you mention 'mood swings' quite often, and you clearly have a lot of faith that it is a good game despite not being able to get it to production. have you considered doing a kickstarter for it? is that something that you would be allowed to do given your position at wotc? with your game design notoriety and dream-infiltrating levels of popularity it would seem like a pretty viable route to take.

I don’t think Kickstarter is currently a viable option, but I haven’t given up the fight. My plan is to get it to print someday.For those unaware, Mood Swings is my mass market TCG that I’ve been trying to get made for twenty-six years.

I've always heard you say that Kamigawa block rated poorly in market research. I don't doubt that the numbers were down, but I wonder if that's really a statement on the block itself or if it was just Kamigawa paying for the sins of Affinity. First, Standard with Affinity was miserable and drove people away from the game. Second, those who didn't quit the game still had lower confidence in WotC due to so many overpowered Mirrodin cards needing bans. Finally, Kamigawa itself had lots of niche or just underpowered cards that couldn't hang in Standard with the rest of the Mirrodin. Any of these would have made a huge impact on the success of Kamigawa block, let alone all three. Did market research at the time account for these external factors?

Yes.

I have a sales question. LOTR, I believe, is the best selling set of all time, right? And if I recall, the best selling commander set of all time is Fallout, behind that being Warhammer. Goes to imply the Marvel sets will likely be the next highest selling sets of all time, if not just behind LOTR. My question is, doesn't this show WOTC should mostly just pivot to UB as the new 'standard' with old planes as the less visited product?

While will continue to do Universes Beyond as there is an obvious audience, but the Magic in-universe sets (which we call “MIP sets”) also serve an important function. There are a lot of fans who love Magic’s IP, and having sets that we have don’t have to interface with outside partners has a lot of advantages.

To add onto what jdrawer01 said, I'm curious as to why the design team stopped using epithets on named cards. I always felt like those were a very distinctly Magic™ thing and enjoyed them greatly, and a lot of the named character cards feel lacking in flavor without having them. Was it a request from the properties WotC is working with on UBs, or was it an internal decision, and if the latter, why drop them?

It depends on the property. Some will use them, some won’t.

Would WOTC ever want to print a Planeswalker into Standard that had "this planeswalker can be your Commander"? Or is that strictly off the table?

Unlikely.

I don't like how weird Magic is getting with mechanics lately. Collect evidence, commit a crime, now gift, forage, and pawprints. What happened to just making new keywords and ability words? Has wotc run out of design space?

All of the mechanics you listed, save paw prints, *is* a new keyword or ability word.

Hello, I heard something interesting about MH3 where you retried EVERY mechanic to see what would work with a new context or be interesting. You (WoTC) revisited many of my favorite mechanics like grandeur but didn't for probably my favorite. That mechanic is absorb, and while it has only been keyworded on one card "Lymph Sliver" it did see a continuation on my favorite card of all "Valkmira, Protector's Shield" alongside what would only a few sets later become ward. I wanted to know if you could share any insights on the designs taken with absorb or any other of your favorite mechanics? Thank you very much for your time.

I designed Lymph Sliver and absorb. If I remember correctly, I was riffing off of a shield mechanic from the Star Wars TCG. (It was a trading card game design lead by Richard Garfield that I was on the initial design team for.)

Does no one at wotc think it's silly how you can put an emrakul or griselbrand into play turn 1 but making a bunch of squirrels with earthcraft is too far?

I think it’s not far enough. : )

I understand WotC doesn't want UB having Planeswalkers, but what about UB re-skins of existing Planeswalkers?

No plans for that right now.

Howdy Mark!I sat with my thoughts and the replies you've given recently about not changing Minotaur or Merfolk to Ox and Fish respectively, and I gotta say, I can't square this circle.You say that WotC won't be changing these specific humanoid-animal races because they have prior mythological notoriety. But to be honest, one could make that excuse for every humanoid-animal race. There are a lot of Mythos that exist throughout the world, and finding a name for every humanoid-animal race wouldn't take too long if someone took the task seriously. I say this to show it doesn't feel like a really consistent or genuine reason to resist a rule that WotC is taking big lengths to adhere to (they are doing errata, which you've said is something that isn't done lightly).However, my biggest issue comes down to consistency with this "rule" you are mentioning. WotC changed Cephalids, Viashino, and probably Homarids soon so that they would fall in line with a rule that WotC wants to follow. Nothing drives me more insane than a rule that isn't applied equally to all, especially when as I mentioned above, the reasoning for the exception doesn't feel like a particularly strong one; at the very least, it doesn't feel strong enough to resist a rule WotC is taking seriously enough to errata 100's of cards so they fall in-line with said rule.I try to be open-minded as often as possible, but even after mulling over the things you've mentioned here on Blogatog, I don't think there is anything you can say that will change my mind on this. I suppose I will just have to sit and wait patiently until ya'll decide to finally finish what you started.Yours Truly,A fellow Ape

The thing you’re missing is the bar is not “does a mythological version exist anywhere in the world?” The question we ask - “is there a popular and well known version of it?”Here’s a different way to think of it. If we picked 100 random people (not specifically Magic players) and gave them a list of creature types, which ones are words they know and which ones aren’t?Some they wouldn’t know because they’re made up things we created that have no well known equivalent. Outside of those, we want to use words people recognize. It makes the game more resonant and lowers the barrier to entry. Our fanciful made-up terminology does have a place - in names and flavor text (aka the text areas focused on flavor). In mechanical rules space, familiarity is more important.