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TheChirurgeon posted:Also I'm willing to bet the company that does market research year-round and has sales figures from past sets has a better handle on how much to print than "random internet poster who desperately wants prices to come down on specific cards" WOTC has made some staggering moves of incompetence over the years that it is more baffling that people still believe any of this.
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Mar 2, 2017 19:11
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evilweasel posted:All in all this is a lot more complex a business than you think it is. On one hand none of this is untrue but on the other I don't think they have done a good job and neither do the people posting about it. In some cases, the product is too expensive to justify buying, and in others wizards refuses to sell them at all. You don't have to have some in-depth analysis of market trends to see that and dislike it.
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Mar 2, 2017 19:12
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Death Bot posted:On one hand none of this is untrue but on the other I don't think they have done a good job and neither do the people posting about it. In some cases, the product is too expensive to justify buying, and in others wizards refuses to sell them at all. You don't have to have some in-depth analysis of market trends to see that and dislike it. I'm not saying they're doing it right, I'm saying random guy's plan of "just print all of the cards people will buy" is stupid. Nothing's stopping WOTC from being stupid as well though.
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Mar 2, 2017 19:15
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TheChirurgeon posted:Also I'm willing to bet the company that does market research year-round and has sales figures from past sets has a better handle on how much to print than "random internet poster who desperately wants prices to come down on specific cards" Sales figures, sure, but the closest thing I've seen to "market research" is that Twitter poll Forsythe or someone else put up asking what people thought of Standard. Which was deleted after most people said it sucked. This is a company that has essentially been making a single product for 20 years, "'it's complicated" isn't an excuse for some of the tone-deaf decisions they've made in the past little while. A single statement of "we listened to feedback about what people liked and didn't like about MM13 and MM15, and tried to make a draftable set that included marquee cards where demand greatly exceeded supply" would explain a lot. Instead, Wizards has made a lot of statements to the effect of "we can't give people all the cards they want all the time, because reasons", but never given a convincing argument of what those reasons are and why they would be bad for the game.
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Mar 2, 2017 19:20
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TheChirurgeon posted:Also I'm willing to bet the company that does market research year-round and has sales figures from past sets has a better handle on how much to print than "random internet poster who desperately wants prices to come down on specific cards" WotC are truly experts in how to do reprint sets, as evidenced by noted roaring success MM15
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Mar 2, 2017 19:21
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Sickening posted:WOTC has made some staggering moves of incompetence over the years that it is more baffling that people still believe any of this. It's pretty simple: 1. They have access to information that we don't about their sales, profits, and costs 2. Their priorities don't always align with player priorities (profits vs. secondary market costs) 3. Smart companies still make mistakes from time to time. That doesn't make them incompetent PhyrexianLibrarian posted:Sales figures, sure, but the closest thing I've seen to "market research" is that Twitter poll Forsythe or someone else put up asking what people thought of Standard. Which was deleted after most people said it sucked. You haven't been paying attention if you haven't seen this. In addition to "private" research they do, such as focus group testing (that I've personally worked on in the past), they also regularly run consumer surveys on their site, both to test response to new sets and to test user experience on their site. These are both visible, common examples of market research that they regularly do. TheChirurgeon fucked around with this message at 19:27 on Mar 2, 2017 |
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Mar 2, 2017 19:24
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PhyrexianLibrarian posted:Sales figures, sure, but the closest thing I've seen to "market research" is that Twitter poll Forsythe or someone else put up asking what people thought of Standard. Which was deleted after most people said it sucked. I honestly think they would have better pr if they just released sets wordlessly instead of trying to explain everything without evoking money or actually paying for cards
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Mar 2, 2017 19:26
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TheChirurgeon posted:It's pretty simple: 1. True. 2. True. 3. That doesn't apply to WOTC of the last 2 years. MM3 is so good that it makes me super interested in what company politics had to be overruled to make it happen. I honestly think there are some grognards in R&D that hated everything about this set. Sickening fucked around with this message at 19:32 on Mar 2, 2017 |
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Mar 2, 2017 19:27
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Lottery of Babylon posted:WotC are truly experts in how to do reprint sets, as evidenced by noted roaring success MM15 Honestly this kind of sentiment baffles me. Again, companies make mistakes. MM15 was two years ago and apparently something they learned from, given the frothing enthusiasm over the new set. And like every other company, WotC isn't a monolith. Different teams make decisions on different sets, and the individuals responsible make mistakes from time to time. The entire company isn't "incompetent" or "not experts" because they stumble on a secondary product. Not everything they do is going to be a roaring success or a flawless product. They make a lot of decisions that I don't necessarily agree with, but I'm also not a Hasbro shareholder and so there's no reason for me to desire high secondary market prices for anything. This also doesn't make them incompetent boobs
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Mar 2, 2017 19:31
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Well, I know one thing for sure, and that's that I want Maro to start doing video blog updates like Jeff from the Overwatch team so that someone can cut them together to make Maro explain how much everyone at WOTC secretly hates the players and how they all have their entire retirement funds tied up in Modern staples.
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Mar 2, 2017 19:37
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Wotc's incompetence in the digital realm makes me think that they are not, in fact, a smart company.
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Mar 2, 2017 19:42
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TheChirurgeon posted:Honestly this kind of sentiment baffles me. Again, companies make mistakes. MM15 was two years ago and apparently something they learned from, given the frothing enthusiasm over the new set. And like every other company, WotC isn't a monolith. Different teams make decisions on different sets, and the individuals responsible make mistakes from time to time. The entire company isn't "incompetent" or "not experts" because they stumble on a secondary product. Not everything they do is going to be a roaring success or a flawless product. They make a lot of decisions that I don't necessarily agree with, but I'm also not a Hasbro shareholder and so there's no reason for me to desire high secondary market prices for anything. This also doesn't make them incompetent boobs Have you read their Glassdoor reviews?
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Mar 2, 2017 19:48
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TheChirurgeon posted:Honestly this kind of sentiment baffles me. Again, companies make mistakes. MM15 was two years ago and apparently something they learned from, given the frothing enthusiasm over the new set. And like every other company, WotC isn't a monolith. Different teams make decisions on different sets, and the individuals responsible make mistakes from time to time. The entire company isn't "incompetent" or "not experts" because they stumble on a secondary product. Not everything they do is going to be a roaring success or a flawless product. They make a lot of decisions that I don't necessarily agree with, but I'm also not a Hasbro shareholder and so there's no reason for me to desire high secondary market prices for anything. This also doesn't make them incompetent boobs gently caress, even if they are incompetent, it's not like replacing them with the ideas of a random internet commentator who thought about it for thirty seconds is going to improve things. It means it's probably a complex problem because even incompetent people tend to muddle their way through simple problems eventually when someone stands to make money by making them.
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Mar 2, 2017 19:52
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TheChirurgeon posted:Honestly this kind of sentiment baffles me. Again, companies make mistakes. MM15 was two years ago and apparently something they learned from, given the frothing enthusiasm over the new set. And like every other company, WotC isn't a monolith. Different teams make decisions on different sets, and the individuals responsible make mistakes from time to time. The entire company isn't "incompetent" or "not experts" because they stumble on a secondary product. Not everything they do is going to be a roaring success or a flawless product. They make a lot of decisions that I don't necessarily agree with, but I'm also not a Hasbro shareholder and so there's no reason for me to desire high secondary market prices for anything. This also doesn't make them incompetent boobs all companies are run by idiots, it's required to be in management
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Mar 2, 2017 19:54
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Lottery of Babylon posted:WotC are truly experts in how to do reprint sets, as evidenced by noted roaring success MM15 Why do you think MM15 wasn't a success? The set was great fun to draft and had a bunch of good reprints. What more do you want?
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Mar 2, 2017 19:55
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*sips New Coke loudly* They have access to marketing research you don't have. Don't question the decisions of a profitable company. >>> sent from My Blackberry.
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Mar 2, 2017 19:56
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St0rmD posted:I like the new art a perfectly shaped hole... it was made for me!
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Mar 2, 2017 19:57
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Here's a hot take, WotC is blisteringly incompetent and if you disagree you probably haven't been paying attention to Magic for the past decade.
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Mar 2, 2017 19:59
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atrus50 posted:a perfectly shaped hole... it was made for me! there's a world where innistrad is a Junji Ito block and i wish it was this one
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Mar 2, 2017 20:01
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mandatory lesbian posted:there's a world where innistrad is a Junji Ito block and i wish it was this one Same 
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Mar 2, 2017 20:02
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Elyv posted:Wotc's incompetence in the digital realm makes me think that they are not, in fact, a smart company. It's definitely a clear indicator that the people in charge of their paper products should not have been put in charge of digital products, and that they probably should have just licensed the product to a separate company that knew what they were doing. It was definitely nowhere near their core competency. The only thing I'd say in their defense is that when they started making MtGO, it was completely uncharted territory and it was OK to have a rocky start. 16 years later, there's no excuse for the state of that product. Duels was pretty good for a while there, though Chill la Chill posted:Have you read their Glassdoor reviews? I haven't, but I'll take a deeper look this weekend. A cursory glance looks like a lot of "not enough room for advancement," which doesn't surprise me given how long the execs have hung around there.
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Mar 2, 2017 20:03
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TheChirurgeon posted:Honestly this kind of sentiment baffles me. Again, companies make mistakes. MM15 was two years ago and apparently something they learned from, given the frothing enthusiasm over the new set. And like every other company, WotC isn't a monolith. Different teams make decisions on different sets, and the individuals responsible make mistakes from time to time. The entire company isn't "incompetent" or "not experts" because they stumble on a secondary product. Not everything they do is going to be a roaring success or a flawless product. They make a lot of decisions that I don't necessarily agree with, but I'm also not a Hasbro shareholder and so there's no reason for me to desire high secondary market prices for anything. This also doesn't make them incompetent boobs Their actions wrt standard, modern, commander, online, tournaments, and I'm sure other areas have been sloppy for years. We're not talking about a bad set or two from an otherwise perfect track record
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Mar 2, 2017 20:05
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If you grade WOTC on a curve with all other corporations they probably don't come off looking that bad, but this is damning with praise so faint that you have to squint to make it out from a few feet away.
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Mar 2, 2017 20:07
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Death Bot posted:Their actions wrt standard, modern, commander, online, tournaments, and I'm sure other areas have been sloppy for years. We're not talking about a bad set or two from an otherwise perfect track record honestly I'm curious as to which sets you think were bad vs good, since you think the last what, 5? 10? years have been a horrible disaster?
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Mar 2, 2017 20:08
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The reason why WOTC is much more successful than GW is that they closed down their physical stores more than a decade ago. If those were still around, I'm sure we'd probably see some of the fun gimmicks like odd hours, one-person stores, and relentless pushing of
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Mar 2, 2017 20:11
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https://www.mtggoldfish.com/price/New+Phyrexia/Karn+Liberated#paper Can we expect this to happen for everything else that doesn't get reprinted in MM17?
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Mar 2, 2017 20:12
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JerryLee posted:If you grade WOTC on a curve with all other corporations they probably don't come off looking that bad, but this is damning with praise so faint that you have to squint to make it out from a few feet away. I don't envy them, since it doesn't seem like they have a lot of other companies they can emulate or look at when it comes to creating a successful template for things like tournaments/events. It also seems like they fall hard into the "traditional media" problem that I hated dealing with when I worked in TV, where anything they do digitally has to justify/support the traditional product, and never gets to be its own thing (or get the support it needs to be such). Chill la Chill posted:The reason why WOTC is much more successful than GW is that they closed down their physical stores more than a decade ago. If those were still around, I'm sure we'd probably see some of the fun gimmicks like odd hours, one-person stores, and relentless pushing of Also the fact that magic doesn't require nearly the insane investment of money, time, and space that warhammer does, and is somehow still much less socially painful to play. Magic can be played on any kitchen table in 10 minutes. Warhammer takes a 6x4' table and at least 3 loving hours every time you play.
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Mar 2, 2017 20:15
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Sickening posted:MM3 is so good that it makes me super interested in what company politics had to be overruled to make it happen. I honestly think there are some grognards in R&D that hated everything about this set. I think that last part might have some real truth to it. I went to this new shop opened by a guy who has been playing since Beta. He loves making brews, hates netdecking, spoilers, and has a bunch of seemingly contradictory views on reprints (he hates it when people complain about expensive cards, but wants WotC to reprint stuff, and also sells boxes of new sets for $99 out of a brick and mortar store). He's actually a pretty nice guy and a great shop owner but I'm glad he's not involved in making decisions about the game. WotC said that most of R&D are "Johnnys" and now I think I understand what they mean.
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Mar 2, 2017 20:15
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What are the most notable cards that are expensive and haven't been reprinted? Karn and Hierarch obviously, and also Spellskite. Ugin is also making his way up in the world of value ...
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Mar 2, 2017 20:17
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There's still one spot for Hierarch, right? And wait, couldn't Karn technically still be in it?
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Mar 2, 2017 20:22
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Bonus posted:What are the most notable cards that are expensive and haven't been reprinted? Karn and Hierarch obviously, and also Spellskite. Ugin is also making his way up in the world of value ... EE and Ensnaring Bridge are number crunched out. Chalice could still make it in?
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Mar 2, 2017 20:22
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TheChirurgeon posted:It's pretty simple: Their market research should be considered completely flawed, given the amount of panic WotC has shown with regards to how they've handled Standard in the last two years. They don't get to the point they have with their main attraction without having some extremely incorrect assumptions made due to misusing focus group data. Standard was on life support, and they've A) printed more lotto tickets in Standard packs (good) B) printed special packs for playing standard, that may contain those lotto tickets (strange but all upside for players who want to play standard) C) banned cards in standard (bad precedent, especially when we aren't in a Caw-Blade or Affinity one-deck standard situation) D) printed special cards and products, outside of FNM promos, to encourage WPN shops to host more standard (okay that's weird, focusing on standard during the time period when they release a Modern focused product) E) done a whole bunch of stupid poo poo on Twitter. All posts they've made with #WotCStaff would be, on average, better for the company if they were all never posted in the first place. TheChirurgeon posted:Duels was pretty good for a while there, though Lol what? One of the versions (ios?) literally did not function for weeks, the PC version would routinely disconnect you (no prize for either player) and I stopped playing because I had two of my three missions fail - one went to 5/4 games played with X deck, and the other just didn't count matches played with Y deck. I'm the kind of idiot that would have paid money to them if their poo poo worked and their poo poo did not work. Did they ever get an Android version?
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Mar 2, 2017 20:23
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InterrupterJones posted:https://www.mtggoldfish.com/price/New+Phyrexia/Karn+Liberated#paper It's not impossible since there's still space for it in the spoiler, but I doubt that it will be reprinted. Meanwhile, the only seller with any copies of Mishra's Bauble on TCGPlayer is selling it for sixty dollars.
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Mar 2, 2017 20:25
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Do we know yet if Mishra's Bauble is excluded from the reprint? I really wanted a playset, but can't justify that kind of money for them.
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Mar 2, 2017 20:28
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Yeah, market research isn't the bend all be all. It's often skewed towards the results that the companies doing it want to get. And just because players say they like A, B and C doesn't mean that they will actually like the finished product that has those things, because it's not guaranteed that those things work together well.
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Mar 2, 2017 20:28
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Star Man posted:It's not impossible since there's still space for it in the spoiler, but I doubt that it will be reprinted. Meanwhile, the only seller with any copies of Mishra's Bauble on TCGPlayer is selling it for sixty dollars.  I know I said it before, but now I guess I'm REALLY glad I picked mine up at $20 each.
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Mar 2, 2017 20:29
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Ersatz posted:Do we know yet if Mishra's Bauble is excluded from the reprint? I really wanted a playset, but can't justify that kind of money for them. Yeep. The signets pushed Mishra's Bauble out of contention. http://mythicspoiler.com/mm3/numbercrunch.html
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Mar 2, 2017 20:31
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Crap. Thanks for confirming.
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Mar 2, 2017 20:33
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Star Man posted:Yeep. The signets pushed Mishra's Bauble out of contention. Oh poo poo, I missed this one. Welp.
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Mar 2, 2017 20:33
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Mishra's Bauble would make for a great FNM promo...
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