Community

Nov 21, 2012 -- 7:29AM, ChrisKool wrote:

Nov 20, 2012 -- 2:52PM, sneakattackkid wrote:

100CS = Commander at a tournament level and the format has failed.  Ultimately some formats are going to have a lot of players and some formats aren't.  Sorry you chose a format that doesn't.  That doesn't mean that WOTC should make the other formats worse to make yours better.

Extended, Modern, Classic, Legacy, 100 Card Singleton, Core Set Constructed, Standard Singleton, Old Blocks Block Constructed.

All of these formats have prospered at times while being unable to fire events at others. (Arguably, Modern has replaced Extended, but before it did, Extended was barely played off-season on MTGO.) Why did they succeed? Without tracking down sources and citing them, I would reckon greatly that it was a combination ot WotC incentives and player-base support. Without a way for a tournament organizer (which is akin to a PRE host) to promote and run events at the same level as the MTGO Scheduled Events, it is impossible to support any format at the semi-competitive level without WotC support.

What really irks me is that Eternal Magic is the cheapest I have ever seen it on Magic Online, *and* Legacy is still has a big paper following (even though fetches and dual lands are ridiculously high- the disparity much more making up for FoW's hefty MTGO pricetag). Sure, Eternal Magic has higher informational and monetary barriers to entry, but it also offers a very rich decision-making environment that cannot be rivaled by Standard or Limited. My only conclusion that these so-called failed formats are a result of poorly decided MTGO organized play initiatives with regard to Eternal Magic. It shouldn't be promoted the same as the formats that are leading to PTs and MOCSs; it needs its own, separate place in MTGO organized play.

Sneak, how does promoting something to support a different group of MTGO players hurt other formats? Most of these fringe communities are interconnected; Standard and its ilk won't hurt at all if there is a successful, competitive MTGO Eternal community.

There are definitely gaps, Chris.  I think were the biggest gap exists stands between WoTC's ability to devote the appropriate amount of time and effort to support those formats and the return on investment for doing so.  It is so very easy for us, the players and organizers to forget that like any business, sometimes you just can't spend time and effort on something which probably could use it when it could be spent more productively somewhere else.   And while I think everyone thinks that WoTC has a money tree that they shake everytime they want to whistle in resources, the are factually still limited in where they can spend time & money.  More specifically, the problem is on the time side of the equation =  because WoTC has already thrown a not-insiginificant amount of money, as already mentioned, at PREs.  It's one way in which they've shown they are able and willing to support, but it's also one way that's ben proven time and again to be a failure at format growth.

Please, don't get me wrong - I'm not an apologist.  I think that gap can be bridged, but realistically every way I can think of doing so would require WoTC to at least make a short-term leap in terms of time & effort that I'm almost 100% is not available - currently.  I would suggest that if they can EVER get a version of MTGO out that meets their standards and come remotely close to the user's expectations, there may be more time available, at which point, I suppose it will be a good time to start asking again.

My main concern, to be frank, is that left to it's own devices, these formats may lose all momentum.  That's montroulsly bad, because starting them up again from essentially nothing takes far more effort than at least greasing the wheel, so to speak.  I can really only comment on classic, which has been fortunate enough to have several people pushing ahead and keeping interest going, and I've only been too happy to help myself over the years.