Hey, Mark! You recently wrote "We put out more products, but at the same level of quality, if not more, than we always have", and I want to say I do agree! However, it seems likely to me that product fatigue from too many releases is a real thing, no matter how good the products are. Anecdotally, I will say that I barely even register / get interested in supplemental products anymore, when once upon a time I'd be all over stuff like Planechase. Just some hopefully constructive feedback.

I said in an ask a few days ago that we’re at another flex point. Let me explain a little more what that means. A flex point is a moment in the life cycle of a product where how the product is used goes through a transition. Flex points are usually the result of a product evolving to match the needs of its audience and/or the technology of making it.For many years, we made Magic trying to get the audience to act a certain way. We would put focus on certain ways to play to influence the audience to play that way. Magic is about Standard. We’ll make Standard-level sets, and make sanction play be Standard, and shine a light on competitive play using Standard. Eventually, we realized Magic did better if we reflected what the audience wanted rather than tried to influence how people played. You tell us how you want to play and we’ll make Magic that lets you do that. So we shifted how we made Magic and started making our offerings more broad. Not just in what sets we made, but how we made them. We experimented with kinds of boosters, kinds of frames/layouts, kinds of premium cards, kinds of art, etc. In addition, we started making more releases as it allowed us to go even broader. The result was a huge success. More people found things that excited them and Magic had it’s best years in its history. Now we get to the flex point. While how we make Magic has changed, how the audience, at least the enfranchised audience, absorbs it hasn’t yet. There’s a lag between new technology and new behavior. You seem to think your inability to focus on everything is a bug, rather than a feature. You can’t absorb it all, so you’re choosing what you care more about and are just focusing on that. Great! That’s where this process is going. Magic is better as a product if it’s not limited by being at a scope that players can absorb in its entirety. Magic at its heart has always been about exploration. It’s a game bigger than its box. Now let’s take that up the next step. It’s a game bigger than a singular focus. It’s a game that as you play it you can discover new things about it. You can run into cards you didn’t know existed. That was Richard’s original concept. The problem was the internet was exploding at the time and there wasn’t a means to withhold the information. Plus, the game just wasn’t that big yet, so players could literally know every card. Richard’s vision was great. It just wasn’t viable at the time. But now Magic turns thirty. There are over 25,000 unique cards. We’re past the point where one person can absorb all the information. So why build our product lineup around that concept? Magic’s complexity has always been a big part of its success. Players can dive deep because the game’s too big for any one person to master it. That’s what I mean by we’re at a flex point. How we make Magic is changing, which means how the audience absorbs it will ultimately change as well. I get it’s disorienting, but as with all flex points, this will come to feel normal once you’re used to it. Anyway, that’s what I was talking about.

Is it safe to assume The Powers That Be felt the same about Quidditch?

The lawyers were the ones that nixed that (in larger concept, not this specific name). I’m not allowed to use other people’s IP in codenames (any more, as we did it once upon a time).

Mark, you missed the point in my previous ask. It wasn't about Commander nor about Toski not being on the right colors - he IS a Green card, the problem is that Green cards have been way more pushed than cards in other colors and this is bothering players. If everyone gets to see strong cards in their favorite colors, Green players have been the major focus for this distribution for the last 2-3 years. Others just started seeing comparable strong cards in their favorite colors very recently.

The game has ebb and flow. At any one moment in time, one color is ebbing more than others. Once upon a time, green was the “worst” color. Now it’s the “best”. Flux will happen and things will change like they always do.The one extenuating circumstance is that the most popular format right now is an eternal one and those formats evolve much slower, so it takes a longer time for things to shake up.

Should Once Upon a Time have been recast as a blue card without the type restrictions, or would it still have required banning even outside green?

I believe it would have been banned in any color.

Can you own Once Upon a Time or Happily Ever After by the name alone? Wizards retroactively invented a Rabiah setting that isn't identical to the source material - a world of 1,0001 versions of the plane, complete with planeswalkers, and names like 'Juzam' and 'Ernham' are, as far as I know, original to Magic. Aside from one or two real character and place names, it seems as distinct as Eldraine (though as a world rather than a set of references I'd argue Eldraine lacks coherence).

Names of cards isn’t the issue. It’s name of characters and places (and to a lesser extent famous objects) that matter. Let’s say we wanted to visit Rabiah in some other media, we could only reference things uniquely ours like Juzam Djinn. Note that every character, anything that would have bern legendary if legendary existed in Arabian Nights uses the actual name of the characters straight from the source material.

Hey Mark!!! Two months ago: “kerwinray asked: I do hope that there are cards named “Once Upon a Time” or “Happily Ever After” in ELD. Like not as playtest names, but actual card names. A maybe and a smiley for this? Maybe. : )” In hindsight, it was probably a given, given how iconic these phrases are, but just so damn pleased with these cards becoming a reality! Awesome!

Both cards went through a bunch of changes, but never left the file.

I would like to renew my periodic request for the Spider Pirate Lava World you (jokingly) referenced once upon a time on Blogatog. : )

Some Blogatog jokes live on. : )

A return to lorowyn?

Minor If. Once upon a time this would have been a Major If, but there have been numerous signs that the enfranchised players would really like to go back. That said, returning to a world that did badly is not the easiest thing to sell internally.

"We often change rarities of cards when reprinting them." Yes but like errata changes old cards that actually said something else once upon a time. The same can be said about rarity. You can make old cards become the new reprint rarity according to rules. (pauper doesn't have to follow it) Now you solved that problem.

No, because having cards contradict what it says printed on them is something we try to avoid whenever we can.

I don't think you answered why it was ok for reflector mage/spell queller to perform like this counter scenario you were so worried about? it's not as if removal or counter spells are doing much at the moment. Yet your new "spells weak/push creatures" ethos doesn't bat an eyelid at putting strong spell effects onto creatures. Do you honestly think the meta called for more reflector mage style play? or that Bant needed help?

Two things:1) It’s not that we are unwilling to have any tournament level cards that counter spells. We just want to be careful of individual power level and total volume of counterspells in Standard.2) Once upon a time, noncreature spells were very powerful and creature spells were weak. We’ve spent many years getting them to an equal power level. Creatures aren’t better than noncreature spells, it just perceptually seems that way to people used to how Magic worked many years ago.