Oliver just wrote an article about new Core Constructed. He talked about card values, and how it affects vendors and power traders. I found it perfectly written and pointing out that most of the buzz was just an overreaction and like in anything, when one field loses something, the other gains something.

When news about new Core came, one player from the area I am from was also devastated that Scourgewar was skipped and he promised to quit the game. I need to point out that he had collected the best cards from the set and hoped to make a bit money with this. It's understandable that when you have concentrated your resources into something and when something like this happens, you're not happy. In the end I think he will still keep playing, but it's something he didn't expect.

Of course he wasn't the only one who didn't like the change. I thought about the change and for me it looked like good news, not bad news. I wanted to write about it, but never found the time or the will to actually do it. When Oliver's article appeared, I took couple of hours to write from another point of view that I thought was missing from the article.

Changes

Changes are happening all the time. When something happens and you don't expect it, of course you're going to be emotional and express your feeling towards it and so on, but people tend to notice only bad things. Changes can be positive too, but people take them granted and even if there have been 11 changes and 10 of those have been positive, you only notice the bad one.

If something happens and you don't like it, then you have two options. Either to accept it or quit the game. Life is full of things that you aren't going to like. If you don't learn to deal with those things, you're going to have real problems in life. Be mad for 2 minutes, be sad for 2 minutes and then get over it. That's my advice. Life is too short to hate and whine about how bad things are.

For example, in music I like classic rock and won't listen to any.... let's say trance music (editor's note: ಠ_ಠ). That doesn't mean that I will quit listening to music. I understand that there are people who like other kind of music and I respect it. You won't quit games that you like overall, even if there's one part you don't like. If you are, then you're not a serious player. I don't like Core very much, but I won't quit because of that. You adapt. I know players who are playing only Limited and I know those also who are playing only Constructed formats. If there's something you don't like, then play what you do like. I haven't seen any rule that says that you have to play only that and that format from now on.

Card value

I'm one of those players who likes to collect cards. I have collected different cards for years. I started in 1994, when I was a small kid and found out there's something called hockey cards with players stats and small career summaries etc. After that I have played almost everything (Magic, VS System, LOTR) that has came on my way.

In my home, I have about 50 big binders and a lot of those white cardboard boxes for 3000+ cards. God knows why I like collecting, but the main point is that probably half of those albums are full of worthless cards. At least worthless in a money sense. Certainly LOTR and Vs System cards. Maybe I'm a fool, but I like collecting and having everthing and not having to worry from where to get some cards when I need them. They are in my albums. They are not worthless to me.

Some time ago WoW TCG almost died because of the uncertainty of its future and I wasn't going to sell my cards. Things may change and luckily they did. It probably won't happen with two games mentioned before, but I don't feel that I should have sold cards before they lost their value. I still play them with couple of friends once a year or so and there more people like me in the world.

Other card games (MTG) introduced a new format some months ago and several card prices rose enormously after that. I have to say, that having almost all the cards from that format in multiples gave a good value boost to my cards. Some went from $6 to $35 and some went from 0-1 to $10. I'm still not going to sell them. Same with the Core changes. If you have a lot of cards, some prices will rise in the future too because people rediscover the cards for formats using older sets. Yes, right now some cards will lose their value, maybe even by half, but after some years, when they are hard to get, their price will go up again.

One last thing about that topic. When the WoW TCG was first introduced, I played Alliance Hunter (like every second player) with 4 copies of Leeroy Jenkins. I bought them about 30-40 bucks each. How much they are worth now? Right answer is almost nothing and I'm absolutely happy that I bought them then and memories and their usefulness then are worth much much more than what they have lost in cash after better cards came.


Why the bad changes are happening

Well, you're thinking it's bad, right? Ok, but do you really believe that CZE is making decisions to make players unhappy, „forcing“ them to quit? No, I never believe that. It's a laughable idea. All the changes are made to make things better, not worse. You just need to see things from right angle.

With Scourgewar in Core, decks would be much more expensive, with more cards in the format, and the boosters and cards from those sets would be harder to get also. The buy-in to game would be just too much to get started. I don't want to spend $500 to see if I like the game or not. That change was needed, so this game will have future. That's right! When you're having, let's say 100000 players all over the world play your game and each year it either goes down or goes nowhere, and your player acquisitions programs aren't doing their job. You need to look to see why it's like that. Are you getting new players in the wrong way or is there something else behind this? I guess we all can agree that the game is good and the brand is more than popular, so there's no problem in that field. Good game, good brand – it's a match made in heaven and should work. If it doesn't work as well as it should, find the mistakes and fix it.

If no players are coming in, then you need to make changes. If that change means that in over a year you will lose 10% of players because of that, but you win by getting 20% of players from acquisition programs, then that's healthy for the game. If you would have kept doing things the old way, in the end you will start to lose old players also for different reasons and the game dies. Maybe not for a couple of years, but eventually it will die. What would be your cards be worth then? Those who quit. As I wrote before, serious players won't quit because of these things.

I always liked Magic because WOTC is not afraid of making changes that players won't like at first. They do what they need to do, even if they are not popular choices. I hope I'm starting to see that in CZE also. I don't personally like it if the changes are made too quickly, like changing the format of some event when I have tested that format for some time etc. But I'm for for any change that is good for the future of the game.

The future

I'm from a small country and our player base is also quite small right now. We haven't had Class Starter Decks for some time and progress of getting new players has been difficult without offering Starters. I didn't start writing to explain why we have had this situation, but I want to show that even if the game is good, players need certain conditions to start playing. If those conditions don't exist, new blood won't flow in. Skipping Scourgewar is important for this. It's like there's a wall and you are in one and potential new players on other side. They can't join you without climbing over the wall and for most, climbing over is too big obsticle to find out what's behind it. You need to tear down the wall.

About year and half ago Cryptozoic started pretty much from zero with Organized Play and they have built up more than I would have hoped for with such time. Continental Championships, World Cup, Worlds, Realms, Darkmoon Faires etc. Not only big events, but also the local event system is cool. There are Battlegrounds, Holiday Celebrations, Draft Rallies, Spectral Safaris, Warm-Up events and more. I did expect CZE to do nice events, but not so many different events. I feel that I should have used word cool again somewhere in the previous sentence.

As the official article said, they feel that this was last big change for a long time. What you probably don't understand is what that exactly means. It means they have built up a pretty solid tournament system and now can turn their heads to acquisition programs.

When CZE was created, of course I can only guess, their first priority was to keep as many existing players as they could and build up new exciting Organized Play. When this is done, you can start bringing in new players. You can't do that without system where to guide new players. When I teach 10 players to play and they ask where, when, and in what tournaments they can play, you can't say that this comes later and to just hold on until then. You first need a system and that's just what they have done.

I think we are right now at a point where the first step is completed and second one should start. I hope next year the OP system will continue in the same way, maybe doing some Pro Player/POY system as well and then creating programs that are helping to introduce the game to more players.

-Kaupo Liiv

kaupo@procard.ee