This is the email I have sent to Mark Rosewater
Greetings, Mark.
I have
being playing magic for around 5 years. In this five years most of my friends
that played when I started dropped it entirely, or just play occasionally.
Our local
store closed, and the few resistant’s, me and another friend, made trips in a 2
week basis to the next closest store, which meant to do an 1 hour travel.
Then one
of my friends started to do tournaments on various coffee places and we started
playing weekly again, people returned.
Some time
went by like this, eventually someone had to take his place and finally we got a
local store again.
Since my
friend picked the tournaments organization, I have helped the best I can and I
still do with my local store. I have been criticized by players and friends; I
even lost some other friends because of it, either by meaningless discussion or
stupidity from both sides.
In the
past years there was only a major change I still dislike, Mythic Rarity. While
it’s true that they made possible for cheap playable rare they also introduced
us to 50€ staple, if we are lucky that they don’t go higher.
I still
prefer the old format where all decks had basically the same price. Nowadays we
have very cheap decks or a deck with 4 to 12 cards that are worth 50€ each,
in the best cases.
But, in
all this time I never thought of dropping Magic: The Gathering, not even when
my 500€ deck got stolen. That is, until now.
I will
talk mostly about Portugal and my situation, since about everything else
someone already made statements or can do better than me.
We lost PT spot’s, I’m not sure how many, but the biggest loss is the
qualification for World’s.
I play magic for fun, but while I play it for fun it’s also true that I play it
mostly because of Nationals and the dream of getting on the national team to
attend Worlds. When that is removed from my horizons I don’t have any reason to
buy cards.
To play
with my friends, I can easily make a bunch of proxy’s and simply make the deck I
like instead of investing money on it with barely any return to happen.
Because, no one from Portugal is going to get an invite from ranking with the
new ranking system. Actually it’s very hard for someone that is not living in
the USA to do so.
I was
actually happy with the new ranking system. At least at a local level, it meant
people wouldn’t sit on ranking to get into nationals they would start playing,
if not weekly from time to time, instead of showing up weeks before nationals
for testing.
With the last changes everything that was good about the new ranking system became irrelevant. No invites for worlds means most people won’t care about it. It doesn’t matter how big the prize is, since it will never be that big that is actually worth it. I would haply refuse a prize of 3000€ for an invite to worlds and the free trip along with it.
With the last changes everything that was good about the new ranking system became irrelevant. No invites for worlds means most people won’t care about it. It doesn’t matter how big the prize is, since it will never be that big that is actually worth it. I would haply refuse a prize of 3000€ for an invite to worlds and the free trip along with it.
Then
after all this you relocate all responsibility of tournaments to local
authorities.
Sorry to
say that this only gives me grief.
I have
been playing since Betrayer’s of Kamigawa and I never saw our distributor doing
anything else besides the very much minimum necessary.
For a
game that as mostly survived due to players, to keep growing and advertised,
the game will die, at least the game outside of the kitchen table.
Lisbon might be able to maintain an active community,
but on the north it will die. Actually it’s already dying, but that’s
understandable when the stores of the distributor have different entree fees
for their 2 stores, a Prerelease in Porto is 26€ in Lisbon 22€, and when they
block the entrance to players that have made a formal complain about their
stores conditions, it becomes ridiculous.
So to end
this, no I’m not happy with only hopping to be the National Champion. My dream
was based on getting on the national team and do something noticeable at worlds,
not by being recognized by our Magic community. Most of them have met me at
least once anyway.
With that
gone and so few PT’S and the only place to get extra GP’S being the USA I’m
dropping from M:TG.
At best I
won’t buy any cards and become a casual player, with proxies.
But not
everything is bad, I will have finally more time for my other hobbies.
Sincerely,
Rui Gomes.
