wotc_Cromulous

October 28–November 5: Dominaria United Sealed

An encore? Possibly Alchemy Sealed, since the first mention of the Alchemy draft queue didn't mention it was Alchemy.

This will actually be original Dominaria. We'll correct the text.

The automatic upkeep stop should be out next week.

This is clearly a shot at me, so sure, I'll take the bait.

I try to be very clear about acknowledging when something is not behaving as desired. However, that doesn't always mean it is bugged - and while that distinction doesn't necessarily mean much to the experience players are having, it is a look behind the scenes (which players sometimes enjoy) at why that issue may not be as easy of a fix as players think (which players often do not enjoy, I admit).

I also try to be clear when an issue, even though it's not desired, may not be as high priority as other issues. The truth is that game development involves a lot of push and pull. That means some things aren't likely to be addressed or will be addressed later on. I certainly don't intend that to be condescending; it's just honest.

I can understand that it's not fun to hear that something you don't like won't change, or at least won't change for a while. Some people might still pr...

This is not something that we set directly; the system looks at the unique identifying number for each basic land card and takes the most recent one - specifically "most recently added to the database." Due to scheduling quirks, the HBG lands ended up being imported later than DMU, so they are still taking precedence.

It is certainly not our the desired behavior, but changing it would mean either changing the function itself (which isn't broken!), writing some kind of specific-case override (which is clunky and gross IMO), or modifying the card entries themselves (which could have any number of unexpected impacts on collections and decklists). Considering it is a purely cosmetic issue, it doesn't really rise to the level of warranting any of those actions. We'd rather keep pursuing a long-term solution to this issue.

That certainly doesn't sound right. The support team should be able to see those appearing on your account and make it up if you file a request. I'll keep an eye out for any similar reports to see if this is systemic.

The list of banned Historic cards in the article was just an error - we're removing it. The event uses the Alchemy card pool, and that will not change.

Well, it's difficult to compete with drafting since there isn't a card pool to add to your collection - but the new constructed event model tries to offer at least a better path than we had before. We did consider some flatter models, but distributing prizes lower means fewer players win their entry fee back. It's always a question of competing desires.

This is an actual error in the distribution - you'll also see that the 2-win reward in that event is 100 gems higher. We'll correct it.

It's the dates from today's post, starting on the 10th. The regular best-of-one Play-Ins are always seven days before the QW itself. Sorry about the error in the previous post.

To clarify, the Bonus event will feed the Qualifier Weekend in October (since the September event will have already happened). You can play this weekend's Play-In with no chance of overlap or conflict.

The Arena version of the set will be the same as the printed version. No additions, removals, or changes.

It's Sealed. I'll make sure the article text is corrected.

No. The cards from HA6 are only legal in Historic. If you only want Explorer stuff, you only need EA1.

Well, it's not called "Adventures in the Remembered Realms"... (We'll find it!)

We use Modern to scare the Cardset team into line when they get rowdy.

Yes, that's among Standard/Historic/Alchemy/Explorer. These are the "major" supported constructed formats in the client.

No, this is looking at the primary constructed formats. Brawl and Historic Brawl games are divided out separately. We serve a lot of different types of players!

I've seen these numbers passed around a lot. To be frank, they represent the players who choose to use that program and not the player base as a whole.

Historic is still much more popular than Explorer. Explorer is the least-played of the main formats - which is totally reasonable since it's also the youngest! It doesn't mean there's anything wrong with it or that we won't keep supporting it! You can still expect to see Explorer-focused content coming to the game before long.

One of Magic's strengths is that it has a lot of different ways to play, and at the end of the day, we aren't really concerned with what's beating what. It's all part of the game.

Don't let those distract you. The real bonanza is all the Ghastlords of Fugue.

These are just for events, sorry! Demon of Death's Gate and a double-handful of other expensive creatures were added to the game a while back to round out the top end of the pool for Momir.

Cards like this are usually hidden away in the back of the client, since players can't craft or use them anyway (as you've discovered) - but clearly we've got a bug on our hands that makes them not hidden at the moment, so they're wandering loose in the deckbuilder. We will get things back in place as soon as we can.