As the game of Magic: The Gathering grows into a robust community, changes happen. If changes never happened, we'd still be playing with white-bordered cards that look like books, with batches instead of the stack, two speeds of "Instant", a crazy hybrid of the Planeswalker and Legendary rule called "Enchant World", and we'd all still be 12 years old. Change happens. Though it can often be dangerous to do so, I place my trust in the hands of the good people who design this game. It's not like Hasbro or WotC are calling up sweat shops somewhere in the third world to source game designers. Thus, it's kind of surprising to hear so many people react negatively to every single change without taking any time to consider the angles.

How To Overreact: Step 1 - Scour The Internet For Drama

It seems like some people were just born to whine. There are legitimate complaints, and there are whiney complaints. "If they put dollar bills into booster packs, he'd complain about how they were folded." Whomever originally wrote that sentence captured perfectly the essence of the eternal Eeyore.

This behavior often occurs on forums and in blog comments. There are a subset of people, especially on the Internet, who seem to begin decreeing that the End of the Game is nigh. Listen people, if 6th Edition Rules and M10 rules didn't kill it, neither will the loss of Magic Player Rewards. That's been the latest change to Incite eRiots©, and it's worth looking at the change below the surface assumption that WotC are cheapskates.

Step 2 - Make Blind and Baseless Accusations

Step 2 is a staple in the repertoire of the Internet Troll, and is a crucial part of overreacting. Ideally, the Troll or Eeyore will derive a consequence (End of the World) or a motivation (WotC are cheapskates) without any real evidence, support, or frankly, clue whatsoever. Using evidence to support a logical conclusion is called "being a good lawyer". Making senseless accusations with non-existent or vague evidence is called being a "Conspiracy theorist whack-a-loon."

Looking at the loss of the MPR, we would do well to suffer through the biblically-proportioned press release Wizards of the Coast put out. I know it's two whole paragraphs, but just pour yourself a glass of wine and make an evening of it. Let's talk about the crux of the issue: why are they doing this? To quote their tracts, to "increase our player support for local organized play programs." That's pretty cryptic, and this isn't a linguistics class, but it would be fair to assume that they plan to extend more support across the board to retail stores like mine to make it easier to give out prizes to their players.

Step 3 - Assume All Problems Are One-Dimensional

When something happens, it happens for a reason. That reason being, everyone's out to screw you and do unspeakable things to your breakfast cereal. You're not paranoid, the timing was done just when you had achieved Meaningless Milestone of Organized Play Participation. There cannot possibly be a reason in the kingdoms of Heaven and Man good enough to justify the foils of which you will be deprived.

Stepping away from the consequences to a given player, it would be better to consider the implications of the change rather than assuming a stance of victimization. When one feels victimized, it becomes far easier to justify being selfish. After all, you've been wronged! The truth of it is, they are cutting MPR out because it was a terrible program. Anyone who says "you can't argue with free cards" has never heard the words "More", "Better", and "Sooner".

In the United States, your best Opportunity to play Magic is at a retail store. The vast majority of the player base has access to a retail store, though the minority that does not is quite vocal about it, understandably so. A retail store is a pain in the ass, a ton of work, a lot of risk, and a proportionally low reward. It's worth every minute, but it's a hard job that has a ton of challenges. Stores should be rewarded for putting on sanctioned events, because frankly, I feel kind of screwed having to use DCI Reporter. That software is awful. Just a few extra foils to fatten up my prize support and draw more players? Fine! I'll take what I can get, especially if that's a competent DCI reporter program that doesn't Crash constantly.

The MPR program was, in fact, pretty bad. It was awesome when they started it up, but the benefits seemed arbitrary. Why 5 tournaments to get a plain card? Why not 4, so you could earn one each month? Why 20? The numbers seemed arbitrary, the cards selected seemed arbitrary, and the promos were always horribly warped, got fulfilled at random intervals it seemed, "broke" news that was already leaked months ago, and otherwise just seemed like a dinosaur of an incentive program.

Channeling the rewards through the store locations is a brilliant idea for many reasons. First, it is far easier to fulfill a few thousand retail stores than a few hundred thousand players. Second, it reduces the number of calls saying "I moved, send me another packet". Third, it rewards the stores for enforcing DCI law. Fourth, you get the cards right then and there, not once every four months. Those are a lot of good reasons, and anyone who thinks this money is going to go towards bolstering the Pro Tour prize purse, Richard Garfield PhD's LearJet, or towards controversial stem cell research is just poorly informed. WotC love pushing organized play, and they'd be disinclined to cut support for their programs. They're just reallocating resources and, we hope, building a 21st century reward program instead of a 20th century one. Show up go FNM, get your player rewards right there.

Step 4 - Your Town is the Only Town On Earth

The globe? Is that the thing on my dad's desk that looks like a blue and green basketball on a metal stand? What are those things? Countries? Weird. Who lives there? At my local store, we always do this, and every week we do it that way. Obviously. Doesn't your store do the same thing?

The world is pretty large these days, and there are real Magic communities all over the world. Yes, somewhere in the city of Berlin, there's a 12 year old German boy who just tapped his first Sumpf. It's the same game, with all the same things you love, but it's played by foreigners. And their Magic communities have unique challenges just like ours do. In some countries, there aren't hobby stores in every town. At GenCon, I met a guy from Israel, where there is literally one game store in the country. Granted, Israel is not a large country by any means, but from most points in the country, the store is hours away. Thus, some disparate organizations and clubs have sprung up to fill the need. Unfortunately, the current WPN structure does not really support those guys as well as it should. I have heard a similar problem exists in Australia, but don't know the exact details. Regardless, most American readers will have no idea of this problem's existence but it effects quite a few people. That's the drawback to this change, but WotC are well-aware of the issue, at least according to their rep at GenCon this year.

Step 5 - Give Up

Eventually, you'll realize the world didn't end, the game didn't experience a mass exodus, and Lassie rescued little Billy from the old well. They should just cover that damn thing up already. When there's nothing left to complain about, just go back to living your life and hope that everyone Forget what a blathering fool you were? In the end, we're left with the hope that Wizards of the Coast cares about the game, wants to keep encouraging organized play, and most importantly, we hope that they know what they're doing. All we can do is hope and have faith, which pretty much makes any reaction other than "we'll see what happens" seem like a kneejerk reaction. Don't be a knee-jerk. Think about all the angles of a problem, card or deck before making a snap judgment, and you'll be a more informed person for it.