

My money is on Tevesh-Szat.

...And so it begins.



In before someone says Urza.

Clearly, this is Thomil's doing.

Jan 2, 2012 -- 2:59PM, TobyornotToby wrote:

Jan 2, 2012 -- 1:53PM, koRnygoatweed wrote:

"With the exception of the elder dragon Nicol Bolas, the vampire Sorin Markov is older than all other planeswalkers described here—older than all of them combined. His multiple millennia have brought him detachment and easy confidence. Unlike Bolas, Sorin doesn't concern himself with gathering power or control. He is content to follow his whims, even when those whims are cruel or deadly."

That is a quote from the Planeswalker page, it's not as though we don't know of Sorin Markov, we don't know about Sorin.

He is a very strange character, why would such a dark soul attempt to seal away the Eldrazi when he could have just walked away from the plane and had nothing to do with it, yet he even returned to the plane when the Eldrazi were released. Sorin's spark may have ignited as a direct result of becoming a vampire, maybe at one point he was a human fighting these same horrors, but he is undoubtedly far older than any creature that inhabits Innistrad, and that includes Avacyn.

Can't wait to see what happens!

I thought it was mentioned in a recent Savor the Flavor that Sorin grandfather is actually still the head of the Markov line at this point. 

Ya, after I typed this I did some reading you appear to be correct, Edgar Markov, Sorin's grandfather is still the head of the Markov bloodline... I find that a bit troubling, they went out of their way to note Sorin's age only to find out his grandfather is still alive? That's not very flavorful at all...

Sorin is definitely in Dark Ascension, but I don't think this paragraph is referring to Sorin.

Finally, there is another planeswalker whose presence will impact—and already has extensively impacted—the tale of Innistrad. His past is woven with the history of this world, and his return after an extended absence will uncover long-buried secrets. Although his humanity was cast off long ago, his purpose on Innistrad will reveal surprising allegiances. His identity is secret for now, but we will learn what role he has to play in the fate of Innistrad very soon.

Was Sorin ever human? If Sorin's grandfather was the head of the Markov bloodline of vampires, surely that implies Sorin was born a vampire. Therefore I find it somewhat plausible this paragraph is referring to some other once-human 'walker.

Of course, it could be just sloppy writing, or cleverly tricksy writing, or some other dodge. But you'd have thought that the author would know that Sorin's face has been plastered across DA ads for months. 

I know world building isn't easy, but there's one logical flaw that bugs me most: writers being too generous with life spans.

So Sorin has been around for "multiple millennia". Ok, he's a Walker and would have found more than enough diversion to keep him from being bored to death, granted. But his grandfather, an ordinary vampire unable to die of age, is still sitting around in his barony? For even more than multiple millennia? And all the townsfolk around him are still fighting with pitchforks? Gimme a break...

It's like expecting humanity to have found nothing better to do than building pyramids after 4,000 years.

Jan 2, 2012 -- 9:32PM, Qmark wrote:

Clearly, this is Thomil's doing.

This is the third time in two days that I've seen someone namedrop Thomil. Is Thomil a thing now? Can we make it a thing?

@Jakusotsu:

Is it really that odd? How do you feel about Dracula, in comparison? Keep in mind that the citizens of Innistrad are living in a literal, externally enforced Dark Age, and that, well, immortality is awesome, so I don't see why A. Innistrad should be more developed or why B. Grandfather Markov should be particularly discontent with his existence. I honestly don't understand your criticism. Just what don't you like here?

@alextfish:

He has been implied to be previously human, yes. The details are still pretty unclear, though.


It's also worth noting that we know nothing about the time spans involved here. Grandfather Markov could be 50 years older than Sorin, for all we know, rather than the further centuries that some of you seem to be assuming.

Jan 3, 2012 -- 6:38AM, Jakusotsu wrote:

I know world building isn't easy, but there's one logical flaw that bugs me most: writers being too generous with life spans.

So Sorin has been around for "multiple millennia". Ok, he's a Walker and would have found more than enough diversion to keep him from being bored to death, granted. But his grandfather, an ordinary vampire unable to die of age, is still sitting around in his barony? For even more than multiple millennia? And all the townsfolk around him are still fighting with pitchforks? Gimme a break...

It's like expecting humanity to have found nothing better to do than building pyramids after 4,000 years.

Who says that he was born/created during the Middle Ages equivalent on Innistrad? Maybe he was a caveman who was turned into one of the very first vampires and Innistrad has progressed technologically since.

Jan 3, 2012 -- 8:17AM, KeeperofManyNames wrote:

Is it really that odd? How do you feel about Dracula, in comparison? Keep in mind that the citizens of Innistrad are living in a literal, externally enforced Dark Age, and that, well, immortality is awesome, so I don't see why A. Innistrad should be more developed or why B. Grandfather Markov should be particularly discontent with his existence. I honestly don't understand your criticism. Just what don't you like here?

What I don't like is the "multiple millennia" thing. We can't even start to imagine what an awfully long time that is. Dracula doesn't even come close.

True, the current crop of Innistrad citizens are much to busy fighting their hardships to develop properly, but these circumstances couldn't have lasted for even one millennium. Either Avacyn was strong enough to give them some shelter or the monsters would have quickly gotten the better of them. But as occamsrazorwit says...

Jan 3, 2012 -- 10:25AM, occamsrazorwit wrote:

Who says that he was born/created during the Middle Ages equivalent on Innistrad? Maybe he was a caveman who was turned into one of the very first vampires and Innistrad has progressed technologically since.

That's a fair point. But the name Edgar Markov implies a decent level of civilization, unless he adopted it later. Whatever the case, I don't envy the (un-)life the creative staff painted for him.

Edit: Oh, and by the way, immortality is far from awesome. Read here:
www.cracked.com/article_18708_5-reasons-...

Jan 3, 2012 -- 10:25AM, occamsrazorwit wrote:

Who says that he was born/created during the Middle Ages equivalent on Innistrad? Maybe he was a caveman who was turned into one of the very first vampires and Innistrad has progressed technologically since.

Dominaria, Ravnica, and I'm sure there are others where it's explicitly stated people have stayed somewhere around the middle ages for millennia.

...because progressing any farther than some bastard lovechild of Clive Barker and Steampunk just isn't "Magical" enough for Magic.

Jan 3, 2012 -- 1:41PM, occamsrazorwit wrote:

I know that the goblins have cannons but has anyone in Magic even wielded guns yet? It's not that big a leap from cannons...

Guns were all over the place in Portal Second Age.  The "fantasy purist gestapo" raised one hell of a [crap]storm over it, too.

Fun times.

Jan 3, 2012 -- 1:41PM, occamsrazorwit wrote:

Jan 3, 2012 -- 1:03PM, TobyornotToby wrote:

Jan 3, 2012 -- 10:25AM, occamsrazorwit wrote:

Who says that he was born/created during the Middle Ages equivalent on Innistrad? Maybe he was a caveman who was turned into one of the very first vampires and Innistrad has progressed technologically since.

 

Dominaria, Ravnica, and I'm sure there are others where it's explicitly stated people have stayed somewhere around the middle ages for millennia.

Well, Ravnica was steam-punk, as Qmark stated, with their interior plumbing, zepellins, etc. But seriously, they haven't progressed from the Middle Ages in millenia?! Even with the help of magic?! Seems that everyone in the Magicverse is pretty stupid. I know that the goblins have cannons but has anyone in Magic even wielded guns yet? It's not that big a leap from cannons...

More playing Devil's Advocate than disagreeing but...

It's possible that the reason they aren't technologically advanced is due to magic rather than in spite of it.  I mean, if you could Victim of Night or Brimstone Volley someone, why would you need a gun?  It may be that there have been huge advancements in magic rather than other technologies.  Maybe back in the day someone discovered a simple spell like shock but after so many years they can now cast Blasphemous Act s or something around those lines.

Just food for thought. 

Compare the Roman Empire circa 100 BCE to that same region in, say, early 1800 CE. Now tell me again why two millenia would result in staggering changes? You're basically taking the explosive expansion of technology in the last century in what is frankly a relatively localized area and applying it to a completely different civilization that doesn't even exist. It really seems like you're falling into the tried and true Magic fan tradition of finding crap to complain about, presumably because you're just too happy with life and need something to bring you down. Like mortality? Hm.

And that Cracked article, besides being, you know, a Cracked article is pretty idiotic on a number of levels. It's easy to rationalize how bad immortality would be when you can't get it. It's a lot harder to work towards it.

Jan 3, 2012 -- 1:19PM, Qmark wrote:

...because progressing any farther than some bastard lovechild of Clive Barker and Steampunk just isn't "Magical" enough for Magic.

Oh yes Magic is awesome the way it is and we don't want to have it any other way. But we do need to be honest and accept it is a plothole like Jakusotsu claims. A minor plothole, one we can live with, but a plothole nonetheless. 

Curious that out of the dozen or so planes we've seen in the past twenty years, only one fifth of one plane seems to have progressed beyond "crapping in the woods", eh?

Really, we just need a plane that isn't presented as "Yet another Crapsack World".

Jan 3, 2012 -- 4:53PM, Qmark wrote:

Curious that out of the dozen or so planes we've seen in the past twenty years, only one fifth of one plane seems to have progressed beyond "crapping in the woods", eh?

Really, we just need a plane that isn't presented as "Yet another Crapsack World".

According to MaRo, Mirrodin counts as Magic's science-fiction plane, but I have issues with that :/

It's a very interesting discussion, and I too would like to see some technological advancement in a Block every now and then, but there's a reason we likely never will. Far too many people consider "fantasy" to mean "medieval with magic". You can only defy expectations so much before you're just annoying your audience, and it would very likely cross the line to have a more modern-esque setting in Magic. After all, Fantasy is a form of escapism, and it's harder to escape from day to day life when it's staring you in the face.

Now, I'd like to propose a couple of reasons to justify the choice to only visit medieval-period settings. First, as has been pointed out, is that the existence of magic would change the way things progress. Technology advances to fulfill a need. When a mage can just concentrate on some lands she's visited and do mostly the same things we can do with all of our modern technology, then the residents of that world don't have much drive to advance beyond the most rudimentary tech.
Not everyone has access to magic, granted, but it only takes a few mages to fulfill the roles a society needs. A mage to train gryphons or other flying creatures for travel (such as the zeppelids in Ravnica); a mage to redirect a water source for plumbing and drinking, or other uses such as an energy source; a mage to enchant stones with fire magic for indoor heating; etc. A minority of the populace can use magic, but they can market it as a good or service and the rest of the population can benefit from it.

Secondly, the Multiverse could be filled with technologically advanced planes. Even the planes we've visited in the past could be technologically advanced at some point in their lifespan. But we don't visit planes in any semblance of chronological order. The reason we keep seeing planes in their medieval period is because that's the time period in which we visit them. They could definitely advance beyond that level of technology in the future; we just won't see them do so.

Jan 3, 2012 -- 2:19PM, Demento_Recraves wrote:

Jan 3, 2012 -- 1:41PM, occamsrazorwit wrote:

Jan 3, 2012 -- 1:03PM, TobyornotToby wrote:

Jan 3, 2012 -- 10:25AM, occamsrazorwit wrote:

Who says that he was born/created during the Middle Ages equivalent on Innistrad? Maybe he was a caveman who was turned into one of the very first vampires and Innistrad has progressed technologically since.

 

Dominaria, Ravnica, and I'm sure there are others where it's explicitly stated people have stayed somewhere around the middle ages for millennia.

Well, Ravnica was steam-punk, as Qmark stated, with their interior plumbing, zepellins, etc. But seriously, they haven't progressed from the Middle Ages in millenia?! Even with the help of magic?! Seems that everyone in the Magicverse is pretty stupid. I know that the goblins have cannons but has anyone in Magic even wielded guns yet? It's not that big a leap from cannons...

More playing Devil's Advocate than disagreeing but...

It's possible that the reason they aren't technologically advanced is due to magic rather than in spite of it.  I mean, if you could Victim of Night or Brimstone Volley someone, why would you need a gun?  It may be that there have been huge advancements in magic rather than other technologies.  Maybe back in the day someone discovered a simple spell like shock but after so many years they can now cast Blasphemous Act s or something around those lines.

Just food for thought. 

You still build a steam engine (they ride around places in things, right?), devise alternative fuels (they have to keep warm and can't just clear cut the plane bare of woodland, right?), develop new alloys to make weapons with (weapons are used in Innistrad, right?).

Note that gunpowder in THIS world was not developed to enable warfare, but rather for entertainment, just as the steam engine and various other Industrial Age devices were developed in realms where it seems "magic" might have little to do with things. There are no tilling machines, presses, steam works, etc. on Innistrad, and it's apparently been that way for (as they say) millennia. Ravnica has been on the verge of leaving Victorianism, with its engines and machines and whatnot, for 10,000 years, and with a disenfranchised unguilded realm there should be plenty of room for culture to force development of means to travel or fight that are different from the magic-wielders. The scope of their reticence to leave their "bubble of time" boggles the mind.

The problem stems from the absence in the framework of the story of a sense of real time, that when you walk back merely 1,000 years you go from now to the Dark Ages where the most complex machine for half of a millennium was a cross-bow, or trebuchet, while another thousand years means the most complex machine may have been the water clock, or a trireme. Another, and we're approaching the rise of Alexander, where they still used bronze weapons. Magic, in all it's troping of fantasy, avoids this by pretending planes can be severed from time somehow, that innovation can be stifled by some arcane element. It works on Ravnica, where the guilds control invention and such, and the needs of the people for travel and warfare are met with products suited to their needs; but not so much as on Zendikar, where no magic really suppressed anything except other magic, and in this case, technology prospered in one area (equipment, gear, etc.) but not in others.

This is a major failing for Creative (just as this site fails at the intended big reveal when all signs point to the bottom of that page).

History is not a bubble, it moves on, and people, not whole civilizations, create and expand on technology or the sake of very small, mundane things. As humans, inventiveness and a desire to make our lives easier would have produced machines to help at the harvets, process textiles, produce printed works and thus expand knowlege, increasing the ease of daily life, expanding daily hours for personal time, allowed the invention of non-woody fuels for lighting, producing a need to expand mining, which creates the steam engine, which can then be adapted to replace or work alongside the horse, and so forth. It goes on. It's 1700s, guys, not some pox of a bubble!

but we couldn't bear the thought that our Savor the Flavor fans might have missed it

Oh sure. That's the reason.

Does anyone else think that the last picture might be a lich version of liliana?

Jan 3, 2012 -- 11:13AM, Jakusotsu wrote:

What I don't like is the "multiple millennia" thing. We can't even start to imagine what an awfully long time that is. Dracula doesn't even come close.

Dracula doesn't, but Imhotep sure does, as does Vandal Savage, and there are plenty of other examples.  They're not vampires, but they're not completely unrelatable god-beings either.  Vampire: the Masquerade postulates vampires older than Egypt and Babylon, and while those are monstrous and inhuman, the ones who lived in Egypt and Babylon aren't much different than those from just 200 years ago (more recently than that it's supposedly been the End Times and thus things have been changing faster and faster).

True, the current crop of Innistrad citizens are much to busy fighting their hardships to develop properly, but these circumstances couldn't have lasted for even one millennium. Either Avacyn was strong enough to give them some shelter or the monsters would have quickly gotten the better of them.

There's every reason to think Avacyn was enforcing stasis on the populace, refusing to allow them to develop.  After all, progress is blue, and blue is halfway to black; evolution is green, and green is halfway to red.  White is the color of unilateralism, purity and dogma.  Why would an ultra-powerful White-aligned angel, who has a huge politically powerful church keeping the populace's obedience through terror of the monsters which only the church can keep at bay, permit any real development?  She probably wants every generation of Innistradians to live functionally identical lives, honoring their ancestors and nurturing their children to follow their footsteps, identifying all but the most trivial degree of individualism and change as being the tools of evil and chaos trying to destroy her ideal society.  She's not quite to the point of wanting to freeze the whole planet in a block of ice to keep it perpetually unchanging (hey, someone did mention Tevesh Szat), but the planet is like an ant farm to her, she wants the citizens to stay behind the glass and keep shuffling around in the same little tunnels forever, so she can sit back and watch the hypnotic patterns of their tiny, pleasant-as-long-as-completely-contained lives.  If she saw the ants building up a hill of dirt that might eventually let them wedge open the lid of the tank and start crawling out into her nice, neat room, she'd certainly intervene to keep them where she thinks they belong, and she'd consider it an act of benevolence because she figures the cage is the ideal environment to keep them perfectly happy forever.

Edit: Oh, and by the way, immortality is far from awesome. Read here:
www.cracked.com/article_18708_5-reasons-...

That article is meant to point out several things that might go wrong, but it hardly guarantees they will; after all, with magic powers and an entire society of fellow immortals, most of these issues wouldn't imply.  (Also I think one of the 5 reasons was "you keep aging" and the vampires clearly don't have that problem, nor did planeswalkers when they were immortal.)

Thanks for all the input guys. Nice discussion.

Magic being at odds with technology is a classic trope which reminds me of this fine game:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcanum:_Of_Steamw...
Unfortunately it's a scenario which can't be entirely used for MTG unless the Tech faction won't appear on any cards (i.e. spells).

And about guns, don't forget Weatherlight whose crew was firing cannons all around.

It's not really about magic and technology being antagonistic.  It's about the seeming inability for Magic's cultures to substitute magic for technology.
Really, The Flinstones seem more socially advanced than Magic's usual settings, what with the elephant sink and bird telephone and such.  All we've really had that even looks to be past 1850 or so is that subplane where everyone is made out mercury or aluminum or something (and I guess that silly mech-thing Urza was driving around for awhile).

Even Ron Weasley had a flying car.

"Yeah, I get it, guys.  Another plane full of goblins/zombies/whatever.  Oh! We've stepped up to werevolves and vampires huh?  Way to totally expand the multivers, guys!"

Jan 3, 2012 -- 10:06PM, Sandwich_Man wrote:

but we couldn't bear the thought that our Savor the Flavor fans might have missed it

Oh sure. That's the reason.

We've seen that Beyer has been slipping for months, but only recently did we find out why - he's lead designer on M13.  That is more than a little exciting and I consider it a very adequate excuse for his recent poor performance as a flavor columnist

Jan 3, 2012 -- 10:11PM, HunterofWumpus wrote:

Does anyone else think that the last picture might be a lich version of liliana?

No.

Jan 3, 2012 -- 4:53PM, Qmark wrote:

Really, we just need a plane that isn't presented as "Yet another Crapsack World".

Agreed.  Alara was 3/5 paradise (by varying definitions) and only 2/5 crapsack at first, but that didn't last long, and otherwise Lorwyn was the last reasonably pleasant place we visited.  I would like to see the high-fantasy and super-weird worlds hinted at by such Future Sight cards as Second Wind , Arcanum Wings , the thing with Lady Farisa in the flavor text, Lucent Liminid , and on the weird side Yixlid Jailer and Lumithread Field .  Lots of amazing potential going to waste because Wizards refuses to mine this already mapped-out space, instead making up new planes that were never even hinted at before (although it's possible that Street Wraith , Grave Scrabbler , and perhaps even Lady Farisa were intended to represent Innistrad, since we know it was in the works at the time - Zendikar showed no such previews however, and Alara only the vaguest hint in the one Nacatl card, which in no way hinted at anything less or more than a full-on Aztec World).

Jan 3, 2012 -- 6:48PM, chronego wrote:

After all, Fantasy is a form of escapism, and it's harder to escape from day to day life when it's staring you in the face.

This in no way prevents urban fantasy genres such as World of Darkness and Unknown Armies, or for that matter the Marvel and DC superhero universes, from presenting a fantastic world which is called "21st Century Earth, Deluxe Edition" and providing many opportunities for escapism that are all the richer because we can recognize the reality in them.  IMO this is what made Ravnica far and away the best setting Magic has ever had - it was a highly urbanized, overpopulated, economically imbalanced environment that had a lot of the same problems as reality, but added a shiny fantasy veneer that didn't actually change that reality much except to exagerrate it - the rich were even more powerful because they were also wizards, the poor were even more oppressed to the point that murder was legal as long as the victim wasn't Guild-affiliated - it really was a dystopian vision of life in a megacity akin to NYC or Tokyo gone to extremes, and I loved it for that.  We could use another take on a similar concept one of these days - and while I don't know if I'd want to go quite that far, the sadly-deceased webcomic "Nascent" offered to explore the idea of what would happen if the real world (well, a version of the real world in which MTG didn't exist, as the author wanted to avoid any "Lovecraft meets Cthulhu" nonsense) gained access to the five colors of magic - you had a black-aligned corrupt corporate executive, a white medic in the Middle East, a red-aligned punk in Communist China who condemned his culture as "not worth saving" right as he gained the ability to breathe fire...it was fascinating stuff and I wish it had gone somewhere.

Technology advances to fulfill a need. When a mage can just concentrate on some lands she's visited and do mostly the same things we can do with all of our modern technology, then the residents of that world don't have much drive to advance beyond the most rudimentary tech.
Not everyone has access to magic, granted, but it only takes a few mages to fulfill the roles a society needs.

True up to a point, but if a small elite controls all of the vital functions, they wield disproportionate power and their enemies are going to start scheming ways to get along without them.  In order to justify the level of non-progress in most magic worlds, you have to do more than assume that wizards are substituting for technology - you have to assume that they're actively sabotaging it.  Not necessarily consciously - just the fact that magic is used might be enough to make science functionally impossible to rely on, because science is about measuring results and finding them consistent, and nearby magic users could unintentionally generate so many X-factors (cast a fireball and disturb wind currents for a mile around because you broke the laws of thermodynamics, that kind of thing) that scientists would find it impossible to draw any sensible conclusions from their experiments and would just give up.  Or at least would spew so much aether/phlogiston/imbalanced humors/spontaneous generation nonsense that they'd set science back as fast as it could advance, producing a perennial dark age in which everything you learn at 20 has been contradicted by the time you reach 40 (assuming you don't die of old age sooner than that).

Jan 3, 2012 -- 8:32PM, Qilong wrote:

but not so much as on Zendikar, where no magic really suppressed anything except other magic, and in this case, technology prospered in one area (equipment, gear, etc.) but not in others.

I figure that the reason Zendikar didn't advance was damn obvious - the ground kept getting up and walking away, or turning itself inside out, or floating off into the sky and sending you tumbling to your death, or just exploding.  It was not a safe plane; it's a wonder anyone managed to live there at all.  I figure that the land seemed to actively oppose efforts to explore it, presumably out of a subconscious effort to prevent anyone from figuring out how to wake the Eldrazi by exploring their ruins, but even far away from the ruins we saw that civilization could barely get off the ground.  My assumption is that if you tried to build a big university and do serious research, the land would actively target that area and destroy it specifically to stop humans from growing too effective at taming Nature.  Granted I may be attributing more volition to the land than it possessed even with dudes like Omnath involved, and attributing a green ethos even to the blue and black aligned parts of the land, but this did seem to be the best explanation - Zendikar will allow you to survive, just barely, but if you start getting uppity it will smack you down fast and hard, the way you or I would scratch an itch if it became too persistent to ignore.

As humans, inventiveness and a desire to make our lives easier would have produced machines to help at the harvets, process textiles, produce printed works and thus expand knowlege

Such accomplishments are probably invented over and over throughout the Multiverse, but lost just as quickly due to the struggles of nearby wizards, the marauding of monsters, and other such disruptions.  Like I said before, progress would falter as fast as it advanced; you can't build a pyramid when the stones of the base are being hauled away under you so fast that you can barely keep from falling to your death.

increasing the ease of daily life, expanding daily hours for personal time

Keep in mind that throughout the Dark Ages people were taught that luxury and sloth were deadly sins, that it was spiritually necessary to spend your whole life on toil and duty and prayer, that idle hands did the devil's work.  All that was without actual angels showing up and telling you these things, and actual demons showing up to avail themselves of any desires toward corrupt, self-indulgent behavior.  I see no reason why the average Dominian citizen would not view the idea of easy living and personal recreation as follies at best, quite possibly dangers to the health of the soul.  Being surrounded by crazy wizards and monsters would not tend to make people more sane and less superstitious.  I don't think the people of Magic's multiverse can be given as much credit for intelligence and stability as us clever monkeys; we've had the run of our planet to an extent that villagers like Hans and Saffi can't even imagine because they're too busy running from lhurgoyfs and revenants.

Jan 3, 2012 -- 10:11PM, HunterofWumpus wrote:

Does anyone else think that the last picture might be a lich version of liliana?

No.

Jan 4, 2012 -- 7:03AM, willpell wrote:

Agreed.  Alara was 3/5 paradise (by varying definitions) and only 2/5 crapsack at first, but that didn't last long, and otherwise Lorwyn was the last reasonably pleasant place we visited.  I would like to see the high-fantasy and super-weird worlds hinted at by such Future Sight cards as Second Wind , Arcanum Wings , the thing with Lady Farisa in the flavor text, Lucent Liminid , and on the weird side Yixlid Jailer and Lumithread Field .  Lots of amazing potential going to waste because Wizards refuses to mine this already mapped-out space, instead making up new planes that were never even hinted at before (although it's possible that Street Wraith , Grave Scrabbler , and perhaps even Lady Farisa were intended to represent Innistrad, since we know it was in the works at the time - Zendikar showed no such previews however, and Alara only the vaguest hint in the one Nacatl card, which in no way hinted at anything less or more than a full-on Aztec World).

You're thinking of Patrician's Scorn . I fully agree with this sentiment. I want to see something like the liquid plane of Iquatana ( Narcomeoba ). Screw the fact that water is Blue, since metal was colorless up to Mirrodin. I'm sure that their can be different liquid or gaseous  (the world above) representations of the color pie. There have been so many planes hinted at but never visited! Look at the planes from Planechase: Valla ( Immersturm ), Kaldheim ( Skybreen ), Ir ( Turri Island ), Moag ( Fields of Summer ), Wildfire ( Naar Isle ). F*cking Arkhos ( Lethe Lake ) where "day and night intermingle, creating a twilight in which one never knows what is dream and what is reality." As much as I loved New Phyrexia, I feel that it'll set a bad precedent for returning to planes and we'll bounce between the same six or seven planes for years to come.

I agree with the idea that Avacyn is suppressing her supplicants, but the fact that magic or some other force impedes technological progress should not mean that we'll never visit a plane technologically advanced. Also, I don't think magic has changed much in millenia either. It shouldn't be that hard to create magical connections between two objects that sound or light can travel through (telephone, radio, television) or put an oracle or intelligence spirit in a box and make it solve problems written in runes or something (computational machine).

Jan 4, 2012 -- 7:27AM, willpell wrote:

... I see no reason why the average Dominian citizen would not view the idea of easy living and personal recreation as follies at best, quite possibly dangers to the health of the soul.  Being surrounded by crazy wizards and monsters would not tend to make people more sane and less superstitious...

You have to remember that it's never the average citizen that creates progress. People like Newton and Tesla were one-of-kind semi-outcasts during their times. Plus, crazy wizards are more likely to create technology, and technological advancement would be more important to survival. Technology rises to fill a need and, in Magic, that need is survival. Plus, it's weird that everyone has made Ornithopter s in EVERY SINGLE CENTURY but nothing has advanced past Da Vinci era technology. Where are the Innistrad Ornithopters then??

Jan 4, 2012 -- 7:03AM, willpell wrote:

Jan 3, 2012 -- 10:06PM, Sandwich_Man wrote:

but we couldn't bear the thought that our Savor the Flavor fans might have missed it

Oh sure. That's the reason.

We've seen that Beyer has been slipping for months, but only recently did we find out why - he's lead designer on M13.  That is more than a little exciting and I consider it a very adequate excuse for his recent poor performance as a flavor columnist

Yeah, I get it. I'm fine with that. I just wish they'd actually tell us that instead of feeding us a line.

Jan 4, 2012 -- 7:03AM, willpell wrote:

I would like to see the high-fantasy and super-weird worlds hinted at by such Future Sight cards as Second Wind , Arcanum Wings , the thing with Lady Farisa in the flavor text, Lucent Liminid , and on the weird side Yixlid Jailer and Lumithread Field .

You chose some interesting examples there. A lot of them seem to have enchantment-related gimmicks, implying that they may be preprints from the same plane/block. A plane where enchantments are as commonplace as artifacts were on Mirrodin.

I can easily see Second Wind ,  Arcanum Wings ,  Lucent Liminid , and  Lumithread Field all being in the same block, along with a few others such as  Daybreak Coronet ,  Imperial Mask ,  Shapeshifter's Marrow ,  Spellweaver Volute ,  Bridge from Below ,  Witch's Mist ,  Emblem of the Warmind , and  Flowstone Embrace .

Jan 4, 2012 -- 7:27AM, willpell wrote:

or for that matter the Marvel and DC superhero universes

Now that you mention it, if they can do an entire plane based on where horror overlaps with fantasy, it could potentially be pretty great to see them do the same thing for the superhero genre.

Jan 4, 2012 -- 10:24PM, Sandwich_Man wrote:

... Bridge from Below ,  Witch's Mist ,  Emblem of the Warmind , and  Flowstone Embrace .

I don't know... Bridge from Below sounds Innistrad-y, Witch's Mist has a gelatinous Overmother (o_o) with weird flavor, and Flowstone Embrace is definitely from Dominaria/Rath. Could mean a return to Dominaria/Rath, which means we get one less new, unique plane.

Jan 4, 2012 -- 9:09AM, occamsrazorwit wrote:

Jan 3, 2012 -- 10:11PM, HunterofWumpus wrote:

I would like to see the high-fantasy and super-weird worlds hinted at by such Future Sight cards as Second Wind , Arcanum Wings , the thing with Lady Farisa in the flavor text, Lucent Liminid , and on the weird side Yixlid Jailer and Lumithread Field .  Lots of amazing potential going to waste because Wizards refuses to mine this already mapped-out space, instead making up new planes that were never even hinted at before.

You're thinking of Patrician's Scorn . I fully agree with this sentiment. I want to see something like the liquid plane of Iquatana ( Narcomeoba ). Screw the fact that water is Blue, since metal was colorless up to Mirrodin. I'm sure that their can be different liquid or gaseous  (the world above) representations of the color pie. There have been so many planes hinted at but never visited! Look at the planes from Planechase: Valla ( Immersturm ), Kaldheim ( Skybreen ), Ir ( Turri Island ), Moag ( Fields of Summer ), Wildfire ( Naar Isle ). F*cking Arkhos ( Lethe Lake ) where "day and night intermingle, creating a twilight in which one never knows what is dream and what is reality." As much as I loved New Phyrexia, I feel that it'll set a bad precedent for returning to planes and we'll bounce between the same six or seven planes for years to come.

Hear hear! I'd love to see another high fantasy or idyllic world. I enjoyed Lorwyn for the setting, and also Esper (although it was the only one of the five shards that was remotely interesting or innovative at all as far as I could tell). I'd love to see the worlds of almost all the cards quoted above (a generic wildfire plane I can probably live without).