The Play Online vs. Tabletop Tug-of-War Continues
Wizards of the Coast defined Magic: The Gathering Play Metrics’ components for the upcoming return of metrics being a determining factor in product and promo allocations.
WotC recently announced that Play Metrics were coming back as a way that they would assign product and promo allocations, starting in March 2024 (see “Play Metrics for ‘Magic: the Gathering’ Events“). In anticipation of this event, they defined the three major components of Play Metrics. The definitions are as follows (as stated on WotC’s WPN site):
Tickets. Tickets are the total number of entries across all of your Magic events in a rolling calendar year; all manner of play counts, and one player can count as multiple Tickets across multiple events.
Engaged Players. This refers to players who register for your events with their official Wizards Account and have played at your store six or more times in the past rolling calendar year, regardless of format.
Activated Players. Primarily used by stores on the Path to WPN Premium, Activated Players are players that register for your events with their official Wizards Account, are in their first year of in-store play, and have joined six events at your store, regardless of format.
To become a WPN Premium store, stores are required to register 1,500 Tickets, 30 Engaged Players, and 10 Activated Players over the course of a year. This is half of what the requirements were in the beginning of 2019, when WPN Premium Play Metics were 3,000 Tickets, 60 Engaged Players, and 10 Activated Players. In late 2019, WotC first began to cut the requirements for becoming a WPN Premium store (see “WotC Cuts Requirements“), almost a year after they launched a $10 million esports league that incorporated MTG Arena as the primary platform to play on (see “Magic Pro League, Mythic Championships“).
The demise of the Standard format on the tabletop (see “Standard Format’s Tabletop Woes“), the cleaving of WPN Premium Metrics, and the soaring popularity of MTG Arena are all, perhaps, linked. MTG Arena provides easy, at-home access to Magic: The Gathering play experiences for users. This is potentially detrimental to Standard on the the tabletop as it is much easier for players to stay home on a Friday night and get their Magic: The Gathering play experience on a laptop than to go out to a store and play. Additionally, the prevalence of COVID-19, on a seasonal basis, and elevated gas prices have also not done anything to inspire players to go out and play more at FLGS.
WotC might want to seek a solution to this Standard online vs. tabletop negative feedback loop, and fast, before it has a truly meaningful impact on Standard set sales. To get Standard back on track, they have recently revealed the next phase in revitalizing Magic: The Gathering’s Standard format events at both FLGS and on a larger scale (see “Revitalizing ‘Magic: The Gathering’s’ Standard Format“).
Source: ICv2
