I would happily go back to McGough writing about ramblers, gamblers and backbiters like he did in his Kamigawa novels. At least I could have fun with Toshi outwitting Boss Uramon, the orochi, Hidetsugu smacking the **** out of Minamo and Kiku doing her thing as a hatchetman.

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Ugin should use Tezzeret, Vraska, Domri, and Tibalt as his own personal Suicide Squad. Since his Gatewatch League don't listen to him.

The "tremendous" surge in interest and engagement in the story he is referring to is a post-Origins development. He has said in other answers that they did not see the numbers they are currently seeing during Theros or during Khans (despite much greater efforts in those blocks to depict the story in the cards). The move to a continuous story happened in Origins and it is since then that they have seen the vast expansion of interest and engagement. (The Sources)

Also, I am not trying to argue that he is right. I also think that a continually omnipresent Complete Gatewatch risks deadening the potential variety of the story. I was looking forward to Kaladesh being just detour for a couple of the Gatewatch. I am just reporting that Maro is reporting that they associate having a central cast with the story's recent success.

We know that she visited Lorwyn once, right after her ignition. We don't know that she didn't come back later, during the period of travel mentioned in "Nissa, Worldwaker".

I'm not saying the details line up perfectly, and I'm not saying that there isn't considerable room for things to be cleaned up by additional story material, just that there is room for a character arc that passes through Teeth while moving from Origins to "Worldwaker".

I think, then, we'll have to agree on... agreeing to different degrees? Because I do feel like we're personally generally on the same page in some ways, but not so much in agreement on exactly what the page says. Not saying your opinion is invalid, I just don't view the given material the same way.

All the same, I very much agree that Chandra's story getting muddled is a disappointment. And I really really wanted Saheeli to be more than a sidenote, but it seems unlikely she'll factor in with the rest of the Watch coming.

And Ajani (seriously, wth?)

Remember when we all thought Tamiyo was dead?

Just saying that we still might have some hope there.

Same here, I thought of that too even though I'm not the biggest Chandra fan. I guess the Conspiracy set is the only breather we'll get from the Gatewatch at all *knocks on wood*.

All the grandeur and visual eye candy Kaladesh has overwhelmingly brought made me forget the seemingly protocol they have with Neowalker introductions post Lorwyn 5: That most of them (minus the returning walkers) wouldn't really made that of a dent in the current happenings of the current plane (excempt Xenagos who was a special case because he got killed on the plane/block he was introduced anyway)

Indeed that happened with Tamiyo and Tibalt. And although there were noticeable improvements with Arlinn, the Jacetus League still get the chunk of the coverage. And it seems to be happening again with the Kaladesh block.

Dovin is a pretty important part of what's going on at least.

Also, I kind of want to do a character breakdown to see how SOI block stacks against KAL for important characters.

Which is sort of bleak for him, the way he was described, hopefully he doesn't follow Xenagos in some way and actually ends up being a good guy by the end of this block.

Still a bit sad about Saheeli, but maybe by the end of the block they give her at least a hook on how she can get off Kaladesh for future returns like what Tamiyo and Tibalt had.

Forgive us for being skeptical when Wizards starts talking "market research." We've had bad experiences with that in the past. I can think of several reasons why starting with Origins they started seeing a big uptick in readership and story knowledge that have nothing to do with the actual quality of the story or cast.

• Theros had a big push towards telling the story on the cards, but it was in an awkward transitional position. On the one hand you have big, splashy story cards, such as Godsend, both Xenagoses, Deicide, and one or two I missed, but on the other hand the story was told through an ebook, rather than through Uncharted Realms.
• Theros wasn't a big hit, mechanically. (It also had the weakest worldbuilding since probably the original Mirrodin, but I'm not sure how that matters.)
• Tarkir had most of its story told by the block structure, rather than on the cards (with some exceptions such as Crux of Fate. Most of the Uncharted Realms were unimportant for the actual story.
• Dragons of Tarkir was a comparative letdown, because people loved the Clans so much.
• They only did their big story push starting with Origins. While all the elements they were introducing were already present in some degree, they only shifted into top gear with Origins.
• Similarly to the above, they only started marketing the story as big as they are doing starting with Origins. They improved the story page, put the URL in the boosters, release free ebooks combining all the stories at the end of the block, released the art books, etc. Their panel on their new story structure and stuff was only with Magic Origins, I believe.
• They've only started pushing important story cards for competitive play relatively recently, which is a factor that is easy to underestimate/
• Critical mass was only reached by Origins for a variety of reasons, which led to a big increase because if everyone on reddit is talking about this week's story, you're more inclined to read it as well.
• They changed the name of Uncharted Realms into something bland and obvious.
• For whatever reason, Jace, Chandra, Liliana, Gideon and/or Nissa have more mass market appeal than Ajani, Elspeth and/or Sarkhan.
• Standard was less fun before Magic Origins (I have no idea if this is true.)
• ...

Now, I'm not saying it isn't possible that a very large part of the audience genuinely enjoys the Gatewatch and the rest of the story. I certainly pick up voices online that defend the current course. But I do think that Wizards has a history of interpreting "market research" in a way that benefits their existing expectations. To give an example: they scrapped the book line because market research indicated that most people weren't interested. Now, in an age with a constant and cheap stream of fiction to consume, I can actually buy that. But if they had promoted the novels as much as they are currently promoting the Gatewatch and Uncharted Realms, we might have seen different results on that front.

Yep, that's what I'm saying. The story is so reined in these days and forced to be highly interconnected, accessible, marketable and representative of the company that there's probably very little you could blame the individual writers for. I absolutely adore Kelly Digges' writing for instance, and I felt SOI was a set where pretty much every writer got to shine. Even Kimberley's stories were suddenly good, and I guess it's understandable that she could do more with charcters like Halana, Alena and Arlinn rather than Nissa and Ashaya. Or maybe she just grew as a writer, I don't know. Ethan is another good example of someone who, though not in Creative, shows interest in the storyline (including the old lore), has actively used that to make people happy (the C14 stuff) and doesn't shy away from asking questions in this forum or even engage with and address criticism. The people they have are fine, even though it's often tempting to blame them for things that are ultimately beyond their control. Once that things like the retconned backstories or the general direction of the story are decided, even the most talented folks have to stick to that. Then again, I'd still like to know who exactly decided they should ignore the established backstories and the stuff that comes with it, but I'm fairly sure the answer is 'marketing'. Or maybe I'm wrong and Creative is directly to blame, or maybe it's a bit of everything. We'll probably never know.

I see where you are coming from, and I don't entirely disagree, but I think there are two sides to this. On the one hand, a lot of the older lore from the (post-revisionist) novels dealing with Dominaria as a whole and Terisiare in particular was very connected. It's not exactly the kind of continuity that Maro is talking about, more like the "see the world evolve and history unfold" kind of continuity (so, a more 'vertical' interconnectedness if you will). The line of The Thran, The Artifact Cycle/Urza's Saga, The Ice Age trilogy, the Weatherlight and Invasion stuff (which is even kinda connected to Mirage and Visions) are one big historical account with one thing leading into the next, and a lot of those threads would be picked up again in Time Spiral. On the other hand, the things you criticise would apply to some extent to the planeshopping era that started with Mirrodin when things got a lot more episodic and unconnected. And I agree that after a while, I too found myself wishing for more interconnected storytelling, a faster pace, a wrap-up of dangling threads and more connections between blocks (a 'horizontal' interconnectedness that doesn't rely on huge timeskips but instead ties characters and settings together). But the problem with Wizards is that they always seem to go from one extreme to the other. Oversaturation of the Weatherlight saga? Let's move to more unconnected stories and planes! But hang on, now the storyline feels too random and unconnected, maybe we should have the same cast of central characters in every block! I mean, they could have had a clear interconnectedness and more storyline focus in general without warping everything around the same four to five characters forever.

But yeah, as I've been saying on the previous page and in fact since Magic Origins, what really finally killed the storyline for me is the complete disregard for continuity. For me at least, it all started going down the drain with Tarkir block and its timetravel, though I guess they just messep up the continuity by accident and out of carelessness and it's just coincidence that it came directly before Magic Origins. But since Origins, them punching holes into everything has been deliberate and part of their new direction, even before the Gatewatch officially existed. My absolute number one reason for hating the Gatewatch is and will always be the fact that those aren't the characters we were introduced to anymore. Their personal history, their relationship with each other, their skillset and their characterisation have been altered and continue to be altered by retcons to varying degrees, destroying all the investment I had in them. Those retcons are inseparable from the worldbuilding and status quo of Kaladesh and Vryn, have seeped into Lorwyn and Ravnica and might seep into planes like Theros or Regatha (e.g. if it turns out the Purifying Fire never existed, or if they decide Chandra's involvement with it just didn't happen). The Origins retcons were as messy as it gets and they continue to confuse me about what's actually still canon (super accurate details from AoA still being referenced while the climax of TPF is entirely ignored). Now the entire continuity of everything from the first Zendikar block onwards has causally collaped (for the second time if you consider Tarkir), and I think if that's not a logical and objective criterium for the death of the storyline as a whole, I don't know what else would be. And again, none of this was justified. Those characters could have served every purpose they are supposed to serve now if they had followed it through from AoA and TPF onwards. Supposedly problematic things like Nissa's xenophobia or Chandra's family were already in the past, and no-one forced them to retell their origin stories and put a spotlight on it.

Without that, I'd be more than willing to make my best effort to like the Gatewatch and try to put off oversaturation for as long as possible. At least they would be characters I'd still like individually, and I could make them even cooler in my head than they actually are on paper (I did that with Sorin for years). If they want me to ever care again and be hyped for the product they sell, they'd have to kill off the original four members of the Gatewatch and find damn good ways to gloss over the continuity mess they've made in their wake. Do another 100-year timeskip and/or never visit Kaladesh and Vryn ever again (or even better, make them fall to Phyrexia and alter the status quo beyond recognition) or something like that. Just something that's compatible with both pre- and post-Origins continuity going forward.

Edit: Oh, yeah, and I agree with what Yxoque and others have said about their market data. Even if most people who click the stories actually read them completely, reading them isn't the same as liking them or approving of the general direction. Maro is a corporate official and would never say something like "Yeah well, the reception of the Gatewatch stories is kinda lukewarm, but now it's all planned out and we have to stick to it for a while. Sorry guys."

I don't know much about it honestly. From what I gather, the guy from MTGHeadQuarters (I guess that's a YouTube thing that I didn't know about until this week?) got all whiny because Wizards offered some interviews to notable online fandom personalities and her didn't make the cut? And then he tried to drag as many of the nicer fandom folk into his drama by calling them out by name and having his followers harass them? And surprise surprise, Wizards didn't care for that and probably will never work with him on anything now. And so we get more drama over some sense of censorship (which this ain't).

Nah, that’s not the way that I’ve heard it reported on: Apparently the issue is that a small group of actual SJW redditors and tumblrinas (you know, the kind you hear everyone whine about, not just sane people who have an issue with blatant racism etc.) actively tried to get him fired over troll tweets of his from half a year ago that they found offensive. As in, they doxxed him and his family, called his business and even called his clients and sponsors in order to have him lose his job and/or lose customers. Wizards then inexplicably bailed on him after years and years of associating with him (and not parting with him after the initial sh​itstorm from six months ago about the exact same tweets), all without contacting him to hear his side of the story or responding to him when he contacted them over it.

That then lead to some valid questions and concern about why they would listen to such a small and crazy minority when this guy is enjoyed by at least over a hundred thousand MTG fans (judging by his subscriber count).

Well, then I have no idea then. All I do know is that I never head of this guy until pretty much today, and that several of the Tumblr fandom folk that I follow (and have appeared for some time to be decent enough people) are now getting loads of anon-hate for no other reason than this guy name-dropped them in whatever complaining he's done recently.

I ran over some searches online regarding this guy, just one thread like this: https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/4zczed/anyone_know_what_mtgheadquarters_problem_is/?sort=new and I pulled over.

Yep, that seems about how I understand things to be reguarding this odd little drama thing.

On a separate note Moppi, I went through your webcomic and tried to read some of your old back-log. It was nice, except several strips were either broken or failed to load correctly.

Thanks for reminding me that, I have yet to fully get back at getting the archive at full. Some of the original files are all scattered on my hard drive and I have yet to try to wade through my 1 tb.

Back to Kaladesh things: This is somewhat interesting and I wonder what sort of ramifications it holds....

I'm not sure if there would be deeper ramifications so much as they were felt to not fit the theme, differentiating Kaladesh from Innistrad that came before and probably cursed-haunted-mummy-tomb riddled Amonkhoet that comes after. This is the story of the Inventor's Faire and living rebels against a living government. Why muddy it with ghosts and zombies, the former of which doesn't really go with the whateverpunk machinery and the latter of which does, but when it does we call it "Phyrexians"?


All the same I felt a bit of a chill, and with it words like "Mako", "Shinra", and "Jenova". Man I hate that feeling...

I guess it just feels weird to not at least have a spirit or two associated with aether or as a "ghost in the machine" sort of trope. Does Kaladesh not have an afterlife? is it tied to some cycle of reincarnation, as would maybe be thematic to the world?

There aren't really any mages and those are pretty magical things.

At the PAX videos they specified that they didn't want undead and decided on another flavour for , hence the Aetherborn. Frankly a nice change of pace; there's only really two other blocks before in which the undead didn't feature promeniently, Kamigawa and Lorwyn.