This is a strange and not great development. I see a lot of people complaining and saying that it is almost entirely a cash grab / money thing, and while that is certainly going to be a part of...
This is a strange and not great development. I see a lot of people complaining and saying that it is almost entirely a cash grab / money thing, and while that is certainly going to be a part of this decision, I think people are really sleeping on one particular thing.
The amount of vitriol sent towards the rules committee and the advisory committee is absolutely insane. They are volunteers who just had a whole bunch of anger directed at them. Having been a reddit mod of a large subreddit for a lot of years, I fully understand that vicious messages that they've been getting, because I got hundreds of them over the years. That was for a much smaller subsection of people than the entirety of Commander players. Nobody should have to deal with that kind of bullshit, but if they do have to deal with it, they should be getting paid for it.
With regards to the current bans that set off this storm: I hope that WotC has the foresight to NOT undo these bans. I know that last week I talked about not being happy with the bans, but I think undoing them would be a huge mistake. It would definitely send the message that this was just about money.
Even smaller subreddits get this stuff, albeit in a lower volume. I used to moderate r/conlangs (which currently has 100K members but didn't when I was a mod) and we got a guy threatening to cut...
Having been a reddit mod of a large subreddit for a lot of years, I fully understand that vicious messages that they've been getting, because I got hundreds of them over the years.
Even smaller subreddits get this stuff, albeit in a lower volume. I used to moderate r/conlangs (which currently has 100K members but didn't when I was a mod) and we got a guy threatening to cut out our tongues once -- a guy we later determined lived within a 30 minute drive from me at the time. That was a particularly egregious incident and is now something we laugh about, since nothing happened, but I wouldn't be able to handle a moderation job where I got death threats on a more regular basis than that, to say nothing of the deluge I'm sure the people on these committees got.
I think anyone who volunteers their time online for any kind of community facing and management role will get threats to their person given enough time, even if the community is very small. I know...
I think anyone who volunteers their time online for any kind of community facing and management role will get threats to their person given enough time, even if the community is very small. I know a lot of people joke and say "the internet was a mistake" but I think this is actually a really serious issue. People online are very prone to baseless threats because there is not a single repercussion for them and it can be very distressing to the recipient.
For more than one subreddit that I moderated, we had to have automoderator rules to catch people posting my home address / phone number. I moderated some video game subreddits which were the most egregious, but also some programming ones (second place), and other various niche gif related things, but all of them had at least one incident of someone wishing or threatening direct harm.
The internet is a wild place.
Realizing that someone was within 30 minutes of you would be difficult. I'm glad you can chuckle now, but that's straight up scary.
luckily, we only found that out because one of the other mods doxxed him in our mod group discord, and afaik he was never aware of it. I do think the anonymity on the internet leaves a lot of...
luckily, we only found that out because one of the other mods doxxed him in our mod group discord, and afaik he was never aware of it.
I do think the anonymity on the internet leaves a lot of people willing to do things they'd be ashamed of irl, because it doesn't feel real/like it has real consequences. I don't think it's a completely solvable problem, but I hope we can find ways to at least mitigate it. I do think it's not a coincidence that certain communities have more of a problem with this relative to their size than others, so if we can learn what they're doing wrong maybe we can figure out what to do right.
I am concerned that they will undo the ban, at least for jeweled lotus, because it was a chase card, and an easy way to sell packs. Hopefully, as you said, they have the foresight not to do that...
I am concerned that they will undo the ban, at least for jeweled lotus, because it was a chase card, and an easy way to sell packs. Hopefully, as you said, they have the foresight not to do that though.
I think that despite Lotus being a chase card, and selling packs, it would be detrimental overall to their business plans to undo the ban. If they do so, it sends a clear message to people that...
I think that despite Lotus being a chase card, and selling packs, it would be detrimental overall to their business plans to undo the ban. If they do so, it sends a clear message to people that this is just about protecting the money, which would be bad for their money.
But it's possible that I'm wrong, and they decide that pulling back the curtain and saying "yes, this is just about protecting chase cards" is what they'll do. But I think it would be a bad call for them.
I definitely agree, and I also really you're right....I just fear the worst for anything Hasbro related. But fingers crossed! And to be honest I don't think they will undo it, it would also...
I definitely agree, and I also really you're right....I just fear the worst for anything Hasbro related. But fingers crossed! And to be honest I don't think they will undo it, it would also undermine the whole idea of them working with the RC which it seems like they are going for.
Major, major follow-up of last week's news. tl;dr the Rules Committee, which was previously five community members who would perform any changes to Commander rules and its banlist, is handing...
tl;dr the Rules Committee, which was previously five community members who would perform any changes to Commander rules and its banlist, is handing control over to the actual Wizards design team. This is after at least one member of the complimentary Commander Advisory Group quit due to harassment. Additionally, Wizards is planning to place Commander into four power brackets, which would be a MAJOR change to the current banlist.
Okay but I read this letter when it came out it said he had just quit. And it’s much easier to point towards his own feelings of not being included in the conversations around the banning decision...
Okay but I read this letter when it came out it said he had just quit. And it’s much easier to point towards his own feelings of not being included in the conversations around the banning decision than any harassment. Do you have evidence to point towards harassment?
The fact that others who resigned explicitly cited that harassment was a major factor if not the reason they decided to quit (X X) certainly points in that direction.
The fact that others who resigned explicitly cited that harassment was a major factor if not the reason they decided to quit (XX) certainly points in that direction.
Well, I hope the people who acted awful and prompted this decision are happy, because if I were still an active player I would sure as hell not. I'll hide my reminiscing and rose tinted glasses...
Well, I hope the people who acted awful and prompted this decision are happy, because if I were still an active player I would sure as hell not.
I'll hide my reminiscing and rose tinted glasses about Commander in here.
Back in the day, Commander (then Elder Dragon Highlander, or EDH) was just a causal format to sling around weird and interesting decks and have fun with your friends. It was (and still is) the only really enjoyable form of multiplayer for M:tG I've ever played. I remember playing over 10 years ago, and I looked forward to building new and fun decks with cards that were not typically played, but interesting to use.
But then WotC started slowly catering directly to the market. The precons started coming out, and they started directly shaping Commander as well as legacy formats inadvertently. It didn't take long for the speculative market to catch on that cards like True Name Nemesis were really damn strong in Legacy and they started aggressively buying up the precons and rocketing the price. (whoops.) Every year after that, they progressively started adding more cards as throwing a bone to Commander players, as well as making themed precons. At first, it was easy to appreciate that they were caring about their community but for me, it didn't take long to realize that "Oh no, this is quickly going to get out of hand into a format that is heavily reliant on getting these specialized cards"
I hate it when I'm right. It quickly became a chore to keep my commander decks up to date, as every time you turned around there was a new "Perfect card for your needs" that showed up. You paid money to obtain it and update, or you just got left behind by people who kept their "casual" decks cutting edge and upgrading them. This frustrated me and, combined with the increasingly non-casual nature of the players around me, I quickly drifted away from the format.
The one thing that held true through for me in all of this is that the rules committee was not with WotC and their "recommendations" of a banned list was always built with concern for the concept of "fun". Their rules and banned list were there, from day 1, as a framework and not the gospel. In their FAQ (Linked here) they frequently speak about how the rules can be tailored to your playgroup's needs, but this should be the starting point. Want to play commander with some broken, otherwise banned cards? Go for it. Does your play group have a different interpretation of the planeswalker as commander rule or how to handle Hybrid mana? Go for it. You guys have fun. I love this philosophy up to the point where two people of different groups need a common language to speak. Then there's only one place for them to go: the common rules. Now there's a strong reliance on this pillar to perform well to keep the format stable and I'll give them credit: They did this well for a long time.
This was a disaster that was waiting to happen with Jeweled Lotus.
The card was from a (relatively) small print run, meaning there wasn't lots of supply around
It was really good, meaning there was a super high demand. If you didn't use it, you could fall behind your opponents who did.
It was purpose built for commander. If it wasn't good there, it literally could not be played anywhere else for any reason.
This set the price sky high, and made everyone protective of their investment. If you touch it, people will get upset. Past bans always have a small vocal minority upset they spent money on cards that are now worthless, but most people just remind them "Buyer Beware" and move on. Most format bans result in a sigh of "Good riddance" with those who played the card saying "it was fun while it lasted" and everyone moves on (except for the Splinter Twin fans, I swear their dying breath will be "Unban twin")
Commander is different. You shape your deck yourself. I guess you could go to someplace like EDHRec.com and get decklists, but even then you still craft and shape the deck to your desires. You now spent ~50-100 USD on a card to keep up with the Joneses and now it's a worthless piece of cardboard. Everyone could just let their groups Rule Zero it back in and do what they wanted, but then you'd have endless fighting between the "pro-Lotus" camp and the "Rules as Written" camp. Knowing games, that would have been ugly so the "pro-Lotus" camp, wanting to protect their investments, went ahead and and acted like complete psychopaths by harassing and threatening the rules committee. I don't blame them for washing their hands of it. I would too. People get wild when their money or investments are involved.
Now WotC has it. They don't have the same independence and leeway as the commander rules committee had. They have pressures from the company, from the C-suite and a goal to make their sales go up. I'm sure the investment crowd will love this, as they continue to sink their money into their cardboard stocks. As someone who just likes games to be fun? I hate it. Much like I've hated most of the decisions made since just before the pandemic. Clearly I'm not their target audience, so I'll just slowly sell my extra magic stuff as I drift farther and farther away with no intention of going back anytime soon.
I think this is just Wizards concerned that their reprint equity of their biggest cash cow was under threat from a more active RC. Which is fair enough I guess but I really hate this.
I think this is just Wizards concerned that their reprint equity of their biggest cash cow was under threat from a more active RC. Which is fair enough I guess but I really hate this.
From the looks of things, this was not a move by WotC, but a move by the Rules Committee due to the deluge of threats and doxing they've been under since the bans were announced. I'm sure Hasbro...
From the looks of things, this was not a move by WotC, but a move by the Rules Committee due to the deluge of threats and doxing they've been under since the bans were announced.
I'm sure Hasbro isn't looking a gift horse in the mouth, but by the same token, the same nincompoops who sent death threats to the rules committee are far less likely to harass a company who sent the literal Pinkertons after another player for much less.
Yeah, this wouldn't be worrying if it weren't for Wizard's recent behavior regarding other properties they own. They've shown that when community and profit collide, profit wins for them any day...
Yeah, this wouldn't be worrying if it weren't for Wizard's recent behavior regarding other properties they own. They've shown that when community and profit collide, profit wins for them any day of the week. I can't say as I blame them necessarily–they are a for-profit corporation, after all–but it doesn't bode well for a purely community-driven project to be subsumed into the corporate structure.
I think the problem arises because Wizards doesn't really understand what the properties they own are. They think of them as products, things they produce for people to consume. That's certainly a part of it, but the stuff they make and the rules they devise aren't the true appeal of what they sell. People like their properties because they allow them to come together with other people for a purpose. Wizards is selling games, but its customers are buying community.
Community is a tricky thing to monetize though. Wizards and others TT games makers have a tough tightrope to walk: they have to both foster a community and tease out some way to turn a profit without destroying that community in the process. No community likes feeling exploited, because that implies the ones doing the exploiting feel themselves apart from the community, as though they're above it. Investors by and large do think themselves apart and above such communities, and so conflict is inevitable when big business intrudes. This is a microcosm of the social harm in late-stage capitalism, I think.
That said, I stopped playing MtG nearly 30 years ago, precisely because the cost was too much. It cut into my childhood cigarette funding. I may be entirely off-base on my read of the Magic community.
I play the majority of Magic online using Tabletop Simulator now, and proxy almost all the decks that I use for face-to-face magic, even in an LGS. I have not gotten called on using proxies. The...
I play the majority of Magic online using Tabletop Simulator now, and proxy almost all the decks that I use for face-to-face magic, even in an LGS. I have not gotten called on using proxies. The cost is very minimal (at least compared to playing actual magic) and using sites like MPCFill to upload and do the actual hard part of proxying makes it very palatable.
Even on various magic forums, it seems like proxying is becoming very acceptable. There are a lot of reasons why, but WotC basically printed super expensive proxies - a product that cost $999 for four booster packs of cards that are not legal in any format. They also have officially said that they allow proxies for playtesting, and only require "real cards" at DCI events, per an official communique. Notable quote:
Wizards of the Coast has no desire to police playtest cards made for personal, non-commercial use, even if that usage takes place in a store.
What we really care about is that DCI-sanctioned events use only authentic Magic cards, and that we stop counterfeits.
So if you're interested, I definitely recommend printing off a deck and having some fun.
The friend I used to play with shuffled himself off our mortal coil some years ago, so I wouldn't know where to start, but thank you anyway. Besides, the whole things feels more than a little...
The friend I used to play with shuffled himself off our mortal coil some years ago, so I wouldn't know where to start, but thank you anyway.
Besides, the whole things feels more than a little predatory anyway. I find real life plenty pay-to-win already. I don't really need to get invested in a hobby that's even more P2W than that.
I'm sorry to hear about your friend. With regards to P2W games - my point was that Magic very much does not have to be P2W at all anymore. You can just pick whatever power level you want and print...
I'm sorry to hear about your friend.
With regards to P2W games - my point was that Magic very much does not have to be P2W at all anymore. You can just pick whatever power level you want and print off the cards, and my experience is that most people do not have a problem with it. With the way WotC is heading, more and more people are using the assets that they put out and using them for decks so that they can play without spending much money at all. In the case of Tabletop Sim, it's 10 bucks... but that presupposes that you have a friend group to play with. If you don't, then I generally don't recommend playing Magic at all.
This likely doesn't require another post, so I'll just throw this summary that I found on r/EDH about the recent stream - https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2265055461 "We all, WOTC and RC, reached this...
"We all, WOTC and RC, reached this conclusion together."
They are taking precautions to ensure the safety of RC members.
They still want to keep it a community-driven format.
Gavin plans to establish a committee similar to Pauper Format Panel. RC and CAG members are likely members.
Aaron addresses the worries about profit-driven actions. "I'm also here for the love of the game(like RC).Yes Hasbro wants things. Yes my bosses wants things. I have a lot of freedom to do what I think is best. Our goal is to make things last forever. Keeping the community happy is our way to make money."
They want to wait until the Panel is established to talk about the banlist.
Beyond the initial banlist changes they don't want to make changes too often.
Quarterly banlist updates similar to RC. It won't follow B&R of other formats.
Power brackets: E.g. tier 1 swords, tier 2 thalia, tier 3 drannith magistrate, tier 4 armageddon etc.
Aaron Forsythe used to play Armageddon 😱
They aren't trying to replace Rule 0, they are trying to make it easier.
At least 1 person from the CEDH community will be part of the panel. WOTC will still focus on casual commander.
No separate banlists. Brackets will already do that job.
Aaron: "4th bracket will be cards that you will rarely see in precons."
Sol Ring isn't going anywhere. Sol Ring is "Bracket 0" so to say.
Points system similar to Canlander is too complex and competitive for casual commander.
Brawl in Arena already separates decks into 4 categories.
Jeweled Lotus, Arcane Signet, Dockside etc. were mistakes. Cards that were banned recently are the kinds of cards they wouldn't want to make today. They want to reduce ubiquitousness going forward.
They are discussing implementing more digital tools. E.g. you enter your decklist and it tells you your bracket.
They want to release first Brackets article before MagicCon Las Vegas.
Committee will be in the range of 10-20 people. There are also 10 commander designers working in WOTC.
They are not tied to number 4. They can make a 5th bracket for CEDH.
It is undecided whether the Committee will be anonymous. At least some names will be known.
They can divide combos into different brackets: Thoracle combos bracket 4, SangBond+EqBlood bracket 3 etc.
This is a strange and not great development. I see a lot of people complaining and saying that it is almost entirely a cash grab / money thing, and while that is certainly going to be a part of this decision, I think people are really sleeping on one particular thing.
The amount of vitriol sent towards the rules committee and the advisory committee is absolutely insane. They are volunteers who just had a whole bunch of anger directed at them. Having been a reddit mod of a large subreddit for a lot of years, I fully understand that vicious messages that they've been getting, because I got hundreds of them over the years. That was for a much smaller subsection of people than the entirety of Commander players. Nobody should have to deal with that kind of bullshit, but if they do have to deal with it, they should be getting paid for it.
With regards to the current bans that set off this storm: I hope that WotC has the foresight to NOT undo these bans. I know that last week I talked about not being happy with the bans, but I think undoing them would be a huge mistake. It would definitely send the message that this was just about money.
Edit with some more information:
Jim LaPage wrote a letter: https://x.com/JimTSF/status/1840783966926000255
Toby Elliot with more info: https://x.com/tobyelliott/status/1840784261445546203
tl;dr - for both of these people, it seems like it is directly about the threats that they received.
Even smaller subreddits get this stuff, albeit in a lower volume. I used to moderate r/conlangs (which currently has 100K members but didn't when I was a mod) and we got a guy threatening to cut out our tongues once -- a guy we later determined lived within a 30 minute drive from me at the time. That was a particularly egregious incident and is now something we laugh about, since nothing happened, but I wouldn't be able to handle a moderation job where I got death threats on a more regular basis than that, to say nothing of the deluge I'm sure the people on these committees got.
I think anyone who volunteers their time online for any kind of community facing and management role will get threats to their person given enough time, even if the community is very small. I know a lot of people joke and say "the internet was a mistake" but I think this is actually a really serious issue. People online are very prone to baseless threats because there is not a single repercussion for them and it can be very distressing to the recipient.
For more than one subreddit that I moderated, we had to have automoderator rules to catch people posting my home address / phone number. I moderated some video game subreddits which were the most egregious, but also some programming ones (second place), and other various niche gif related things, but all of them had at least one incident of someone wishing or threatening direct harm.
The internet is a wild place.
Realizing that someone was within 30 minutes of you would be difficult. I'm glad you can chuckle now, but that's straight up scary.
luckily, we only found that out because one of the other mods doxxed him in our mod group discord, and afaik he was never aware of it.
I do think the anonymity on the internet leaves a lot of people willing to do things they'd be ashamed of irl, because it doesn't feel real/like it has real consequences. I don't think it's a completely solvable problem, but I hope we can find ways to at least mitigate it. I do think it's not a coincidence that certain communities have more of a problem with this relative to their size than others, so if we can learn what they're doing wrong maybe we can figure out what to do right.
I am concerned that they will undo the ban, at least for jeweled lotus, because it was a chase card, and an easy way to sell packs. Hopefully, as you said, they have the foresight not to do that though.
I think that despite Lotus being a chase card, and selling packs, it would be detrimental overall to their business plans to undo the ban. If they do so, it sends a clear message to people that this is just about protecting the money, which would be bad for their money.
But it's possible that I'm wrong, and they decide that pulling back the curtain and saying "yes, this is just about protecting chase cards" is what they'll do. But I think it would be a bad call for them.
I definitely agree, and I also really you're right....I just fear the worst for anything Hasbro related. But fingers crossed! And to be honest I don't think they will undo it, it would also undermine the whole idea of them working with the RC which it seems like they are going for.
Major, major follow-up of last week's news.
tl;dr the Rules Committee, which was previously five community members who would perform any changes to Commander rules and its banlist, is handing control over to the actual Wizards design team. This is after at least one member of the complimentary Commander Advisory Group quit due to harassment. Additionally, Wizards is planning to place Commander into four power brackets, which would be a MAJOR change to the current banlist.
Okay but I read this letter when it came out it said he had just quit. And it’s much easier to point towards his own feelings of not being included in the conversations around the banning decision than any harassment. Do you have evidence to point towards harassment?
The fact that others who resigned explicitly cited that harassment was a major factor if not the reason they decided to quit (X X) certainly points in that direction.
Well, I hope the people who acted awful and prompted this decision are happy, because if I were still an active player I would sure as hell not.
I'll hide my reminiscing and rose tinted glasses about Commander in here.
Back in the day, Commander (then Elder Dragon Highlander, or EDH) was just a causal format to sling around weird and interesting decks and have fun with your friends. It was (and still is) the only really enjoyable form of multiplayer for M:tG I've ever played. I remember playing over 10 years ago, and I looked forward to building new and fun decks with cards that were not typically played, but interesting to use.But then WotC started slowly catering directly to the market. The precons started coming out, and they started directly shaping Commander as well as legacy formats inadvertently. It didn't take long for the speculative market to catch on that cards like True Name Nemesis were really damn strong in Legacy and they started aggressively buying up the precons and rocketing the price. (whoops.) Every year after that, they progressively started adding more cards as throwing a bone to Commander players, as well as making themed precons. At first, it was easy to appreciate that they were caring about their community but for me, it didn't take long to realize that "Oh no, this is quickly going to get out of hand into a format that is heavily reliant on getting these specialized cards"
I hate it when I'm right. It quickly became a chore to keep my commander decks up to date, as every time you turned around there was a new "Perfect card for your needs" that showed up. You paid money to obtain it and update, or you just got left behind by people who kept their "casual" decks cutting edge and upgrading them. This frustrated me and, combined with the increasingly non-casual nature of the players around me, I quickly drifted away from the format.
The one thing that held true through for me in all of this is that the rules committee was not with WotC and their "recommendations" of a banned list was always built with concern for the concept of "fun". Their rules and banned list were there, from day 1, as a framework and not the gospel. In their FAQ (Linked here) they frequently speak about how the rules can be tailored to your playgroup's needs, but this should be the starting point. Want to play commander with some broken, otherwise banned cards? Go for it. Does your play group have a different interpretation of the planeswalker as commander rule or how to handle Hybrid mana? Go for it. You guys have fun. I love this philosophy up to the point where two people of different groups need a common language to speak. Then there's only one place for them to go: the common rules. Now there's a strong reliance on this pillar to perform well to keep the format stable and I'll give them credit: They did this well for a long time.
This was a disaster that was waiting to happen with Jeweled Lotus.
This set the price sky high, and made everyone protective of their investment. If you touch it, people will get upset. Past bans always have a small vocal minority upset they spent money on cards that are now worthless, but most people just remind them "Buyer Beware" and move on. Most format bans result in a sigh of "Good riddance" with those who played the card saying "it was fun while it lasted" and everyone moves on (except for the Splinter Twin fans, I swear their dying breath will be "Unban twin")
Commander is different. You shape your deck yourself. I guess you could go to someplace like EDHRec.com and get decklists, but even then you still craft and shape the deck to your desires. You now spent ~50-100 USD on a card to keep up with the Joneses and now it's a worthless piece of cardboard. Everyone could just let their groups Rule Zero it back in and do what they wanted, but then you'd have endless fighting between the "pro-Lotus" camp and the "Rules as Written" camp. Knowing games, that would have been ugly so the "pro-Lotus" camp, wanting to protect their investments, went ahead and and acted like complete psychopaths by harassing and threatening the rules committee. I don't blame them for washing their hands of it. I would too. People get wild when their money or investments are involved.
Now WotC has it. They don't have the same independence and leeway as the commander rules committee had. They have pressures from the company, from the C-suite and a goal to make their sales go up. I'm sure the investment crowd will love this, as they continue to sink their money into their cardboard stocks. As someone who just likes games to be fun? I hate it. Much like I've hated most of the decisions made since just before the pandemic. Clearly I'm not their target audience, so I'll just slowly sell my extra magic stuff as I drift farther and farther away with no intention of going back anytime soon.
I think this is just Wizards concerned that their reprint equity of their biggest cash cow was under threat from a more active RC. Which is fair enough I guess but I really hate this.
From the looks of things, this was not a move by WotC, but a move by the Rules Committee due to the deluge of threats and doxing they've been under since the bans were announced.
I'm sure Hasbro isn't looking a gift horse in the mouth, but by the same token, the same nincompoops who sent death threats to the rules committee are far less likely to harass a company who sent the literal Pinkertons after another player for much less.
Yea I just saw Jim's letter. Honestly do not blame them one bit for giving it up, I just wish this wasn't where we ended up.
Yeah, this wouldn't be worrying if it weren't for Wizard's recent behavior regarding other properties they own. They've shown that when community and profit collide, profit wins for them any day of the week. I can't say as I blame them necessarily–they are a for-profit corporation, after all–but it doesn't bode well for a purely community-driven project to be subsumed into the corporate structure.
I think the problem arises because Wizards doesn't really understand what the properties they own are. They think of them as products, things they produce for people to consume. That's certainly a part of it, but the stuff they make and the rules they devise aren't the true appeal of what they sell. People like their properties because they allow them to come together with other people for a purpose. Wizards is selling games, but its customers are buying community.
Community is a tricky thing to monetize though. Wizards and others TT games makers have a tough tightrope to walk: they have to both foster a community and tease out some way to turn a profit without destroying that community in the process. No community likes feeling exploited, because that implies the ones doing the exploiting feel themselves apart from the community, as though they're above it. Investors by and large do think themselves apart and above such communities, and so conflict is inevitable when big business intrudes. This is a microcosm of the social harm in late-stage capitalism, I think.
That said, I stopped playing MtG nearly 30 years ago, precisely because the cost was too much. It cut into my childhood cigarette funding. I may be entirely off-base on my read of the Magic community.
I play the majority of Magic online using Tabletop Simulator now, and proxy almost all the decks that I use for face-to-face magic, even in an LGS. I have not gotten called on using proxies. The cost is very minimal (at least compared to playing actual magic) and using sites like MPCFill to upload and do the actual hard part of proxying makes it very palatable.
Even on various magic forums, it seems like proxying is becoming very acceptable. There are a lot of reasons why, but WotC basically printed super expensive proxies - a product that cost $999 for four booster packs of cards that are not legal in any format. They also have officially said that they allow proxies for playtesting, and only require "real cards" at DCI events, per an official communique. Notable quote:
So if you're interested, I definitely recommend printing off a deck and having some fun.
The friend I used to play with shuffled himself off our mortal coil some years ago, so I wouldn't know where to start, but thank you anyway.
Besides, the whole things feels more than a little predatory anyway. I find real life plenty pay-to-win already. I don't really need to get invested in a hobby that's even more P2W than that.
I'm sorry to hear about your friend.
With regards to P2W games - my point was that Magic very much does not have to be P2W at all anymore. You can just pick whatever power level you want and print off the cards, and my experience is that most people do not have a problem with it. With the way WotC is heading, more and more people are using the assets that they put out and using them for decks so that they can play without spending much money at all. In the case of Tabletop Sim, it's 10 bucks... but that presupposes that you have a friend group to play with. If you don't, then I generally don't recommend playing Magic at all.
This likely doesn't require another post, so I'll just throw this summary that I found on r/EDH about the recent stream - https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2265055461