The Stray
Hero
I dunno, I think the broken promises of MTG are another symptom of the same issue. I'd forgotten about the flap around the mechanically unique cards being box toppers -- and it happened in 2018, a couple years after Chris Cocks became the WotC CEO. That was right around the time his thumbprint would have been felt on the game, considering how far in advance the MTG team works, and it wasn't super-long after they tried to shorten the Standard Rotation from 2 years to 18 months, which caused a mess of issues when they had to walk it back. There was also the move from 3-set blocks to 2-set blocks, which was awkward but did seem a bit better pacing-wise, and then the shift again to Single Sets Maybe With Loose Connections, which was a much worse shift for the game because now we're not on a plane long enough to see actual change and theme improvements and everything is siloed, making Standard effectively a bunch of Block Constructed decks fighting each other.The game can be played though.
I dont want to derail what is a righteous thread in terms of showing Wizards as liars and cheats though.