"This is a minor change without any further ramifications"

As I already said in the Retcon thread next door, it is crucial for the entire Legends II trilogy that the Meditation Plane works exactly the way the books say it does. Think about it. In the scene that I quoted there, Bolas wants to go after Tetsuo when he escapes to the Meditation Plane, and his first impulse is to planeswalk there. Only when he finds that he can't, he projects his spirit there, leaving his body vulnerable to the Hammer of Bogardan. Since Creative decided to outright retcon (sorry, "massage") how the M.P. works instead of portraying it as an in-universe change ("The Mending did it"), Tetsuo's plan simply doesn't make sense anymore and never had a chance to begin with. If you could just planeswalk to the M.P. all along and entering it physically was never a big deal, Bolas would have done so, just eaten him and possibly destroyed the M.P. with his plane-shattering presence. What is more, depending on how this change is supposed to affect non-'walkers, the physical confrontation between Tetsuo and Lord Dark would probably have happened a lot earlier on the M.P. rather than in the Imperial Shrine at the end of the third book. No matter which way you look at it, this retcon means that Bolas can't have been defeated in Legends II and almost all canon from that point onwards (including the current storyline) logically collapses. Sure, that's not what they intended, but you can't cherry-pick causality. It's the Tarkir problem all over again.


"There was a conflict between the needs of new readers and those of old fans"

I don't see how that was the case here at all. Yes, it was important that Vraska meets Bolas on a secret plane and receives instructions. What wasn't important was that it happens on the M.P. They could have just used the unnamed barren plane where Bolas meets up with Liliana in AoA and Magic Origins. It would have served the same purpose without confusing anyone or requiring retcons, and everyone who wasn't completely new to the storyline would have recognised it as a nice little bit of continuity between Bolas's appearances.

Generally speaking, I think the dilemma between old and new readers is much less often a thing than Creative wants us to believe. And in the cases where it's cropping up, it should be a question of either not bringing it up and finding a different solution (like I just proposed with the M.P) or providing whatever additional explanation is needed. And lo and behold, apparently that's even possible without using up story space for it, judging by the feature about Vraska that they put on the website this week. Besides, why do they think it's okay to err on the side of the new readers every time they make that decision? The only instance of old lore actually mattering in the story without being retconned in recent years was Tamiyo's scroll about Serra's Realm. And yeah, that was epic and I love Tamiyo all the more for it. I mean, jeez, nobody cared about "massaging" stuff for new readers when we got into the storyline, and I'm really glad they didn't. That approach just isn't sustainable. What about the people who are new readers now that are crazy enough to actually become hardcore storyline fans and start tracking down the books one day? Won't they be confused and disappointed that nothing lines up with what they've read? I know I would be.


"It's okay to retcon things that freelance writers made up"

How is this suddenly an excuse? This basically confirms what I've been saying since Magic Origins, namely that they started treating revisionist material as if it were pre-rev material. Now, I kinda get that they wanted to clean up a couple of things that were established not by one but two completey different companies with the Revision. It wasn't even clear for how long Magic would be around or whether that storyline thing would take off when the first novels and comics were published. They get a free pass for that one continuity overhaul with the Revision for all I care, but how many times are they going to move their goalposts after that? Now it's not even enough that the books were published by their own company anymore?

Let me tell you something about authors making things up without an eye to the future. According to Ari Marmell, Creative told him to write that the Guilds of Ravnica had fallen in AoA. Then Creative changed their minds, and they even explicitly retconned the Interregnum away in 'Absent Minds' and 'Homesick'. TPF was closely supervised by Creative, at least close enough to have an entire chapter rewritten in-house. Not only is that in-house chapter one big plot hole and the worst in the novel, Creative apparently was okay with Chandra's backstory the way it was when they reworked the manuscript, until Magic Origins came along. What's more, Nissa's original character and backstory were made up in-house, two of the three sources that contradict their new take on gorgons were written in-house ('The Wild Son' by Doug and 'Xathrid Gorgon' by Jenna Helland). As to Legends II, there is nothing 'Wild West' about McGough's use of the Meditation Plane in those books. It worked the way it had to to fulfill its role in the story, and Creative can't blame him for making a thing that he himself made up not conform to what plans they have with it in 2017. If Doug now suggests that they would have anticipated that waaay back then and written it accordingly if they had had full control, that's just plain ridiculous.

Yeah, there were things that are accurately described as 'Wild West', such as the Karona shenanigans or the entirety of ToM. Those actually needed to be "massaged" for good reasons, and nobdy complained when they were. But on the whole, Creative should be damn grateful they had most of those novels and not declare them fair game for retconning on principle. If that's where their line is now, then that's exactly like a new Revision, and I'm not prepared to keep engaging with Magic under that premise.