MTG Arena on Steam passed its all time player count with the release of Final Fantasy (previously 12k)
Feels weird being uninterested in this set and seeing all the opposition online only to see it being a smashing success on just about every metric of popularity
It was my weakest attended prerelease event since I became a WPN store back in 2019. Obviously not counting COVID era events.
I had 5 people on Friday, 2 people on Saturday. It tied my next lowest, which was Aetherdrift with 0 frost and 7 people Saturday.
Aetherdrift I at least had a lot of take home prerelease kits. Final Fantasy had zero.
Sales for Final Fantasy are up over Aetherdrift, and Tarkir Dragonstorm, which had abysmal sales. Since TDS's release I have sold more Bloomburrow than I have Tarkir.
Wow, that's surprising to hear. Dragonstorm was absolutely hopping at the LGS near me. Was Bloomburrow big or do you just not see a lot of Magic traffic recently?
Bloomburrow was really big for me, I think I had 16. Bear in mind I am a really small shop in a town of <10,000. My prereleases are normally 12-14.
Nixahon on YouTube put it like something like "even if I'm not into it for the IP or adverse to mixing in non-magic IP, I'm still going to have fun with the mechanics". I've kind of used that as the touchstone for me to enjoy it.
Have not had a chance to play it yet (out of town), but that helped mollify some of my objections. Lots of the early access streams look like it will be a fun set mechanically so I'm looking forward to playing.
Played around with a friends set for pre-release and saw some draft decks, I like the tier mechanic, no idea if its new, which allows a spell to be cheap and weak or expensive and powerful. Chocobo kick was an absolute smasher as well, combos so well for landfall. A lot of cards I was meh about but some fun mechanics.
I really enjoyed the pre release and set outside of the ridiculous pricing.
Still not sure how I feel about it being included in more formats.
But I will say the shop I attend (larger area) was about 40 people each day, and probably unsurprisingly, the shop was sold out of everything by Sunday
I don't think there was ever going to be a doubt if Final Fantasy, Spiderman, etc would be more popular than regular MtG. I think it's all but guaranteed to increase player count when you have something like a popular outside IP crossed over with a different game.
Steam saw 6,000 additional active users, a 50% increase, and I honestly don't know if that's a signal that the crossover is a big hit, but that number seems really low overall to me. Fortnite is seeing ~6M average actives for reference. Maybe Steam doesn't account for a very high % of the installs, so assuming a 50% increase in players in Arena is a massive jump, but to the original point, if you're a fan of FF why wouldn't you try a FTP game that features cards from the game? How much of it will you try is the real question.
The bigger issue that the game has had to deal with since the 90s is the complexity. I remember in the late 90s hearing store owners say things like "you have to be too smart to play Magic" and even though it's a little silly, there is a high level of state management and knowledge needed to play the game at all. It's quick to get a rundown of the rules, but it's not simple to play the game. These new players are interested enough to check it out, run through the tutorial, maybe do the color challenge, but then what? It has such a high onboard cost that is very different from an RPG for FPS style game. Will they still be interested after FF rotates in 8 weeks?
These are the unanswered questions that they are gambling with at the expense of the enfranchised player base. Maybe the enfranchised players will always continue to play because they just like the game mechanics. Maybe the added players from FF and Marvel sets will outpace the existing players that quit the game. I don't know, but just like with other technical parallels like chess or computer programming, there is a finite number of people who can play the game beyond a surface level.
@mike @MysticKetchup WotC probably considers it a win if 1% of the completely new players stick around. The returning players probably have a better %, but there is a lot less of them, but they may also spend money more freely while trying it out again.
Now we get to see how many of them quit shortly after trying their favorite cards in standard and getting rolled over in 3-4 turns.
UB is one thing, but I really don't get how these cards will see play in any deck outside of brawl. I guess if winrate doesn't matter then you can play whatever you want though.