By Disidență (Troy) on Thursday, January 01, 2009 - 03:27 pm:

Their was a thread started by a user named Skibo on the MTG storyline boards.

And with the new year, he asked for new year resoultions asked by the readers of the MTG story's for the Wizards Creative Department.

So, Go and get your voice heard, phyrexians!

You guys want the Current state of the Creative Department to change right? Well, complain no more, go on their and get your idea's and opinions across!

Here is a link to the thread,
http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?p=17542287#post17542287

By Sam KoMN (A1withnoname) on Thursday, January 01, 2009 - 08:37 pm:

I already posted my thoughts.

This could be a good thread.

By Disidență (Troy) on Thursday, January 01, 2009 - 09:53 pm:

Cool, are you KeeperofManyNames?

O yah, I seconded your comment.

Does that redeem me any?

Any style points?

By Disidență (Troy) on Saturday, January 03, 2009 - 11:37 am:

Sam, you just got served.

No, some guy responded to all your suggestions. and it wasnt brady.

Originally Posted by KeeperofManyNames
1. Expand the book line to more than four books a year. If the different settings for Dungeons & Dragons can do this, creating books enjoyed by people who don't even play, why can't Magic: The Gathering do the same thing? It seems odd.

There are several reasons. Firstly, Dungeons & Dragons is more popular. This means more people to buy more books, which means D&D can afford to maintain several different campaign worlds.

Secondly, because Wizards doesn't exert direct control over most of its publishings. Dragonlance, for example, isn't directly under Wizard's control and never has been. The Realms is, but as I understand it there's some contract-thing going on that keeps the Realms basically outside any direct ability for Wizards to affect its novels. Eberron is still under Keith Baker's creative control.

Thirdly, D&D maintains only three major novel settings: Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, and Eberron. If Magic were to create an open world, that is, where pretty much anyone can write a Magic story, get permission, and then publish, it would create a problem of niche fans.

DC and Marvel comics deal with these problems all the time. When was the last time you saw an Aquaman comic? Sure, there are some people who want to read Aquaman. But you have to look at cost to print verses money recieved in return.

In other words, unless Magic was making a lot of money off of this scheme, Magic would be making no money off of this scheme. There's no middle ground and not enough of a fan base to justify the risk.

Fourth, Magic is not as closed a world as the Realms or Eberron or Dragonlance. That is, the Realms benefits from having a certain set of common denominators. magic works like this, this is the history, these are the fallen empires, and so on. Magic by definition has limitless worlds, which means limitless possibilities, which means a limitless number of books that have nothing in common with each other; no linking factor.

Fifth, Magic and D&D are different games. The whole point of D&D is character creation, so we expect many books about many characters with many different plot points. Magic's story tends to focus on different worlds more than characters, however, so we expect lots of new setting books.

I mean, what is Magic supposed to do if they were to make a character of Drizzt-level love for a given book, and then no one in Creative has any desire to go back to that character in a future book or set but all anyone here wants is about book or set with him in it?


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2. Start wrapping up unanswered questions, uncompleted storylines, and missing information.

They tried this. It was called Time Spiral, remember?


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3. Finish What You Start! What did Karn come up against? What was that oil in Mirrodin? Is The Ineffable still really alive, or was the Onslaught cycle just a bad dream [please decide the latter...]?

A good writer always leaves open plot points, if they're trying to write an ongoing arc or world. In other words, this request basically says "Write Badly."


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4. Let authors have more control, don't use page limits, don't put absurd constraints upon the books that cause the content to suffer, don't sacrifice quality for some slavish devotion to trilogies, or One Book Per Block, or whatever.

This is partially a good idea, partially not. They tried this, remember? The character's name was Braids. Look what happened there; look how the fans reacted there.


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5. GET PROFESSIONAL COMIC WRITERS. That, or go read EVERYTHING that Scott McCloud has ever written. Making Comics, Understanding Comics, and Reinventing Comics will all be of immense value. The comics right now need serious improvement.

The comics right now are webcomics that you can read for free. A lot of good webcomics don't have amazing art or professional comic writers. I still like Megatokyo, El Goonish Shive, Nuklear Power, and so on. Quality isn't the goal. Entertainment is. I liked Fuel for the Fire.


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6. Promote the books through quality, not through begging. There is an interesting difference between the general attitudes of Doug Beyer compared to Matt Cavotta. Cavotta used his articles to show an extremely deep view of the different settings, and generally promoted the books [most memorably, the Ravnica cycle] by showing how great the setting was. Beyer comes right out and tries to guilt the storyline fans into buying books. Cavotta's way is better.

I don't read the articles, so I've got nothing to say on this.


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7. Creative doesn't cover it. A continuity section is necessary, because there is so much magic continuity. Maybe even just a team of fact-checkers like Skibo suggests, but there needs to be someone making sure that things sync up.

And who's going to pay for all of this? You?

Cost VS benefit. Creative should be able to cover it. Most holes are things that don't actually effect the actual story. Time Spiral's quality was not effected by whether or not Argoth actually was where Yavimaya was; the story exists independently anyway.

By Sam KoMN (A1withnoname) on Saturday, January 03, 2009 - 05:26 pm:

I would love to reply to all of his complaints. However, I realize that there is no point in arguing with someone who clearly does not understand the basic rudiments of formal logic, and who continually over-interprets my statements.

His response to my number five, for instance, makes absolutely No Sense Whatsoever, you will note.

I don't have the time, energy, or will to constantly battle people like this. So, no response. It should be obvious what problems his statements inherently hold. I don't need to pick them apart only to continue what is essentially a war of attrition between my obsessive need to correct fallacious thinking, and his stubborn adherence to woolly thinking.

By Disidență (Troy) on Saturday, January 03, 2009 - 07:00 pm:

Sam, are you a Wizard?
I mean, you just seem like a old all knowing Arcane Wizard.

Puschkin, dosent Sam remind of you of a Archmage in Dalaran?

I mean, how do you know all this? rudiments of Formal logic? Dont lie, Are you Merlin, the wise old Wizard?

As i've said before, you continue to amaze me.

Also, im going to be asking you questions ranging from why does choclate taste good to whether or not god is real.

Now, think of a cool name, Im thinking Talin the Advisor.

By Sam KoMN (A1withnoname) on Saturday, January 03, 2009 - 11:34 pm:

I can never tell if you like me or are mocking me. It's... unsettling.

Chocolate tastes good because it's a subtle aphrodisiac. God exists and her name is Haruhi Suzumiya. [Alternately, Lain.] You may call me the Prince of Lies [or nonsense made up on the spot].

By Puschkin (Puschkin) on Sunday, January 04, 2009 - 06:10 am:

Sam? No. But some of the music of the introduction movie of Wrath of the Lichking reminds me of the LotR tune. And Arthas' armour reminds me of Sauron's armour - alot. And the creepy smaller scout guys that lurk around in the beginning of the death knight campaign remind me of Gollum/Smeagol.

By Disidență (Troy) on Sunday, January 04, 2009 - 11:00 am:

Yay, do you remeber when you first go into Icecrown and you start those chain quests to unlock shadow vault.

The first one you have to do is kill a eye all the way at the top of a massive tower.

Then those wrathgates? wow

By Disidență (Troy) on Sunday, January 04, 2009 - 11:08 am:

Merlin, Prince of Lies, Why does World of Warcraft have so many fans. And how do they make so much money off of it?

Merlin, Should we like or dislike the new planeswalkers?

Merlin, was the Merlin in Arthurian legend real?

By Puschkin (Puschkin) on Monday, January 05, 2009 - 04:15 am:

Yeah, forgot about the eye-thingy.

WoW has so many fans because it's simple enough to get "normal" people into it. You know, like Risk gets normal people into wargaming because it has so simple rules. At first it attracted all the Diablo and Warcraft/Starcraft players just because it's Blizzard. And from there, WoW's popularity skyrocketed because it was the only simple MMORPG and once it had a critical mass of players it will get even more because, well, it's calles "MASSIVE MULTI Player Role Playing Game" for a reason - you don't play the best game on the market, you play what your friends play in order to enjoy a game together with them.
That's why Starcraft overshadowed Total Annihilation. TA is the better game, by far, but SC had BattleNet.

By Sam KoMN (A1withnoname) on Monday, January 05, 2009 - 09:28 am:

Also, WoW is essentially an addictive drug. Nothing necessarily against WoW players, but I have noticed some behavior among players that I know disturbingly reminiscent of extreme drug addiction...

We should like the wheeled warriors as characters if they are good characters, but dislike them as a replacement for Planeswalkers. That's about my take on it.

I'm willing to accept Merlin's reality if there's evidence for it. Even tenuous circumstantial evidence. I'm not sure it matters at this point, though, whether or not he lived. The legend past a certain point seems to have supplanted reality. It doesn't matter whether or not he existed in the first place, only how powerful his stories were. The Order of Freemasons takes much of its symbolism from a medieval hoax (The Rosecrucians), and depending who you ascribe to, the most powerful religion the world has ever known is based off of a fictional individual.

Seriously, though, why do you ask me these questions? I'm not really a bottomless pit of answers, I just know how to bullshit my way around questions using really big words. It's slightly alarming. I feel like L. Ron Hubbard or something.

By Puschkin (Puschkin) on Monday, January 05, 2009 - 10:16 am:

Can't you find drug addiction like behaviour in all kinds of hobbies? Be it sports, collecting things, or, in this case, playing WoW.
Regarding WoW, I am kind of sick about all the complaints about it and their players. Whatever it is ("they are addicted" "they lost contact to reality" "they don't have a life" "they never touched boobs" "they are socially inapt") are common place accusiations that have been said for way too many groups of people already, including Magic players, remind you. They may be true to some extent and in some cases but that's only because there will always be persons like this, whether they play or not. WoW has almost 10 million players world wide - TEN MILLIONS! It doesn't surprise me at all that one can find all kind of nerds, addicts or even psycho mass murderers among them because, well, any given sample of that many people will contain all kinds of extreme people, naturally. And those extreme people are the ones that make their way into media and youtube and then jokes are getting made of them etc. But WoW is one of the first "nerdy" games that is really played by the masses of John Does out there - I really wonder why people keep on pointing fingers on WoW players because if you look real close, they are everywhere and not limited to any special kind of people, it doesn't matter what gender you are or how much money, it doesn't matter what kind of music you like, not even if you are into computers, anyone can play and it can appeal to almost anyone. Take Nina. She's a friend of mine that had never played anything besides Monopoly and Uno, not to speak of any computer games. She always sniffed at our gaming hobbies and didn't like it when we started talking about Magic or whatever. But then she started playing WoW for some unknown reason and now she is talking about raids, ganking, DPS and the latest nerfs ... so, anybody who thinks WoW or MMORPGs for that matter are limited to a special kind of people is just plain wrong. And that also means anyone who is calling names and looking down on WoW players should have a look at the nearest mirror because in fact he is somewhat calling himself an idiot.

Oh and I don't say this because I am a die-hard WoW-fan. In fact I don't play more than 20 hours per month. My highest character is Level 62 although I am playing for 3 years now ... I did this rant because it's a general thing about gamers and WoW is just the most popular target for the haters right now. Luckily, we don't have to endure that for long anymore since gaming becomes more and more accepted. Did you know that the (computer) games industry made more business volume than movies and music last year? Yeah. Go figure.

By Ineffable's Son (Eidtelnvil) on Monday, January 05, 2009 - 02:15 pm:

1 - Why are we talking about WoW? Oh, wait. It's Phyrexia. Nevermind. Shouldn't have asked. :-D

2 - Rogue Shadows is (A) not a member of WotC, so who cares? and (B) the most ass-kissing member of the WotC boards. Just sayin'.

By Nemesis (Nemesis) on Monday, January 05, 2009 - 03:23 pm:

I just gave Rogue Shadows the ass-kisser a lengthy response.

By Disidență (Troy) on Monday, January 05, 2009 - 05:00 pm:

So what people play WoW all the time?
It piss's me off when people say nerds have no life.

Like, My friend is a uber trekkie, he went to conventions, did his part in cancelling one of the star trek show series because it was "Un Star trekish".
And people say to him you have no life.
And then i say back to them, "Yay! Because a person that opened up his own Dentist office, has a family, goes out with them, and has some fun watching and doing what HE LIKES."
Yay, thats no life.

Puschkin, i saw this in a sig on one of the posters on the WoW boards,
"Some of us are good at WoW, the rest of us have sex."

Eid, let me make this dramatic as possible,

The only reason i said those trollish flames was because i had no way to back up my reasons for protecting the bradywalkers.
I ran out of all reasons for backing them up, and i followed the code of honor, "When in doubt, troll and flame"
But, you kept your cool and stroyed me.
I learned my lesson, dont mess with a phyrexian.

Merlin, what do we do aganist Rogue Shadows?

Whatever we do, we must stroy him!
(Thanks Eid for correcting me on my horrid spelling mistakes, i know now of a new word! :-D

By Sam KoMN (A1withnoname) on Monday, January 05, 2009 - 06:53 pm:

Wow, sorry Pushkin, I really meant no offense. I guess I wasn't specific enough. As I said, nothing against general WoW players. It's just that I have run into several extremely alarming WoW players, all within a short time frame. It made a Very Strong Impression. I by no means meant to insult all WoW players, just to point out that it seems to become an obsession very easily. I was wrong, however. I apologize.

[Seriously, though. You should have seen the one kid! Complete wackjob. I don't think he washed his hair once in the two years that I knew him. But yes, sorry about that.]

Nemesis, thanks for posting a much cooler, more collected, and more rational reply than I would have been able to. And for pointing out where he completely mutilated my points and turned them into gibberish.

I mean, honestly, what the hell? Does the conclusion to his post make any sense?! I can't weed through it. Isn't he essentially arguing, "Don't worry about whether or not you are actually providing a good that you are Paid To Provide; just have fun with it?"

By Homelands Bookie (Psycho) on Tuesday, January 06, 2009 - 04:11 am:

Puschkin, I've never played WoW, or have ever seen someone play it. But isn't this generalization the same as the Dumb Blonde Jokes?

I'm going to read the Wizzard's Board right now.

By Puschkin (Puschkin) on Tuesday, January 06, 2009 - 04:15 am:

Nah, I didn't take offense by YOUR post, just wanted to get rid of all of that, your post was just the trigger. Generally speaking, people are dumb, and dumb people make dumb generalizations without even noticing and jump to conclusions way too fast. It's a general problem and it annoys me alot. I farmed the fuel for my rant in other places, not Phyrexia.

By Sengir (Sengir) on Tuesday, January 06, 2009 - 01:52 pm:

I know a few people who play WoW, and there are definitely varying degrees of addiction. One girl literally lost a social life when she started playing...it was really sad. Then she got a job at Wal-Mart and got out of WoW (her soul had been claimed by WoW only to be stolen again by Wal-Mart).

And then there's a guy who plays WoW but you wouldn't even guess. He always gets around to hanging out with people and therefore defeats the stereotypical WoW player.

I don't really know anything about WoW other than I'm not really that interested to start playing it. Other than the few people I know who play it, the only place I would hear about WoW is that South Park episode about it.

By Sengir (Sengir) on Tuesday, January 06, 2009 - 01:53 pm:

...and the commercials for it with Ozzy Osbourne...those are really entertaining.

By Ineffable's Son (Eidtelnvil) on Tuesday, January 06, 2009 - 02:21 pm:

Agreed.