From Innistrad to Outlaws: The Fortnite-ification of MTG

This article sums up my feelings precisely. I want to go back to when Magic was Magic and not a hundred other things with no depth. I'm fine with planes like Eldraine where it's "Magic's take on fairy tales", since there was some creativity and depth there, but New Capenna, Karlov Manor, and Thunder Junction all feel really cheap.

Same here, I strongly disliked Capenna and Murders and I really hated to see Thunders previews.

When the Brother's War and the Dominaria United sets were released, they fell back behind my expectations - I immediately compared them with my all time favorites Tempest and Urza blocks (flavor wise). But then, compared with Thunder Junction I think the "new" Urza sets are really good...

Why does everything have to be shiny and sparkly? Give me Phyrexian Colossus, Spirit of the Night or Volrath instead of humanized demons in cowboy hats or suits please.
I think the switch to sing large sets instead of blocks plays a lot into the failure to really dive into the stories of the planes. Can't do something like the Tarkir block with a single set and not a series of three that are narratively connected and sequential.
- They have done "blocks" though like with the three Ravnica sets in a row, the two Innistrad sets, and the two Phyrexia sets. They might feel pressured to plane hop more outside of the block structure though.
@rigatti @MysticKetchup I agree with the article, except for the start point. I think the first sign of that big change was when they got rid of the block structure. I think there are a lot of problems with that structure being rigidly enforced, but I don't think that 4+ new planes a year is correct. It really does feel like they're frantically hopping from one place to the next in the hopes that "ooh shiney" will keep people invested

@MysticKetchup I've just had a thought. This "Fortnite-ification" of Magic (alongside many other games like, well, Fortnite but also Call of Duty, Minecraft Bedrock & Destiny 2 as of late) with the intense focus on crossover IPs to make quick easy cash with barely-relevant products that are really just tie-ins...

Does anyone else remember the tie-in shovelware platformers of the early 2000s? Not the good ones, the unforgivably *bad* ones.

Magic is becoming a vector for that same market.

Yep. Magic is dead, long live the new magic. A once valuable and unique game with lots of interesting things to say and show, now relegated to a backdrop of mechanics to shill pop culture references in card form. The greed got them in the end, as it always does...

This was a really great article, echoes a lot of what I've thought for a while. I really have disliked sales #s as the sole evaluation criteria for whether something in MtG is a success. Just because something makes more money doesn't mean it's a step in the right direction. This Fortnite-ification of Magic makes it very easy to get in and "play what you like" but I feel like this challenges the entire foundation of the game. The Standard -> Non-rotating format nature of the game and the in-game lore that has been built out and is actually cool and unique, these things are diminishing more and more in favor of the Fortnite-ification and UB stuff.