Closing the Gap

For any of you who frequent message boards for UDE's games, you probably know that I'm not one to hold back the criticism when I think they're doing something wrong. My biggest complaint with UDE has always been the lack of information combined with the lack of punctuality of information when they do actually release it. To balance things out, I'm going to give UDE props when they do something right. For anyone who doesn't read the Upper Deck message boards, there were two very encouraging posts made by Upper Deck employees this week that I would like to highlight.

The first is by World of Warcraft Product Manager Dan Bojanowski and you can find it here.

The second was by Premier Events Manager "Chott" which you can find here.

I'm going to get to the highlights of each post, first I want to compliment UDE. This is at least a step in the right direction. While info for Worlds probably should have already gone up, at least they are now telling us when the info will be up and just passing along a lot of useful information in general. I think maintaining an open line of communication between the company and the customers is key. As long as they keep the info flowing, I'll be happy.

Now, let's jump into what these posts had to say. First, let's take a quick look at the Premeir Events info. The most important thing is that the Worlds page with all of its info will go live on September 28th. This update will include formats for the main event, scheduled side events, and the mystery of Honor ranking will finally be solved. The cutoffs for Honor ranking and rating will also be announced.

DMF's in the States have been planned but hand problems with venues falling through which had been quasi-confirmed by Ben Drago last week or so, but there are more in the works for possibly later this year, but hopefully early next.

Finally, regarding the legality of March of the Legion for Worlds, we have to wait a little longer.

Now on to Dan's post about future products. There's not a lot here to talk about that you can't gather just by reading the thread, but the one thing I want to talk about is the confirmation of blocks in design. Dan says that March of the Legion, Servants of the Betrayer, and the next set (cleverly codenamed WOW 6) will all work together with similar gameplay mechanics and design. Limited tournaments will use the block format as well with MotL not being mixed with any previous sets. He did say he didn't know about Constructed set rotations as that would be an Organized Play decision.

WOW 7-9 are also being designed as a block. The first set of each block (MotL and WOW 7) will be larger sets and have starter decks. Each other set in the block will be smaller and booster only (a la FoO). They are clearly taking a page out of Magic's playbook as this basically mirrors their release schedule as they release a 3 set block plus one "extra" set each year. A lot of people will dislike this similarity simply because it's the way Magic does it. But let's face facts. Magic is a well-oiled machine.

I've always thought that one of the biggest problems with VS. System was how hard they tried to show how different they were than Magic. From the dual system PCQ's to one set drafts to being another game that "fixed" mana screw, everything I always heard was why VS. was better than Magic. There are a lot of people who think that WoW should be the same way, like Magic is evil and to be avoided at all costs. But there's no shame in taking something that obviously works and putting it to work for you. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. And one of the signs that a game has made it, is when people quit comparing to all the other games to show why it's better. They just play it because it's fun. You'll hear very few people on the Magic side of a Game X vs. Magic debate simply because Magic players don't care about comparing their game to others. I would love to see WoW reach that level as well where everyone else talks about why their game is better than WoW and the WoW players just play their game.

Continuing in the similarities to Magic vein, it will also be interesting to see how they handle Constructed formats once more than one block is legal. I would expect to see block constructed with just the sets from the most recent block legal, plus a "Standard" with two blocks and an old-school with all sets legal.

The other question is how they will handle older sets, Heroes of Azeroth most specifically rotating out. Will they reprint staple cards like Shadow Bolt and Counterspell in blocks' lead off sets, or will they introduce Core Sets like Magic already had with 9th, 10th, etc. For this one, I'm not even going to wager a guess, but I highly doubt there will be a time when Vanquish isn't tournament legal in all formats.