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Didn't they say that staples and utility cards would never be printed at mythic...

We knew from the start that this would happen.

Sep 18, 2009 -- 5:23AM, TheGoldenVoid wrote:

So it looks like the 2 of the best chase rare cards in Zendikar are Mythic rares. That's just great, thanks. This really looks more and more like a cynical ploy to up secondary values and/or, dare I say, get more tix puchased in MtgO. Getting pretty fed up with this.

100% agreed.

I fully understand that, as a business, Wizards wants to sell more booster boxes, but I also think that this sales tactic of making utility cards profoundly more difficult to obtain (something they’ve previously promised they wouldn’t do) is myopic at best. Sure, it might create a short-term spike in booster sales, but it also fuels a lot of antipathy within the player base. If nothing else, this definitely creates a larger barrier to entry into competitive Magic, particularly since the target demographic seems to be young adults. That can’t possibly be good for the long-term health of the game.

(And, for whatever it’s worth, I say this as a person who has a lot of disposable income to spend on the game. I’m not complaining for myself.)

I agree with what's been said so far. There's another thing Maro said too: That they'd be reducing the number of cards they printed per year, as players said it was too much. Now, even ignoring the fact that Mythics sort of cancelled that out (after all, "too much" meant too much money, not "too many" cards to think about), less that a year later we have the announcement that there is going to be a new core set every year WITH NEW CARDS.

I don't know if we can blame Maro though. I get this sense that his corporate masters are the ones that want MOAR MONEY, and he he's the one that has to explain it. He goes along with it because he knows it would be worse if he wasn't there.

 Edit: When Maro says "If we want to stay competitive in attracting new players we have to keep up with the industry standards.", does anyone else get the feeling that he doesn't believe a word of that crap? Maro + Corporate BS don't mix.

Sep 18, 2009 -- 8:39AM, olstyn wrote:

I think we might as well just get used to the fact that this is how it is, and that Rosewater lied in the initial mythic announcement.

As usual, they wrote themselves an "out" into that announcement:

We want the flavor of mythic rare to be something that feels very special and unique. Generally speaking we expect that to mean cards like Planeswalkers, most legends, and epic-feeling creatures and spells. They will not just be a list of each set's most powerful tournament-level cards.

We've also decided that there are certain things we specifically do not want to be mythic rares. The largest category is utility cards, what I'll define as cards that fill a universal function. Some examples of this category would be cycles of dual lands and cards like Mutavault or Char.

Sep 18, 2009 -- 9:37AM, ForestDrake wrote:

As usual, they wrote themselves an "out" into that announcement:

We want the flavor of mythic rare to be something that feels very special and unique. Generally speaking we expect that to mean cards like Planeswalkers, most legends, and epic-feeling creatures and spells. They will not just be a list of each set's most powerful tournament-level cards.

We've also decided that there are certain things we specifically do not want to be mythic rares. The largest category is utility cards, what I'll define as cards that fill a universal function. Some examples of this category would be cycles of dual lands and cards like Mutavault or Char.

Oh, I fully realize they wrote an "out" in there, and I fully expected them to use it to violate the promise of the announcement at the time.  Sure, it was a carefully crafted lie, such that they can claim later that "technically," they weren't lying, but that doesn't change the fact that it was a blatant falsehood.