Community

Already sent this in the feedback form, but I figured I would share it here for extra visibility:

I have been an avid magic player and collector for over 11 years.  I am a die-hard collector of angel cards, with thousands of dollars in rare and hard to find angels, accumulated carefully over years.

I am very bothered by the low number of these promotional Helvault cards in existence (~300 of each jumbo foil, and ~3100 foil tokens). I attended a Helvault event, but it was not a 'premium' one, so I had no chance to receive these foil promos.

I had a nearly complete collection of every angel printed or misprinted, but now, there are foil jumbo cards that will be nearly impossible to obtain, as there are less copies of each foil jumbo angel than there are MTG angel collectors in my state alone! There are ZERO copies even for sale on the internet right now.

If this was the doing of your marketing department, I would deem this a failure. These premium Helvaults were not announced before-hand, so players could not have changed their purchasing behavior to Wizard's financial benefit (i.e. "What cool promos! I should go to the prerelease after all, so I have a chance at them!"). These cards aren't even sold by Wizards, so players cannot even PAY YOU for them if they wanted to.

All you've managed to do is shift money to third-party dealers as the owners of these rare treasures inevitably get ripped off, make an absurdly small and lucky part of your user-base happy, and alienate and devastate loyal fans like me.

Maybe this is a good time to quit collecting angels/MTG, since I'll never be able to have a truly complete angel collection after this point.

Hey WOTC, if you're reading this... Its like a Kid on Christmas Day, instead of getting a Toy they get a pair of socks. Like that what we really wanted, Had the Helvault been packed with boosters pack I would've been happy with that as well.

Hello WotC,

I realize I do not log in often. However, as a longtime consumer of your product, I have decided that it would be worthwhile to devote my precious time to providing you with feedback regarding the recent Helvault promotion.

You were lucky.

As bad as the reaction of the community is right now, it could have been a lot worse. Let us consider if the spoiled vault had been a premium one instead of the normal one. Keep in mind that the community had no reason to expect that the contents would not be the same in every Helvault. In such a scenario, last weekend would have been catastrophic. Helvault events would have sold out as everyone who normally would not attend a prerelease came out of the woodwork expecting to get a Judge foil. Imagine the pandemonium that would have ensued when the standard vaults were opened to reveal the mediocre contents within. I would not doubt that more than a few stores would have been accused of stealing "the good stuff" by those who were aware of the spoiled premium vault. The animosity and distrust that would have developed in such a situation far exceeds what is going on at this time.

I do not believe it is good policy to expose the WPN stores to that kind of risk. I do not believe that this sort of disparity in the promotional items distributed at events is good for the brand. Lastly, I do not believe the decision to even create premium Helvaults included enough consideration as to how customers receiving the non-premium Helvaults would react. I certainly hope steps are taken to avoid a repetition of this mistake in the future.

Regarding the actual contents of the standard Helvault:

Tokens: These are not exciting. Full art promos of the common angel and demon from the set would have been more exciting.

Oversized Magic Cards: These are useless, even to Commander players. If you must make oversized cards, please make them useful. For example, an "Innistrad" plane card or "Open the Helvault" scheme card would have been much more exciting and useful.

Dice: I understand other people like these, however I preferred the Ravnica-style dial counters. I hope those dial counters are brought back for Return to Ravnica.

Thank you for taking my feedback into consideration. I sincerely hope it provides some benefit to the planning of your future promotional events. Despite the negative reaction to this event, I do believe that the community in general does want WotC to succeed at making Magic the best game it can be. It is because of this that we become concerned when the company makes decisions that we believe might cause harm to the local game stores, the community of players, or the future of the game itself.