so organised play is a bit of a joke now isn't it

[Philip Dickinson]

my favourite line:

Nationals provide a good opportunity for many players around the world to experience a large-scale Magic tournament and earn high amounts of Planeswalker Points in a single event

wow! excellent! more planeswalker points, which are dumb in and of themselves.

 

can anyone find any upside to any of the OP changes made this year?

[James Mills]

The upside is that because Worlds is only a 16 player event Wizards won't have to hire such large venues. In fact - it can be done in someones house or better yet a school hall!

 

 

[Charlie Grover]

They have to free up money for all those GP's somehow. They basically turned worlds into the invitational, giving them more money to give out at GP's, which I dont dislike inherently unless all those gp's are in america. I think they should give nats t4 a PT qualification though.

[Philip Dickinson]

i think that "increased budget for GPs" is a really terrible upside considering

 

a. the overwhelming majority of GPs are in north america

b. GPs no longer award PT invites

 

the whole way wizards has handled this is just plain embarrassing. i honestly don't remember the last time wotc made an announcement that was actually legitimately good

[Glenn Goldsworthy]

well I can safely say that I will be bothering with any big events next year as I am even less interested after all these terrible changes, I like the fact that taking away prizes (pt invites, boosters etc) has been exchanged for the amazing plainswalker points, what a bunch of tools.  The problem is that the only way to make ourselves heard would been be for huge numbers to stop playing, this isn't going to happen as the game itself is still very good just the people making the decisions clearly don't have most players in mind when making these crazy calls

[Peter Dun]

this is actually the final straw for me.... I'm actually quitting playing this game for something else after I help team gb with worlds this year. I won't spend my time moaning too much, but 5 words:

 

Rating

Prereleases

Protour (cutting one, never considering replacing)

Worlds

Invites (GP t16s, cutting ptqs etc.)

 

maybe I'll come to nationals next year to hang out, and it will be great to cube some time or blues bar etc. with you guys, but I'm finished with regards to competitive play (and in 12 years I honestly have never felt this way about the game before)

 

guess I go and play bridge... unless someone has any other recommendation (I want something highly competitive that I will lose a lot from playing to begin with but can improve over time... preferably not chess as the social aspect is HORRIBLE)... but I can go back there if I have to.

 

NOT something I can just steal money off little kids by playing like YGO or WOW :P

[Peter Dun]

@DanR + Charlie... its getting quite late now... but if for some reason you see this, come skype?

[Philip Dickinson]

i think i'm with master dunn on this one. i've been playing this game on and off for fucking years and the decisions that wotc has made surrounding every aspect of the game over the last 5 years have been terrible. obviously the decision to alter worlds doesn't directly affect me at all but there have just been too many bad changes in the last few years for me to maintain any faith in wotc

 

i guess i'm going to start by just selling my modo account before i get round to determining what i keep/sell irl. that should give me an ok bankroll to start playing poker again or whatever. 

[Charlie Grover]

Sigh.. pete, thats really quite unnecessary. As a group of players, our chances of qualifying for a PT are pretty much equivalent to what they used to be, bar the loss of 1 PTQ (call nats a PTQ for sake of argument). We dont game GP's very much or very seriously, and I got the impression from reading the articles that there will be ways to keep good finishers at PT's on the tour. Asides the destruction of nationals us a group are fairly unaffected. I actually quite like the change to worlds; Im going to give the changes time to actually effect me before I ragequit. Also lets face it, given that all I ever do is cube and occassionally play a PTQ, this doesnt really effect me. Im actually quite curious to watch the Invitational style worlds thing unfurl.

 

The only person who really gets to rage is royde. and we all know how royde rages..

[Gary Lynch]

This could be the worst decision they have made. I know every announcment they make people say they will quit but i think this is different.

I understand that perhaps casual players bring in more money than the pros and grinders but why would you want to cut off an entire part of your customer base?

If they reduce the benifit to being a pro people will stop doing it. Less pros means less magic content online, meaning less interest from players. If there wasnt a constant stream of articles about decks people probably wouldnt try and keep up with the best deck and therefore would buy less cards.

I totaly get that this change on the surface seems like it only affects a small number of people but thats not true at all.

With out the pro tour and worlds, what reason do people have to play PTQ's and Nats? If not playing PTq's and nats that also means not bothering with Nats Qualifiers and probably not GPT's either. If your not bothering with those events then having a constructed deck seems less relavent (if your playing for fun you should be drafting or playing cube). That adds up to a fair ammount per year per competative player, a lot more if they are very competative and play more of those events. Also no reason to play sealed deck any more as you dont need to practice for PTQ's etc.

I dont know about you guys but one of the big draws to magic was the articles about the pros and their experiences. Even though I have never made a pro tour (like a lot of people) that dream always seems just within reach so we keep trying. If you take away that dream then spending so much money on bits of cardboard seems less appealing.

[Daniel Royde]

For everyone here, the main part of this announcement is that Nats will probably be significantly less interesting. Nats was always fun because basically everyone went.

If they have a big enough cash prize for nats, it might be interesting. I'm not sure what "big enough" would be, but since it's easier than a GP (in b4 "sick brags") it wouldn't need to be as much, but even that seems very unlikely.

I obviously hate not knowing whether I should go to Hawaii or not, but there's only about 50 ppl in the world who are Q'd but don't have flights, so that shouldn't bother people. The same issue with GPs is more troubling however.

IMHO there'd be a lot less negativity about these changes if they were actually announced in a reasonable way. Everytime there's an announcement we're not given all of the information we want. Further questions are unanswered. There is no reasonable justification given for anything. We just get presented with a Wizards marketing piece telling us how great the change is. *vom*

[Tom Reeve]

For most people to get excited about Nats prize money, £5k split across the Top 16 alongside normal booster prizes would probably be more than enough. At which point WotC UK needs to decide whether it actually cares if UK Nats drifts into irrelevance in the eyes of competitive players.

[Tom Reeve]

Also I agree entirely with Gary. Cutting off more and more ways that ordinary players can -aim- to make it onto the PT seems thoroughly self-defeating in the medium to long term. I look at what I know about Magic OP now, and the only events that I'm being -incentivised- to attend are PTQs, where in the past it would be PTQs, Nationals Qualifiers, Nationals, and GPTs with travel awards for European GPs. I might play in some things because I enjoy the game, but I might just as well turn up and play Commander or Cube.