MTG Salvation

Mark is at his best when he is editing other people's ideas, and at his worst when he is pressing for his own ideas. He's been responsible for a lot of design mistakes that came from him pushing things that her personally likes or chasing a challenge, but he's also been responsible for a lot of really well designed sets and was instrumental in defining the color pie and contributing a lot to the foundation that design is built on. His record has been a mixed bag, but I think he does the "Lead" part of his lead designer job well, and should step back more from the designer part, or let others have more veto power over his pet ideas. At least his mistakes come partially from genuine passion for the game, and aren't entirely just pushing power to sell packs short term.

Quote from Card Slinger J »

Unfortunately as long as people are stupid, policies need to be put in place assuming people are stupid. It's got nothing to do with shady business practices when it's got more to do with protecting the lowest common denominator. Each state is handling COVID-19 differently however each state isn't handling it intelligently, so Wizards of the Coast stepped in because they decided they didn't want their products associated with an outbreak. I do think that Double Masters, Mystery Booster, and Jumpstart completely devaluing the majority of Non-Reserve List cards that Local Game Stores need to make a profit from flipping card singles combined with low cash flow affecting their business during this pandemic sounds like a recipe for disaster because what good is keeping Paper Magic affordable If nobody has a place to play anymore? Organized Play for Paper Magic be damned.

Sure Local Game Stores are no longer able to run Organized Play events but that doesn't mean that they need to shutdown In-Store Play entirely for Casual players who just want to hangout with their friends and play EDH / Commander. What would give Wizards of the Coast the idea that the majority of Paper Magic players actually play at home over their LGS? I can understand If the LGS environment is toxic but that's just a false negative stereotype that EVERY LGS is like this when it isn't. Not every LGS has a loyal community (not online btw) that financially supports them especially when it's already difficult enough as it is to compete against online companies when they don't even have operational websites, no eBay accounts, or Social Media presence. Even If they do it increases online competition to the point where it's hard for these Local Game Stores to get noticed like on TCGPlayer.

This makes more sense.

I don't have a problem devaluing cards by printing them. The health of the game depends on accessibility, and for older formats and commander being too expensive is a bigger issue than LGS availability. Yes, LGS (and online stores like SCG) rely on the secondary market, buying cards at below market value and selling at a profit. The risk of that strategy is that it's speculation. Usually they make money from it, but there is always a risk that cards will drop in value, either due to rotation, the hot deck that needs it going out of fashion, or reprints. The LGS business model needs to adapt to where the secondary market is a supplement to their business model rather than an integral part of it. Not for any moral reason, but because doing so will make their businesses more stable and resilient to market shocks.

Why WotC thinks at home play is the majority: surveys. They do a fair amount of market research to determine how people play the game and what players like and want so they can target products to them. The reason you see premium products and stuff like that is because their market research told them a significant enough portion of the player base wants those products. You see the major commitment to EDH because they found it was the most popular format after 60 card casual, and they built brawl in the hopes of building on that. They know that at home play is still the most common way people engage with magic, with casual and EDH leading that. At home players tend to spend less on cards than FNM warriors, but there are more of them and they tend to buy packs. I think Wizards isnt about to abandon the LGS because they make money from them, tournament engagement increases the amount people spend on magic, and limited moves packs. Getting people who play at home into their local LGS makes wizards money by getting them to spend more. They want both market share and dollars per player, so both groups are important.

As for long term LGS viability, it was a struggle before COVID. Stores in big cities with a younger population do well, as do stores in college towns, because they have a large customer base to draw on. Stores in more rural areas, or smaller suburbs, struggle because there just aren't enough customers. You need a certain concentration of nerd culture involved people to serve for a nerd culture exclusive business to thrive, even when your pretty diversified within that culture and selling comics and games in addition to running DND campaigns Warhammer tourneys and Magic, Yu-Gi-Oh, and Pokemon events. I think a plausible business model for these areas where LGS struggle is to run it as a combination business with some other sort of thing, like a bowling alley or skating rink. Most such places have sizeable party rooms that can host events, and areas that usually have pool tables and arcade games that could be retrofitted as the sales floor for product. Or a diner, I have a couple in my area that have large banquet areas that they use to host gaming clubs during the day and are usually empty at night. And by gaming clubs, I mean just old people playing bridge and stuff. One even has an area thats basically a couple chairs and some decorations that's as large as the sales floor in most LGS and off to the side. Imagine running FNM and having players order their food from you instead of bringing McDonald's. There's potential here, it just requires innovation, something that has been really lacking in the LGS sector. It's still operating under the model that worked in the 90s,

Dear Christ, wtf do you mean WotC is basing their decisions on this on their political views? This is absolutely an issue in rural areas, but social distancing is more effective in rural areas because it's easier to adhere to social distancing and minimize your number of interactions. Yea, different states are handling this differently, and the ones that tried to open up early and who were less cautious are the ones currently getting hit hard and entering a second wave, while NJ, one of the most densely populated states and one that got hit hard early when the US was caught with it's pants down, has been cautious and is currently one of the states in the best shape. Large indoor gatherings in small spaces, like most LGS play, is how this virus best spreads. This isn't a political opinion, it's peer reviewed medical opinion supported by multiple high quality studies. This isn't some liberal plot to screw over small business, it's a once a century worldwide pandemic of moderate lethality and high infectivity.

Quote from SpeedGrapher »

Everyone loves Mark Rose Water. Your title and post don't match up. It really seems like this is drama stirring thread. Maro is friendly, listens to the player base and answers questions constantly on blogatog. He gave you zendidar 3. Ravnica 3. Theros 2. He's giving you everything you want.
It's still a business. You don't have to buy the product. For most people $4 for a pack of paper cards is crazy when you can buy a normal deck of playing cards for about $5 and use them for forever. He gave you Jumpstart and M2021 which had a huge amount of high end re-prints. He's doing an amazing job.
#Maro is awesome.

He even brought back Dominaria! That's 2 years of being an amazing game designer!
There is a power creep problem in the creatures but they can power that stuff down by doing heavy creature type effect cards which they are already doing.
Rin and Seri, Inseparable Never thought there would be dog and cat lords. But there will be a lot more creature type lords you have never heard of. Turtles Aegis Turtle, badgers Charging Badger etc.

Oh, hi Mark

Card slinger, stop jumping from doom to doom. It seems like your thinking of bad things that could happen if everything goes wrong, assume they will happen without thinking critically about it, and then come here and claim it's an inevitability. You seem to only be seeking evidence that confirms doomsday suspicions. This isn't healthy. And I'm not saying that to rag on you, but because it's a pattern of thinking that will really undermine your well being over time. You've mentioned having anxiety, and this is the sort of thing that contributes to it. Changes how you process this sort of information, and thinking critically about doomsday scenarios so you can use evidence against them to correctly evaluate their likelihood, helps a lot. And that's applicable to all aspects of life.

Quote from Card Slinger J »

Quote from Narvuntien »

There are enough things to worry about before getting to biological warfare (or what God thinks of you). You might just have anxiety, something that this virus is making worse, maybe seek some professional help. Seriously, you don't need to pull on those bootstraps yourself, Maybe, you just need some help because your brain doesn't produce the right amount of serotonin.

I was talking to you as if you were sane but you are a Peterson Fan *facepalm*

I don't really follow Jordan Peterson all that much when I mainly found his discussion on the "Peter Pan Syndrome" to be really insightful to what the current generation of young adults are going through right now. Believe it or not it's actually based on an actual book published in 1983 titled, "The Peter Pan Syndrome: Men Who Have Never Grown Up".

Except Peterson isn't insightful. He's blaming young adults for not moving out of their parents homes as early as their parents did, and ignoring the major financial challenges facing young people their parents didn't face. 20 somethings don't live with their parents because they want to, or because of Peter Pan syndrome, they do so because they start adult life in a financial hole due to college tuition, and use the money they save living at home to start working on the principle and saving for a house, which costs a lot more in today's dollars than it did when Peterson was in his 20s. Its simply good finances to live at home during their 20s instead of throwing money away into rent. Most of the people who do this have college debt because their parents didn't pay their tuition. Peterson types look down on these people but not on people whose parents paid their tuition, allowing them to graduate debt free and put their post college earnings directly into rent while also being able to save for home ownership.

I get the appeal of Peterson. Its mostly the same as any other hack life coach. When people are in a rough place and unsure of themselves, he's a voice giving simple answers. He packages this in an archaic worldview and a get tough message. Sometimes sucking it up and making sacrifices is the only way to get by when life hands you a crap sandwich, but Peterson plays that as a virtue and the right way to live generally instead of a necessary evil to survive in the face of adversity. He supports the very systems that cause the problems he claims to solve for people (and makes worse long term, like encouraging 20 somethings to make sacrifices to move out and pay rent as soon as possible which delays actually being able to own a home versus living at home and saving up buy a house). He fetishizes austerity and a mythical spartan masculinity that is as immature as overindulgent hedonism. Peter Pan syndrome is an old hot take that was simply a repackaging of the same complaint old curmudgeons have had about the next generation since Plato (literally, Plato made the same complaints). Its not real, its just old people railing against the young because they have an idealized view of their own life narrative and think the next gen aren't living up to it. Its why boomers rail against Millenials being lazy or profligate when they actually work more hours, are more productive, and more austere in their lifestyles than boomers were at the same age. You know The Peter Pan Syndrome book you reference was written in the early 80s, about Peterson's generation (Boomers), and now Peterson (and Boomers more generally) are crying about the same wolf with Millenials and Z. Its garbage pop psychology that serves to make the old feel superior to the young and any young that listen to it feel ashamed for being human.

Do not feel bad about liking magic, nor liking playing at an LGS. Don't think that liking games or anything considered "childish", and don't be ashamed about asking for help and support. Growing up isn't about posturing or signaling, its about being responsible. That's it. If people can rely on you, and you can basically take care of yourself, that's it. And taking care of yourself can mean understanding when you need help or support and having the humility to accept it. It also means self care, and that's different for everyone. For a lot of us here, playing some magic is self care. For others, its meditation, or watching the game, or going to church, or sitting around watching cartoons all weekend every once in awhile. And there's nothing wrong with that.

Quote from Card Slinger J »

Quote from Onering »

Card slinger, its impractical to base a business plan on a once a century event. Practicality dictates that if there is a rare event that can possibly destroy your business, but it's rare enough that you are very likely to die before it happens again, you don't let that hold you back from running your business.

Given recent advancements in 21st century technology I don't think outbreaks that require the kind of response that we've made with COVID-19 are as rare as you think especially If the smartest people on Earth are able to replicate it easily enough to cause biological warfare as a means of depopulating the planet without having to launch military strikes on other nations. In that kind of scenario you have a situation where vaccines are being used as political bargaining chips in order to further advance agendas of certain nations and terrorist groups instead of nuclear warheads like it was done in the past. Why? Because it costs them less damage while strengthening their own military forces all in one foul swoop even If it costs peoples' lives in the process regardless of where they're from. It's more about forced population control than divide and conquer.


And It's not so much that COVID-19 style viruses aren't the new normal when the potential of them being used for geopolitical warfare is extremely dangerous compared to the traditional means of how we normally view geopolitical warfare through the use of military action and physical weapons. In order to diminish the possibility of another COVID-19 style outbreak we really need more safeguards in place to help prevent this sort of crisis from occurring again though currently we don't have that at the moment right now. Given how technology continues to advance it will be a lot easier to genetically modify a COVID-19 style virus to where it ends up becoming more advanced than the last that makes it more difficult to fight against. The question is whether If those who fulfill these kind of evil deeds are willing to risk the collapse of the global economy in their march for conquest.

You're verging into conspiracy theory thinking here. So you're saying its not that COVID is the new normal, its that somehow people will make the jump in logic that they should be afraid of bio terrorism. First, that wasn't what you were saying before, nor does it support your previous arguments, so nice try. Second, to jump from COVID to fears of bio terrorism would require a paranoid, ill informed, extremely risk averse mindset that would lead to failed businesses regardless of how rosy the economic outlook is, so again, the only people who would be kept from opening an LGS due to bio terror fears are people who aren't fit to run a successful business anyway, so at least they won't be throwing their money away.

Third, and this is where I'll go slightly off topic, but no terrorist, government, mad scientist, or super villain would ever try to weaponize COVID-19, because COVID-19 sucks balls as a bio weapon. Bio weapons are most useful in causing terror in a target population or as an area of denial weapon. COVID-19 lacks the qualities that make it effective for these roles, or any bio warfare role. First, it simply isn't deadly enough. A 1% fatality rate is high enough to necessitate the sort of government reaction it has, as if we tried to get herd immunity just by infecting people the US would see about 35 million deaths, but its far too low to be effective as a bio weapon. You are going to do more damage, more reliably, with conventional weapons. Second, Its slow as hell. It takes 2 weeks for symptoms to show, and bio weapons need to act quickly for the desired effect. Third, it spreads too easily. Effective bio weapons kill your enemies but don't come back on you. For all the reasons COVID-19 has proven uniquely difficult to contain it would also prove a poor choice for bio weapon, as any state or group that carries out a successful attack is going to be sure it will hit them as well, possibly even worse than the target. Fourth, it is most dangerous to the elderly, while bio weapons are most effective, both in war and as terrorism, when they hit the young, specifically fighting age adults, at least as hard. The death rate among the younger generations is significantly less than among older populations, and the people most likely to be soldiers (young and in good health) are also most likely to not only survive COVID, but to have mild or no symptoms. Lastly, there a plenty of diseases that have been around for years that would make far superior bio weapons both for terrorism and warfare, including COVID's relatives SARS and MERS. Biological weapons are expensive and unwieldy, which is why they have rarely been used, and most of the time where used before the existence of Germ Theory. There are just too many easier, cheaper, more controllable, and more reliable ways to kill people, and even among bio weapons COVID-19 wouldn't make the cut.

Rather than letting your mind run wild with worst case scenarios that aren't based on fact, take a breath and educate yourself. And Jordan Peterson repackaging decades old self help pablum doesn't count.

I think what's getting threads killed isn't the on topic discussion, that necessarily touches on politics but stays focused on how those politics impact the decision at hand, but the posts that drift way off topic into screeds against "sjws" and "screeching Twitter mobs", because those posts are far less about an artist getting cut for bad behavior or cards getting banned for racist imagery or themes (and the degrees to which each individual card actually met those criteria), but rather about their own insecurities around a changing culture that causes them to feel personally attacked when cards are banned for having a slur in their names or an artist is cut loose for endorsing extremists on social media.

Quote from Mystic_X »

I guess it sucks if you want to play Abzan in Standard and now you're forced to look at regular prints of Indatha Triome through a new lens.
I'm generally not a fan of borderless cards unless they're manually altered which actually takes skill (printed borderless cards seem to defeat the purpose for me, and most seem magnified, not actually extended). However, in this case, the alternate art is indeed much nicer than its bordered counterpart

I mean, the cards still exist, he already got paid, why can't you run them? They aren't themselves offensive. He's just not going to get any future work.

[quote from="WarMachinePrime »" url="/forums/magic-fundamentals/magic-general/817934-wizards-cuts-ties-with-artist-terese-nielsen?comment=87"
I don't like this current culture of division. Healing is in order, I hope I haven't harmed with my words here. Can we at least find that common ground of "agreeing to disagree"? [/quote]

Here's the problem with that sentiment when applied to this situation: what Theresa was doing was actively feeding a culture of division. There is no middle ground on anti semitism. There is no middle ground on bigotry. There is no middle ground on people like Alex Jones. You either support that crap, or you don't. Wizards even tried to find a "middle ground", it would have started commissioning her again if she just stopped publicly supporting that crap. She couldn't. She continued to support some of the most extreme voices out there.

An open, diverse, and tolerant society where it is possible to agree to disagree without hating each other for it can not afford to tolerate the kind of crap she was, and is, supporting, because that crap is directly opposed to an open, diverse, and tolerant society where we can agree to disagree. Healing cannot happen while those views are accepted and tolerated, because those people will continue to sabotage any attempt at healing. Because healing is not what they want. They want division. They want those they disagree with silenced. They want groups of people harmed. They don't want a plurality of viewpoints to exist, they want only their viewpoint to dominate.

Despite what people with a persecution complex like mystic may assert, this isn't about Democrats vs republicans. There's plenty of room at the party of ideas for conservatives and republicans, and to equate bigotry and the most extreme far right voices with republicans, as mystic did, is slanderous to republicans. Alex Jones does draw some of the most extreme republicans, but also many libertarians and even some extreme leftists. There are leftist anti semites. Ice Cube is rightly getting crapped on for his bizarre anti semitism (though I still haven't figured out what that ******* black cube is supposed to mean). There's also a difference between being transphobic and not being pro trans. Not wanting to have sex with a trans woman isn't transphobic, believing that your birth sex is your gender isn't transphobic, repeatedly declaring that trans women aren't women and it's all mental illness IS. The difference there is it goes beyond your personal beliefs into attacking trans people. Criticism of Israel for it's policies isn't anti semitism, criticism of Israel based on anti Jewish sentiment or stereotypes is, like the tweet from Cynthia McKinney (a former liberal Democrat btw who rightly has been shunned within the party for anti semitism, before becoming a green and then most recently a libertarian) that Theresa like was doing. Louis Farrakhan is guy that does a lot of good work in the black community, but he's a raging antisemite that is as vile as anything on the right in that regard, so when a Democrat occasionally rubs elbows with him due to his work in the black community they rightly catch heat for ignoring his hatred of Jews. Its usually republicans who point that out, and the absolutely should.

Quote from motleyslayer »

One of the two stores in my area is running in store events right now, so I can see them running some kind of pre-release for Zendikar Rising. I think that we'll probably get more information in regards to what will happen with these events over the next few weeks, as the events will probably be late September.

I think that'll depend on one thing: schools.

Schools will be back in session in the next five weeks, and given the piss-poor plans to reopen them, outbreaks are inevitable. Despite rhetoric to the contrary, kids aren't immune and can serve as convenient spreaders, and reopening schools without the resources to do so safely just so parents can get back to work and the economy can look better in time for elections later in the fall is doomed to failure. Once that happens, the smartest play would be to go back into lockdown, with nonessential businesses like LGSs being closed again. I don't know if Zendikar events will be able to run, or if they'll be safe to attend if they do. A spike in cases due to schools opening again that doesn't become apparent until October may not trigger lockdowns that disrupt prereleases, but that might even be worse in some ways.

One way or another, though, LGSs are going to get rolled. Either by a new lockdown, or by decreased sales/play. Even if, by some miracle, there are no outbreaks related to schools (though kid-related outbreaks are already happening, and they had similar issues overseas when countries opened schools again), the pandemic isn't going away and a second wave is predicted in the US and Canada.

Quote from Narvuntien »

I live in the capital city and I was talking about that, just the store that closed was in the country.

Federally sure politics is trash, ours isn't great but at least took COVID threat seriously since March. I am suggesting you go to your State and even local governments they are much more responsive to citizens. They need to keep their small business running or they might never recover.

How to stop the spread: 2 months lockdown, everything except supermarkets/pharmacies closed, 2 person groups only, mask orders. I am not sure if the USA constitution allows the closing of state boarders, but there needs to be people checking every single border and giving out 2 week stay at home orders.
Once you stop community spread you can start testing and carefully tracking sporadic outbreaks that will continue. locking down apartments and suburbs following the persons travel history to find where they got it from. Test and Track. just doing testing isn't enough you need to track where they got it from. The testing needs to be free or people won't get it done.
A further 2 months of slowly allowing more businesses to open and larger groups to meet.

The economy is just gone its too late to save it, forget it! save lives instead. You effectively need to hibernate the economy until the emergency is over. No rent, no rates, no power or water bills, no one gets fired but everything is closed. You need to have your local small business to still be there when you get out of lockdown so their bills need to go away until they can open. The economy is dead just go into however much debt is required to solve the problem, doing nothing or doing a huge amount are both bad but only once saves lives.

Leaders in failed states don't care about people, just siphoning off as much value as they can while they still can.

Though, that does impact MtG as people aren't going to have as much disposable income and many will need to prioritize what they spend their limited resources on. Last I checked, the Senate took a recess rather than figure out what to do in regards to supporting people out of work or experiencing a drop in income due to covid. And the impending eviction crisis will compound that with tens of millions at risk of losing their homes. I don't find it illogical that luxury products sales will suffer.

Did MtG sales dip through the spring? Are sales rebounding this summer with things reopening? I've seen conflicting reports (evidently Q1 revenues were up, but covid really only struck in the last slice of that quarter so Q2 sales will be the better datapoint). Q3 may see that uptick with reopens shifting perception, but I do wonder how the unemployment and housing crises may have blunted the MtG sales recovery.

Quote from Card Slinger J »

Not sure If anyone's heard about this yet however there were some YouTube videos recently of a group of doctors in front of the U.S. Supreme Court including Stella Immanuel claiming that she had cured COVID-19 in 350 patients at her clinic using a combination of hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin, and zinc and that public health measures such as wearing face masks and social distancing were no longer necessary. Apparently the antimalarial medication hydroxychloroquine had previously had its emergency use authorization for COVID-19 removed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which said it had not been proven to be an effective treatment for the virus. Even If it hadn't been proven yet that still doesn't give them the right to silence these doctors from getting the information out there to test whether or not If it is an effective treatment against COVID-19.

Do you think that passes the smell test? Demon sperm, my dude, demon sperm. And whatever scientific arguments they tried to make have been thoroughly debunked.

Quote from WarMachinePrime »

My government did its best to save businesses from the worst of the COVID. As I said earlier in the thread there is no COVID here, because the border is closed and all cases tracked and quarantined (currently 8 active). They also announced further financial aid For example: small businesses here get free electricity until September (from April) as we still have government-owned power utilities.

Perhaps you should petition your government for help for local small businesses.

We have had the CARES Act and the Paycheck Protection Plan Act passed that combined is several TRILLION dollars of aid and low interest loans to small businesses. Some states have granted aid to small businesses as well. Our border is like Swiss Cheese with Mexico, covid travels freely into the country from the south and from air travel just about anywhere in the world. Western Australia I see has about 2.6 million people spread out over a HUGE area, with 2.0 million of that in Perth. (Basically a city and thousands of square miles of uninhabited bush country) Much easier for WA to contain and reduce over a population of 330 million concentrated in large cities all over the country.

Petitioning our government for help is about like pissing into the wind, near pointless as they do what they wish. And when they do something its slow and packed with pork riding legislation that increases the beuaracracy.

We lost 33% of our GDP in the second quarter. Shattering the record of the Great Depression. (Of the largest market on the planet) and we have over 26 TRILLION dollars in debt. Comparing Western Australia to the United States is like comparing raisins to grapefruit. Don't get me wrong, at this time I'd probably rather be living in rural Western Australia. Fixes here aren't simple.

I live in the capital city and I was talking about that, just the store that closed was in the country.

Federally sure politics is trash, ours isn't great but at least took COVID threat seriously since March. I am suggesting you go to your State and even local governments they are much more responsive to citizens. They need to keep their small business running or they might never recover.

How to stop the spread: 2 months lockdown, everything except supermarkets/pharmacies closed, 2 person groups only, mask orders. I am not sure if the USA constitution allows the closing of state boarders, but there needs to be people checking every single border and giving out 2 week stay at home orders.
Once you stop community spread you can start testing and carefully tracking sporadic outbreaks that will continue. locking down apartments and suburbs following the persons travel history to find where they got it from. Test and Track. just doing testing isn't enough you need to track where they got it from. The testing needs to be free or people won't get it done.
A further 2 months of slowly allowing more businesses to open and larger groups to meet.

The economy is just gone its too late to save it, forget it! save lives instead. You effectively need to hibernate the economy until the emergency is over. No rent, no rates, no power or water bills, no one gets fired but everything is closed. You need to have your local small business to still be there when you get out of lockdown so their bills need to go away until they can open. The economy is dead just go into however much debt is required to solve the problem, doing nothing or doing a huge amount are both bad but only once saves lives.

Op imho I think you (either justified or not) just hate Mark and just looking for reasons to air those feeling. And while your allows to not like Mark I think you really need to reach into what he actually does at wizards since it appears that you really don't.

Quote from Card Slinger J »

Sounds to me as though Wizards of the Coast are mostly taking heat for Hasbro corporate's mistakes where Wizards of the Coast are just following orders while their parent company Hasbro are the ones calling all the controversial shots that makes their business partner look terrible as a company.

Corporate policies wouldn't dictate some of this behavior, the descriptions of the work environment paint a picture of *****ty management, not harsh corporate policy. Yelling, treating employees like they don't matter, disrespect, and tokenism are very much issues with management within WotC since they would be in charge of the tone of the work environment.

Hasbro may be increasing pressure or things along those lines, but that doesn't mean they are responsible for the work environment, that's on WotC leads. I've seen it countless times (I think most people who've been in the workforce for any length of time has likely experienced or heard of some version of this), people in leadership roles or positions of power for reasons other than their leadership skills who create toxic work environments through their failures of leadership. That's not on corporate, not really, it's on the managers of the toxic environment.

The irony is that before Hasbro bought out Wizards of the Coast in 1998 they had none of these problems back when the only Social Media outlets we had were message board forums such as the one we're using now.

Well, I'm not sure we can really draw that conclusion. Social media has exposed a lot of poor behavior and bad business practices in many industries, gaming very much included. More often than not, those behaviors predate social media. In some cases bad work environments take time to develop, which may be the case here. And sometimes the environment doesn't change, but social standards and who is getting hired does so newer team members are seeing what the veterans considered the norm and thought nothing of. A work environment of tokenism, disrespect, devaluing of heterodox perspectives, etc may not be as noticed if the team is overwhelmingly from a very specific demographic, after all.

So did the work culture at WotC sour recently and they had none of these problems before? Maybe, I'm not sure we're going to really know for sure. That said, however, we're seeing that in a lot of cases of exposing bad work environments that complaints are being heard is new, but the culture and work environments have issues going much farther back.

So aside from the screw up that is companion, its more about diversity hiring and treatment of employees (which Mark has little control over) than its actually about actual game direction. Next.

Copy/pasted my reply to your same topic on Nexus, where previous replies had laid out the poor quality of this article in more detail:


Hard to read. Skimmed as best I could. Poor writing, poorly thought out arguments.

A few gripes: workers are paid below market value, but stay to work for a game they love - then quit, go get paid the market value, and recognize that we can't all work at the thing we love while at the same time complaining about our pay. If Wizards indeed pays below market value, maybe if their employees leave for other jobs then the market will dictate to them that they should increase their salaries.

Title of thread says MaRo must go, body of article discusses primarily contains complaints of business decisions (salary, nepotism, deceptive hiring practices, tone deaf leadership) - but isn't MaRo the head DESIGNER? If I had a complaint about how Wizards designs their products, like so many people do, aim those complaints at MaRo. But if you have complaints about Wizards' business dealings, it's pretty deceptive to aim the article at MaRo.

well you're probably not seeing many more removals right now because they hit all the big ones. they also dealt with all the big time offender artists, though lets be real most of them haven't had work commissioned in a long time. it was much more of an issue in the early days of magic than it is now. though, don't confuse that with there not being issues now either.

they're dealing with issues as they come up because they dealt with the known ones. that's like... pretty ******* standard stuff. its not the heavy fisted ban everything cancel culture some magic players want you to believe. most of this crap will be nailed before cards are print now, but there will be times it slips by and has to be dealt with. that's also pretty ******* standard for every company out there.

the reasons those cards got banned has been talked about, and talked about,and talked about. the reasons those artists had support dropped has been discussed too. look up any of the many news articles or previously locked threads if you still don't understand the reasons.

we don't need this thread yet again, though we do very much need something regarding it all stickied at the top of the forums so we stop going through this every single week. wotc took a stance, they should have years ago but they finally did. finally after years of knowing about this. its time mtg:s did too.

Quote from Onering »

Bubonic Plague is endemic to Mongolia. There are cases every year, usually from someone ******* around with prairie dogs or other animals that are natural reservoirs for the disease. Plague manifests quickly and is a well known pathogen, so its easy to catch early and stop the spread. We already have known, effective treatments for plague. It is, luckily, caused by a bacteria that isn't commonly exposed to antibiotics, so it responds well to antibiotic treatments. Its also present in Africa, and the USA. You can catch plague on a camping trip in the Great Plains or the Southwest. Typically a couple people do every year. We actually had a full on plague pandemic pretty recently, it lasted about 100 years and ended in the 50s. Turns out even then it was fairly easy for countries to control the spread and it thus mainly effected India and China. It killed about 12 million people, but that was spread out over about a century, and most of the deaths came before widespread availability of antibiotics, the advent of which greatly reduced the death rate and contributed to the rather swift end of the pandemic.

Case in point my High School English teacher's daughter at 8 got it when she found a dead squirrel on a camping trip in Colorado, picked it up and buried it for a funeral (they are hunters so she wasn't scared to touch dead animal bodies). Once she got on the right antibiotic she was fine. No else in her family or the doctors who treated caught it.

There are enough things to worry about before getting to biological warfare (or what God thinks of you). You might just have anxiety, something that this virus is making worse, maybe seek some professional help. Seriously, you don't need to pull on those bootstraps yourself, Maybe, you just need some help because your brain doesn't produce the right amount of serotonin.

I was talking to you as if you were sane but you are a Peterson Fan *facepalm*

I grew up during the Cold War. Needing to recognize where the nearest Nuclear Fallout shelter was. Practicing "duck and cover". (As if our grade school desks would save us from a nuclear blast. And yes our school practiced in the early 70's as we were near an Air Force Base and anti nuke rocket site) Fearing what the USSR was up to all the time. Mutual destruction. (MD is still around by the way.)

The point is we made it through that stage. If we have to worry about germ warfare currently then we will do the same as every civilization has tried to manage their endgame scenario and hopefully make it through. Life goes on in the meantime. Its a sad fact that businesses will go under. Others will pop up to take their place in time. We aren't going to be stuck in this outbreak forever. Life is hard and there are NO guarantees. I see you are quoting scripture in your signature. Look more deeply and I think you may find some solace. Its not the end, look for the good, seize it and don't let others bring you down. Again I would urge you, find family and/or friends and play Magic for fun, kitchen table style. Teach people formats that you like playing. You can have fun without someone having to organize for you, DO IT YOURSELF!!!