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Magic the Gathering players lament the loss of 30-year history

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Re: Magic the Gathering players lament the loss of 30-year history

#41

Post by dmix »

vlunkr wrote: post #39
monero-xmr wrote: post #8

Major franchises that have a lot of nerd crossover (marvel, Star Wars, etc.) keep a lot of influencers on the payroll as “advisors” or various types or consultants for events like this. Expect some mea culpas and some Twitter threads from respected people saying, “WotC made a terrible mistake but with the latest changes it’s better now.” Someone at corporate will take a public decapitation as the fall guy with a nice…

Do they really pay influencers? I’m skeptical. There seem to be a limitless supply of megafans who will defend the bad decisions of corporations because they’ve invested their personality in it, not because they’re getting paid.

RedLetterMedia's fake "Nerd Crew" podcast [1] satirized the fanboy Youtube/podcast community perfectly.

You don't need to pay influencers heavily. You just need to make them feel important.

You get mid-tier execs to phone them to give them "inside" information. You give them early access to content so they can have opinions before anyone. You invite them to white-glove events (maybe even fly them there for free) and then have your attractive well-spoken marketing people treat them like royalty. You get your social teams to drum up fake viral headlines to generate talking-points for TV interviews/podcasts for hosts that wouldn't otherwise have content.

That goes a long way with megafans and most people who aren't business savvy.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCIYCaXNe88&list=PLJ_TJFLc25...

Re: Magic the Gathering players lament the loss of 30-year history

#42

Post by sp332 »

forgotpwd16 wrote: post #28
boomboomsubban wrote: post #22

I don't understand why they pulled everything off the wayback machine. Even if I disagree, I can understand the argument that it's not worth maintaining the old content themselves. But why stop third party archives?

>I don't understand why they pulled everything off the wayback machine. Someone cannot--as in their request will be rejected--do that unless it's for pages that host personal information. Archives still there if you have the original URL*. The problem is, like in many other sites, every few years they move everything around. So you cannot just copy-paste the new URL and expect to find the copies available in the olde…

It's really not that hard to get info taken down from IA if you are the site owner. Official blog from 2017 https://blog.archive.org/2017/04/17/robots-txt-meant-for-sea... and more recent third-party blog with a survey of several ways to remove content (that you control) from Wayback https://blog.reputationx.com/block-wayback-machine

Re: Magic the Gathering players lament the loss of 30-year history

#44

Post by braingenious »

blockwriter wrote: post #30
Our_Benefactors wrote: post #3

WOTC doesn’t care about hardcore fans who have history with the franchise, they just care about creating limited run products to juice the fans. It’s been impossible to take the game seriously from a competitive standpoint for about the past decade where they’ve continued to move further and further from the block-core annual release cycle.

My theory is that they also killed competitive magic due to the MeToo movement and the various other social causes that sprang up in the last 6 years. Wotc and its corporate parent cannot control who the winningest players are, and their old tournament structures more or less simply rewarded, and therefore promoted, those that did the best in tournament play. One individual, who frequently won or was in the running a…

I feel like that’s quite the stretch. What other competitive endeavors were killed due to MeToo in your estimation?

Re: Magic the Gathering players lament the loss of 30-year history

#45

Post by charlieyu1 »

monero-xmr wrote: post #8

Major franchises that have a lot of nerd crossover (marvel, Star Wars, etc.) keep a lot of influencers on the payroll as “advisors” or various types or consultants for events like this. Expect some mea culpas and some Twitter threads from respected people saying, “WotC made a terrible mistake but with the latest changes it’s better now.” Someone at corporate will take a public decapitation as the fall guy with a nice…

I don't think the nerd crowds like influencers. Can't be bothered. Just release better content and less drama.

Re: Magic the Gathering players lament the loss of 30-year history

#46

Post by gverrilla »

chongli wrote: post #7
jachee wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hasbro and their injected pointy-hairs don’t care about hardcore fans. Or fans. Or players. Or even the odious non-playing collectors. Or the game. Or it’s history. Or their workers. All they care about is how much more money they can wrong out of their cash cow.

While all of that may be true, it's hard to see how the deletion of a website fits into that grand plan. We're talking about saving a few bucks to maintain this old information at a cost of huge waves of bad will? Seems incredibly short-sighted.

Well this is the first time I hear about magic in a few years. So maybe it's a PR stunt?

Re: Magic the Gathering players lament the loss of 30-year history

#47

Post by jedberg »

Imnimo wrote: post #2

One piece of Magic history that is still well-preserved is the ancient usenet groups: https://groups.google.com/g/rec.games.deckmaster https://groups.google.com/g/rec.games.trading-cards.magic.mi... The most recent posts are spam, but if you use the advanced search to go back to 1994/1995, it's fun to read about the way people looked at the game nearly 30 years ago. You can find people selling Black Lotuses (now wort…

> You can find people selling Black Lotuses (now worth many thousands of dollars) for a few bucks.

Yup, that was my friends. I was smart enough to preserve my cards. Sadly I don't know where I put the box with the preserved cards...

Re: Magic the Gathering players lament the loss of 30-year history

#48

Post by s1artibartfast »

blockwriter wrote: post #30
Our_Benefactors wrote: post #3

WOTC doesn’t care about hardcore fans who have history with the franchise, they just care about creating limited run products to juice the fans. It’s been impossible to take the game seriously from a competitive standpoint for about the past decade where they’ve continued to move further and further from the block-core annual release cycle.

My theory is that they also killed competitive magic due to the MeToo movement and the various other social causes that sprang up in the last 6 years. Wotc and its corporate parent cannot control who the winningest players are, and their old tournament structures more or less simply rewarded, and therefore promoted, those that did the best in tournament play. One individual, who frequently won or was in the running a…

I'm sure plenty of people at Wizards were concerned that the public faces of magic were not on their payroll, with all the risk that that entails.

I think the bigger factor is that they were trying to push more of the franchise and business Online. That way they don't have to cover the cost of physical Goods and split any profits with local game stores and Merchants.

Re: Magic the Gathering players lament the loss of 30-year history

#50

Post by matheusmoreira »

Our_Benefactors wrote: post #3

WOTC doesn’t care about hardcore fans who have history with the franchise, they just care about creating limited run products to juice the fans. It’s been impossible to take the game seriously from a competitive standpoint for about the past decade where they’ve continued to move further and further from the block-core annual release cycle.

> they just care about creating limited run products to juice the fans

Fans need to start refusing to be juiced. Stop paying them money.

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