I've been wanting to do another one of these pseudo-articles for a while and have been searching for a good thesis. I don't want to do fan-fiction, or just grouse that "it's not like it used to be." But I really think that Magic's storytelling could be doing better, or at least more interesting things. So I want to explore ideas that I think wouldn't (or shouldn't) pass muster either with the creative team's current design philosophy or, more concerning, the en-blandening of focus-group testing. So, let's talk about Colonial Williamsburg. Colonial Williamsburg is almost interminably mockable. A sort of WestWorld where we ignore the period mobdro kodi-appropriate bigotry and hygiene because including that wouldn't serve any constructive purpose.

Since we left Dominaria, Magic has been spending a lot of time in Colonial Williamsburg. Now, I want to be exceptionally clear: I'm super excited to see cultures from all over getting the M:tG treatment. Tarkir's Mongolian orcs, martial-arts dragons, and zombie wats are fantastic. Kaladesh did a passable job not being "just India with artifacts." I'd like to see mythology further afield, like the crafting-wizards from the film Yeelen, or the Dreamtime of Australia's first peoples. But we're getting fantasy Egypt next. Call the Silithids. And Stargate Command. (Maybe we can get China Meiville's Khepri? That'd be cool.)

But, really, I'm less concerned that the settings are being made approachable (read: at least passingly familiar) than with the sense of smallness these homogeneous cultures present. This can make some sense on Theros. The world is only as big as a fantastic Aegean sea. And maybe this works for Innistrad. Walk too far into the woods and you're never coming back, sail to the frozen poles and go mad from the things you find.

But what do we find when we leave Ghirapur, Kaladesh? Well, the lore tells us we'll never reach the sunken wats of the Sultai. Those fairy tale woods of Innistrad never lead you into the Kithkin warrens of Lorwyn. Ascend high enough through the Kami Realm of Kamigawa, you'll never reach the star fields of Nyx. This all feels like a missed opportunity. By needing ever more planes to walk, we've devalued the wildness of myriad realities.

There are lots of counter-examples. Mirrodin / New Phyrexia only works as its own thing. The deep end of Ravnica's lore really cares about what the heck Ravnica IS if you could rewind the urbanization. But, maybe it's time for another Conflux? Eh, Bolas? Half of Zendikar got eaten, right? Seems like a decent place to all these Colonial Williamsburgs.

Next time (maybe): Dovin Baan's Desk Job.

I get where you're coming from and I'm honestly not going to argue against the thought either.
Ravnica and Mirrodin both are, perhaps, iffy propositions to stress the system though, as canonically, they're both absolutely tiny. The population on Ravnica only numbers in the millions and Mirrodin is smaller than our moon.

Zendikar and Alara both had a feeling of scope that's been dreadfully lost. Kamigawa and Innistrad both were purported to be larger with far distant lands, but what good is telling us this with no intention of showing even the faintest hint of the exotic?

Tarkir... Was relatively cosmopolitan as far as cultural diaspora went. It suffered from other problems. Problems I feel Zendikar groomed with as well. The idea that everything sucks so there's nothing to actually see. This was magnified and put on display in a really bad way with Ikoria.
Meanwhile, Kaladesh and Eldraine both suffered from being so myopically fixated that the rest of the world was reduced to a blur. Strixhaven made it even worse. (Of course, the flip side is giving your protagonists an excuse to do a tour, then we get repeats of Mirrodin and Zendikar, considered by most to be the worst stories they've printed)

Then there's Kaldheim, which has a problem of being so segmented it stops feeling organic at all. The component pieces to the world are fine, but they don't feel like they exist in the same place to the degree that there's no way to grow attached to any conflict.