Disappointment in today's magic industry...

[Wyattsb]

Originally Posted by Mark

I still think that there is a huge difference between advertising/marketing/branding and misleading/fooling customers and supporters. There is nothing wrong with the first ones (it used to be the biggest part of what I studied at university) but the last ones are either morally wrong or even illegal by many country's laws in case of misleading (making false statements, leaving out essential information and such).

This really hits home with my opinion. I don't really find too much wrong with t11's capitalistic approach to magic and merchandise, as some of the real, big secrets are kept by the better performers who invented them, whereas t11 sells smaller stuff that a lot of people don't really mind if it gets revealed.

However, they push it sometimes. The renaming of old moves is a bit much, as well as a few lies they have told to try and sell products, just tiny little things that would be fixed after complaints. It shows they are getting a little ahead of themselves and their ideas. What got to me the most though was the advertising, when you read a description of a product, and you just know that Jonathan Bayme wrote it, his excessive use of commas, pauses and capitalisation is just so damn annoying. It makes all of their products sound the same, and if I see the words 'subtleties' and 'nuances' one more time I think I could strangle someone. Its so bad that he literally types his forum posts like a magic advertisement, and repeats himself to the point of ridiculousness, he isn't the only one either, its like they have a policy to write like that to all questions, complaints and comments. The more someone has to do with the company the worse it gets, just their stupid over justification of what they are saying to you, its kind of patronising to their customers, sometimes it like instead of addressing someone directly, they would rather direct it at everyone who might happen to read the post, which makes it seem like they don't really care what you have to say. If you're looking for an example read the description for Regeneration, or any of his forum posts.
So really, if everything was dialled down a little bit, I don't think I would have too much of a problem with t11, the forum community is actually pretty good, aside from a couple of know-it-all users and the rate of illiteracy seems to be quite high.

I actually quite like the whole exclusiveness thing, damn, if I could afford it, I would have the biggest collection of all the pretty custom decks, particularly the rare ones. I admit, I love my Monarchs, they do design very beautiful cards. I'm glad to have the white ones too, the rarest deck I own, I plan on selling them though. The whole rare collectible thing really creates a pretty good community with a healthy bit of competition. I dislike uncut decks though, they should be way cheaper, and don't look that good I dont think. What I did like was I saw someone on eBay once selling a frame-able sheet that had a collection of single cards from rare decks, so you arent just looking at the same thing printed over and over. So if you had like 15 rare decks, you could get a nice wall hanging, and you would have 54 of them, he was selling them cheap too, which I though was a brilliant way to have a card collection.

Apart from t11, the only other pretty bad ones are The Blue Crown and Ellusionist, but then again, they aren't that bad. Obviously The Blue Crown for Alex Pandrea's re releases, and I just generally dont like him, but apart from that, they have some good stuff, and some nice collectible decks

As far as I've seen, Ellusionist isn't that bad at all, excepting their horribly designed website, theres not much there as far as magic releases go that interests me, but I'm actually looking into buying some of their decks pretty soon.

Anyway, thats just my two cents