I'm sympathetic to this complaint, but COVID-19 is what took me away from paper Magic. I was out of the game for three years and I'm only back now because of Arena.

I agree with most of this.

Regarding the speed/balance issues -- I really just want to play Magic with a much, much lower power level than anything that is currently supported, but WotC has been pushing the power level for so long that I don't even know if we can get back there. I would be open to playing something like Standard Pauper or Standard Artisan, but even that is probably way beyond where I really want to be. I want to turn the clock back 15 or 20 years to when 2R got you a Goblin Chariot instead of a Screaming Nemesis.

Regarding the Arena interface -- I turned off voice lines and background music, changed my graphics settings to Low, and set my default pet to none, all within about a month of starting Arena. And then after a while I just started leaving my headphones off anyway. I put up with emotes for over a year, but broke down and disabled them within the past month or so. It's been an improvement. I feel bad that I might be missing the occasional sincere "Nice" or "Thinking", but not as bad as I used to feel about getting a premature "Good game" or a "Your Go" during a complex turn. I would love a setting to disable non-essential animations. Sleeves, pets, ripple effects in the background. I play Arena despite those things, not because of them. And the card highlighting! I realize it actually provides information but I'd still shut it off in a second.

As for sitting through combos... Arena really needs more sophisticated skipping controls. MTGO has had "Pass until end of turn" and "Pass until next turn" for two decades.

I would like to see Sol Ring banned, partly because it's an obviously overpowered card and partly because it reduces space in your deck. Your options are to accept that the real deck construction rules are "Sol Ring plus 98 cards", or to accept that you're voluntarily building an underpowered deck, neither of which are satisfactory IMO.

That said, I think it's interesting that their logic for not banning Sol Ring echoes the reason why I thought Gush shouldn't have been banned from Pauper: it's "the iconic card of the format", and telling people that they'll get to play it is a good advertisement for the format.

I admire the restraint it took to write calmly about a subject that must be pretty personal for Mark.

I think Mark is misunderstanding what "stop designing for Commander" means. His response here would be more appropriate if fans were saying "stop balancing for Commander" -- which of course nobody is. I don't know about anyone else, but speaking for myself, when I say "stop designing for Commander" I mean "stop printing undercosted legends with as many abilities as you can jam into a text box". It is okay -- preferable, even -- if one card can't do everything by itself.

I think Mark is probably right about playtesting, in that no amount of additional resources would be enough to guarantee they'd catch every mistake. But I still don't love the "eh, what can you do" attitude. I keep thinking, maybe they could hire a consultant with experience in an industry where rigorous testing is the norm. There's got to be room to improve their processes.

As is tradition, this B&R announcement begins by saying that they will be changing the frequency of B&R announcements.

And then there's this:

It is worth noting that we don't plan on changing the current Standard B&R philosophy, meaning we still only want one window per year, barring an emergency, where we consider taking action in Standard.

I'm not sure I get the concept of non-emergency bans. If a card needs to be banned, ban it immediately; if it doesn't, don't ban it at all. This once-a-year interval makes even less sense for Standard than for other formats, since a year is proportionally longer for Standard.

I understand that they want people to feel confident that their chosen deck won't disappear at a moment's notice, I just don't think that's worth the trade-off of making everyone put up with an unbalanced format for months.

They call them "Beyond Boosters" because, unlike normal boosters, they're not made from meat.

October 2023: "Having too many types of booster is hurting sales, so we're consolidating them."

July 2024: "Hey check out this new type of booster we came up with."

I've been playing Magic long enough to remember when a 3/4 for 3 mana would need a pretty significant drawback to even be printable. So I'm still surprised when they come out with broken nonsense like Nadu, even though I shouldn't be by now.

This Pro Tour had lopsided numbers and non-interactive games and just wasn't much fun to watch. Wizards should consider it a disaster, but whether they will probably depends a lot on MH3 sales numbers.

I'll always have fond memories of [[Aurochs Herd]]. I know a lot of people don't like Coldsnap draft, but I'll play it anytime, and I'll probably try to force green.

Yeah, this is basically what I was trying to say, put much more succinctly.

Hard to disagree with any of the points he makes, but Standard accounts for most of my playtime right now, and I'd feel pretty lost if it went away.

It's not actually that I like Standard in particular so much as that I prefer formats with lower power levels. I like games to last longer and involve more back-and-forth. I would actually prefer a power level much lower than Standard, but Standard is the best I can get, so I take it. I would rather have seen them change Standard rotation to one year than three years -- but they'd have to accompany that by making it much, much easier to obtain new cards quickly, and it's hard to imagine that happening.

I would probably quit the game rather than move to Modern. Modern combines the worst aspects of Legacy/Vintage (high power level, short games, high monetary cost) with the worst aspect of Standard (you don't get to play all your cards). Pioneer/Explorer are a little better I guess, but give them time, they'll become "Second Modern" eventually.

I'll play Commander with friends, but not with strangers. It's alright but it's not really the same game. Too swingy, too flashy for my tastes. No opportunity to gain small advantages over time. It's nothing for the entire battlefield to be wiped and refilled twice before it even comes around to your turn again. And no sense of personal achievement, even when you win. Commander is about doing cool things, and all winning means is that you did the last cool thing. It doesn't necessarily reflect on good strategic decisions you made. Sometimes things just happen to line up for you due to decisions that other people made while you were tapped out and in the kitchen getting a soda. And Commander seems to be filling up more and more with Universes Beyond cards, which are a real turn-off for me.

I like Draft and Sealed plenty, but I can't afford to play them every day. How many of us can? Plus, without Standard, how much do I care about the cards I acquire in Limited? Is there room to make free or very low-cost phantom drafts available on a permanent basis? I'd consider making that my primary format, but I doubt Wizards can justify it financially.

So yeah, it's pretty much Standard or Pauper for me, and Pauper isn't available on Arena.

Surprised to see mono-red aggro with the second largest share; I guess Goddric must have helped it more than I realized. Mono-red is maybe the one archetype that will never be absent from any metagame, but prior to WOE I would not have said it was in a good place in Standard.