1. As a follow-up: With regards to prize payout, I’ve chatted with a member of Wizards to bring attention to the pathetic prize support. He thanked me for my feedback, but didn’t offer up any tangible response to indicate that they will do anything about it, or if they have anything up their sleeve already. I guess the take away is that they are now aware of it issue and it’s in their court to do something about it.

  2. I agree with your assessment, enderfall. Apathy is serious. There seems to be a threshold level of apparent interest in a format that gives any given prospective player an amount of faith that the queue will fire necessary for them to join the queue and allow it to fire.

    Contributing to this is the obvious problem of asymmetrical prize payout, as you note. Asymmetrical, that is, in that less valuable prizes are allotted to tournament winners the corresponding formats of which demand mastering different card interactions and collecting difficult-to-find cards. One would think that to encourage the health of such formats, the prize support would be slightly skewed in the direction of rewarding innovators and participants given the higher barrier to entry.

  3. who cares bro. Standerd is all where it at yo. Bonfire, RG aggro beatz, Delver of Serretcs, what more could u want.

  4. The prize payout was the thing keeping me from joining, desperately trying to find a new format as i don’t like standard and modern has gotten a bit boring, I don’t mind making the investment to build the deck I want to play, but currently I will never make that money back with the current prizes so it hardly seems worth it.

  5. I don’t play classic because:

    - No Moxen
    - I’d rather own FoW in paper than online, and I don’t even have the money for the paper cards
    - Price payout
    - No Qs fire
    - If people play, they seem to be hardcore

    So yeah. Format’s dead.

  6. Here’s the biggest problem and you touched on it in the article. Classic is really just “feels” like a neutered vintage. I know classic is its own thing but as long as classic remains online only and vintage remains its closest paper counterpart, why would anyone invest in an format that has a high barrier to entry that’s an “inferior” version of its paper equivalent.

    And really the only reason vintage is cool is because it allows you play with all of magic’s legendary cards including its most legendary. The power 9. Classic is just like vintage except its missing vintage’s single biggest hook.

  7. I dont play classic (other than casual) because:

    The cards cost too much – 100 for a fow or LED is just stupid (especially with LED which is very narrow and only usable in one real deck). But even for decks without FOW/LED you are still looking at a very expensive format. Yes you can play rdw for somewhat cheap…it wont win but you can play it.

    The format is degenerate. There are way too many combo decks and its very unhealthy for the format and EXTREMELY BORING to play against. There needs to be more of a banned/restricted list….which would just make the format Legacy.

    The format has very little interaction. Playing fow is not interacting. Tendrils targetting the opp is not interacting. There are many solitaire/goldfish decks in the format. That is something I have zero interest in playing with or against. Magic is a 2 player game, and I have no interest in watching someone masturbate.

    My experience with classic players is that they are snobs. People get mocked for having the cheaper version of cards in their deck. Players are rude when they dont agree with opp deck choices. More so than in other formats. This is just my experience, doesnt apply to everyone.

    I enjoy playing classic in casual games. There is a lot of very fun and interactive decks you can play with how few restrictions there are for the format. Unfortunately when it comes to tourney play having just a few restrictions is not a good thing.

  8. Gee, everyone coming out of the woodwork to take a shot at Classic, huh? Lot’s of misconceptions going around as well…people taking hearsay and making it fact. But that’s what people do in real life… I guess there isn’t anything I can do, people will believe what they want to believe.

    A few things are completely baffling to me though… MonKei would own FoW in paper, but not digital? What’s the difference? They both cost well over $50! People like playing Delver in Standard…well, you can play Delver in Classic with better cards…it’s probably the best deck at the moment, too!

    And 420Gabriel, I have to call you out on Classic being snobs. You may have had one bad experience with a particular player, but I can’t imagine you haven’t encountered all the rage quitters that abound in limited and standard. That is not evident in all but the smallest of % of players in Classic (perhaps only a couple of people), but what I see of and hear about in Standard and Limited is leaps and bounds worse than anything in Classic.

  9. Just a short opinion for now. Classic (and any format like it, ahem, 100 Card Singleton) needs official tournament queues with subsidies- something like “Weekend Challenges” or DEs that give all participants a UNH land and 3-1/4-0 a foil UNH land. Perhaps special, invite-only events where the new art (promo) Classic cards were given out as prizes would also help (to both add to the card pool and give incentive to play). If only WotC offered a TO account for non-employees to run events…

  10. So basically, enderfall, we were telling you why we do not feel like playing classic. The response: “not true, get your facts right” and a lot of hating. See, I typed in a wall of text, but then deleted all that BS. It’s not my job to tell you why it’s stupid for you to say the reasons for me not playing classic base on misconceptions. Figure it out yourself. God, SO MUCH HATE.
    Oh, and I’d rather own paper FoWs because… I like it moar?

  11. The loss of the weekend challenges and introduction of daily events likely is what killed classic ust as it did 100CS. At first people thought it was great because there were now more tournaments. However as several people pointed out at the time it fragments the player base and then all of a sudden there are too many events and people don’t all try to go to the same time slots and then they stop firing and then no one joins any of the time slots.

    100CS and classic regularly fired their weekend challenges. It is still a mystery to me why WOTC didn’t revert back to the old system after this one clearly failed. The only times classic or 100CS didn’t fire their weekend challenges was during release weeks.

  12. All I’m saying is that you can’t hate a certain type of food when you’ve never tried it. You can say that the food doesn’t look appealing to you and that’s why you don’t eat it, but you can’t say the food tastes like dirt if you have no clue what it tastes like.

  13. To use some old school terms. if type 1 (Classic) is just type 1.5 (Legacy) online because of no power nine cards, there where’s the incentive to invest in type 1? Maybe Wizards should have given everyone online a set of power 9 for the 10th anniversary instead of foil fun decks and maybe you would see a more people interested in type 1. You can argue to the contrary, but most people don’t like playing a round of magic that is decided by who wins the die roll, which is what type 1 has been for a long time.

    I feel that everyone who loves Magic is entitled to their niche, but making comments like “play this deck in Classic because it wins (sometimes), is akin to pro players writing articles that say ‘play this deck (so I can beat you) and is, in my opinion, in bad taste. if a format is dead…it’s dead. All good things must come to an end. So sell your Classic cards and come join us in the 21st century of MTGO!

  14. Its quiet ironic that now modern/standard has classics shoe on the other foot. Classic is dead and if that isn’t the pot calling the kettle black then I dont know what is.

  15. To get back on point, I think platipus10 has an interesting thought. What if, there was only one event each weekend. Could enough players make time to play in that one event knowing it was the only opportunity to do so that week, which is to say what the weekend challenges used to be?

    I think, as well as what’s left of the community, we’ve mutually decided that the 9:30pm EDT event on Saturdays is the most likely to fire. Perhaps we should all just assume that that is the only event each week. I’ll be there this coming Saturday, though the next two Saturdays after that I have a vacation followed by a work trip.

    I’ll acknowledge that in hind-sight asking players to join with RDW could be viewed as a way for someone to game the system for easy prey. Obviously, that was not my intention. I was merely trying to point out that if someone was so inclined to TRY the format but was not willing to pay money for a top deck, RDW is the cheapest option available. RDW CAN win! I’ve lost my fair share of games to RDW and if someone actually tried to create a metagame RDW to beat other Classic decks it could succeed. I’m willing to try it out myself as I’m not entirely sure anyone has tried before. My assumption is that everyone just throws in 40 burn spells and 20 lands and calls it a day. Is it possible to build a better RDW?? Probably not, but I will certainly try.

  16. Mad, “So sell your Classic cards and come join us in the 21st century of MTGO!”

    The sad part, though, is that MTGO provides the opportunity to offer a bunch of unique formats and play styles that are hard to organize in paper (mainly due to cost). The 21st century of MTGO actually seems like it would involve a bunch of different options — look at how Commander took off, for instance.

    Also, for those who keep saying that whoever goes first wins, this suggests you haven’t played the format very much, or read the coverage. Enderfall’s series has shown time and time again that creatures and creature-based (even aggressive) decklists are a mainstay in Classic, alongside combo.

  17. Since I dont play the format at all I’d figure I would join the rest of this page and just blurt out shit I dont know but I feel I do anyway. Because, You know, screw you. So, anyway. Yeah. All those crazy storm combo decks killing people on their turn 0. And youre all snobs, also I cant afford it and youre all snobs. Oh , wait i already said that. Well youre still snobs.

    So there are my reasons why classic is dead. No, i dont play it and never will but i will write here like i know why classic is dead, because why not?

  19. PSS. Join me next week for my free feature article on why Legacy is dead. You can all chime in with your useless bullshit then!

  20. It seems that people are taking it quite personal for an unknown reason. If you don’t care about Classic, so why hating?
    @ enderfall: I liked your articles as they were well explained and you seem to know the format. However, I had the impression that for this very one, you got a bit – let’s say – emotional. Which is fine in the first place. But I have to agree with MonKei that there was no need to blame people that were honestly trying to help by telling you why they don’t play Classic. I would very much rather own a paper Force of Will than a digital version. Something you can touch and see without having electricity is just way better than magnetic 0s and 1s. Moreover, you can frame it and decorate your home :)
    I mean, don’t get me wrong. It’s all fine getting emotional about the format you love but it seems a bit conter-productive to me to blame people trying to help.

  21. Theirs definitely a possibility that classic is decidedly finished, not finished in a comparison to when we all left the legacy queues, but decidedly so in that classic is now dead.

    I too have come to this conclusion. However I think it is important that we remember that classic is a different game to classic in the sense of what classic is considered to be, ie classic in the sense of a very different game. It’s metagame and it’s play style is totally different.

    Anyway, just my 2cents.

  22. Beside’s, I have 4 FOW online, and 8 mint/NM FOW in paper, so not my problem :D kekekeke

  23. Traded for paper FOWs back when Mirage came out, got them for practicaly nothing. I could sell them for $200+ no sweats today if I wanted to.

  24. Congrats Jeff on your FoWs *rolleyes*.

    Classic is dead/dying for the same reason that legacy is dying in paper, new formats for a lower entry fee dissuade players from entering. Ask a paper modern player why he plays modern and not legacy and the answer is never card availability, it is always some skewed version of how combo dominates and there is no reason to play such a stale format. Same goes for classic. Turn 1 kills rule the format with FoW, Mental Mistep, thoughseize, duress, spellsnare, spell pierce, etc.

  25. cheers man. Yeah u just gotta read lot’s of trading articles and have the business acumen, and you can get some good deals on sleepers sometimes.

  26. I’m glad that my article has generated the response it has thus far.

    That being said, I’m not sure how my article was seen as “emotional”. The tone was clearly “here are the problems, the format is basically dead, let’s band together and help fix it”.

    I also wasn’t aware that pointing out misconceptions about the format, mostly from people that probably have never played Classic, could be considered blaming them for the fall of the format. They were clearly not helping by spouting out things they may have heard 3rd hand in the just for fun room from someone that had also never played the format. My article explicitly stated exactly what went wrong, and at no point did I blame the fall of the format on people’s uninformed opinions. They thought they were helping by post their hate here, so I was simply calling out the hate as unnecessary. Constructed criticism is one thing. Spewing hate for no reason other than to pour salt on the wounds is not productive.

    For the record, Modern has a pretty dominant combo deck that consistently finishes well in tournaments…Just because the combo typically goes off on Turn 4 instead of “possibly” Turn 1 in the most rare circumstances, doesn’t mean it’s any less prevalent, nor oppressive. Additionally, less than 1% of Classic games I’ve played are Turn 1 kills. If Turn 1 kills were so prevalent, then why would cards like Jace, Snapcaster Mage, Tarmogoyf, Delver, Dark Confidant, Standstill, Trygon Predator, or any number of other cards that can not possibly win a game on Turn 1 sound strategies? If all it was was two people playing solitaire, then why do creature decks perform so well?

  27. It’s been my personal impression that the article is “emotional” in the sense of having more personal involvement compared to your other articles. I suppose I didn’t make that clear enough.
    Regarding “blaming” people or not, I admit that I again may have expressed myself inaccurately. I was mostly referring to MonKei’s post. I can’t really find obvious hate in his/ her list of why he/she isn’t playing Classic.
    For the others, I do agree with you that it certainly is self-assertive to state personal impressions as facts and I don’t like those “reasons” either. However, it might be due to me not being involved in Classic but I didn’t read that much hate from the first couple of comments. It also may be that my English is simply too bad.
    Anyways, I definitively do understand you and I know how it feels like. I’m kind of sitting at the other end of the table trying to convince the people in my local community to play Pauper. They also refuse to give it a shot without having played it even once and claim it would be boring and not challenging at all.
    I hope, I made myself clear this time (Curse you, lack of English skills!) that I agree with you in most aspect, but on the other hand, couldn’t confirm the amount of potential hate in some comments.

    Cheers,
    High_Gene

  28. Here’s the thing: MonKei’s first post was completely fine. I made it a point in my analogy to eating vegetables that you can claim that Classic doesn’t appeal to you because it doesn’t have Power, or it is expensive, or the queue’s don’t fire, etc. Those are all valid concerns, and I accept that. MonKei’s post basically said that much, but they made one strange comment that I didn’t understand (desire to own FoW in paper but not digital), which I pointed out. If you can own FoW in paper but not digital, then why own any digital cards at all? Isn’t that argument saying that you don’t value digital cards, and as such, what would be the purpose of owning any digital cards?? Unless that is because you acquired your FoW many years ago very cheap and the cost of FoW on MTGO precludes you from owning it online….which is a completely different/separate issue.

    My original concerns were with some others thoughts. Yet somehow, MonKei took everything so personal, as if I was directing everything I said at them. I took exception to the following: Turn 1 kills, non-interactivity, snobbish behavior, and hardcore players. The first two are completely incorrect, the 3rd is making a sweeping generalization based on one individuals experience with a very small handful of specific individuals (or fewer) and the last is to be expected in any competitive format.

    I hope this clears things up.

  29. I’m sorry to see that Classic has hit a wall. Reasons why I didn’t get into Classic:
    1) Investment was a bit too high for me; I can trade for one or two decks with the resources in my account, but I would rather play a format in which I can play a bunch of different decks. Playing the same deck in the format all the time gets stale, and it also doesn’t allow one to also play the metagame very much (yes, card choices can still address the metagame, but not as much as switching decks).
    2) I didn’t find the games to be as fun as I had hoped when I tried it for a bit, but admittedly I suffer from that knowledge deficit that you mentioned.

    Wizards has to be given plenty of blame for this problem. Rarely have they simultaneously seemed to 1) care about eternal formats much and 2) be smart about managing the health of those formats. They have done some good things, such as feature them occasionally in good ways and offer some special events here and there (that even includes 100CS). But then they shoot themselves in the foot a couple of months later by screwing up the schedule. And the prizes.

    And yes, the prizes are a major problem. This has been discussed recently elsewhere, but it MATTERS that a format with much lower initial investment (block) gets higher prize payouts because of market price of packs. I don’t know how much better the prizes would have to be in Legacy / Classic to make those formats fire more often, but that is what it would take. And it’s not like Wizards would be propping up the format and handing out freebies – that is just what it would require for the format to make sense to more people in the same way that Standard and Modern make sense to them now.

    By the way, I agree that more promos would be a perfectly valid idea, but I think straight up higher numbers of packs as prizes is way more appropriate. If Wizards wants to justify that idea, then I’m sure they are smart enough to calculate how many packs of product need to be opened on average to produce your average classic deck compared to Block / Standard decks. Guess what – it would be a higher number since you’re pulling rares from more sets! This proves the higher investment cost without forcing Wizards to commit the (evidently) heinous sin of acknowledging that a secondary market exists.

    Whatever. I guess I don’t have time to play in events anyway, so I should detach myself a little more.

  30. One other thing I forgot to mention: the reason why I actually did dip my toes into classic briefly. The decks themselves are really, really neat in Classic. They do really cool shit! The synergies are intricate and cool. Also, playing with stuff like Demonic Tutor and Tolarian Academy is friggin’ awesome.

  31. In my opinion, the problem that prevent the Qs to fire (and the community to regenerate) is the time shift. I’ve tried to enter an event last saturday (afternoon GMT). We were 6. I am quite sure that with the players Qing the event at 2.30 AM GMT Sunday morning we were more than 16.

    Last winter I’ve attended my first (and only, unfortunately) classic event. I ended 2-2, despite the lack of Fow (I was playing a personal version of 4c noble fish).

    Lack of P9 in the format shift the metagame in the shop direction, but this is a personal opinion. Like any magic player I would like to see the P9s online, still classic is (to me) the most fun format and the only I play with interest. Unfortunately I began with paper version in 1996 and I quit it in 1998. MTG without cards as demonic tutor or wheel of fortune (or the proper multilands) it is another game, to me.

    I guess that as community we should try to find a combination of day/time in the available Qs that are viable for both european and american players.

    In conclusion I have appreciated the article and the comments. Talk about a problem is better than ignore it.

  32. As far as prize payout goes, maybe the prize should fit the format? Personally, I don’t believe that M12 boosters are an incentive to play in a Classic event. Why not offer Master Edition boosters as prize? Of course, you couldn’t offer 11 ME boosters for a 4-0 in a Classic daily, but why not 3 packs for 4-0 and maybe 1 for a 3-1 finish, or 4 and 2? This would have a dual benefit of enticing more people to enter a Classic event, and get more of the cards needed to build good Classic decks into the market (without flooding it). No one will ever open a dual land or a FoW in 11 packs of M12, but they might in 1 pack of Masters Edition.

    I agree that since not many Classic events fire, a fixed day/time should be decided on for Classic events. Sunday Classic sounds like a good day to me with event times set up to match the peak hours of global time zones.

  33. I have a full classic deck, most playsets of the needed cards for other decks and still do not play classic. It was my intention and was the reason I collected the cards and played enough to know the format (former paper vintage player).

    The reason I do not play is mainly time. I feel that my schedule does not work with the classic community. That is my fault and I cannot blame others for it.

    Another (albeit smaller) reason is I have found many members of the classic community to be a bit clique-y. Not snobs by any means. When no one knows me and I show up with a full legit classic deck, no on reaches out. No clan invites. No “hey! let’s play some more”. No “Do you play in the league? Why have I not seen you before?” Nothing. Games, Matches, Gone, despite several watchers. While I do not need someone to give me a reach-around to play classic, it would be nice to break the wall down and be invited into the “classic community”

    I am not griping, people can do/play what and how they feel. I just thought I would note my thoughts on why my participation has been non-existent.

    Oh…and the prize support in horrendous.

  34. Hi Vic. Thanks for your thoughts. You are a prefect example for me, as I now can point to one specific person that has the cards, but just doesn’t have the time to play etc.

    Is “HayMarket8″ your MTGO handle? I don’t recall seeing you in the TP room before, but if I missed you, I apologize. I try to chat up people in the TP room, but sometimes I get distracted or have only a few minutes to play, etc. Other times, the other person doesn’t seem to be interested in chatting (perhaps language barrier is an issue there, though).

    Nonetheless, there is always room for players that have a limited amount of time to play in our community. There are other ways to participate that don’t include forking over 6 tickets to play in a DE. ClassicQuarter.com is a great place to simply talk about the format. You can post decklists, and just talk about anything you want. If you have never been to CQ, I encourage you to check it out. Like I said, just posting over there is helping the community. I have never seen new people shunned from CQ, so I fully expect you would be embraced upon signing up.

  35. HayMarket8 is my username. I have been CQ but never posted. In fact, the post above was my first hear yet I have been a reader for over a year. I appreciate all that has been done for classic despite not being mch of a participant. I have entered a few events and been in a couple of ques that did not fire. The events that did not fire were dissappointing as I often have to arrange my schedule to get into them. It is what it is. Thank you for your response.