A lot of regulars who I’ve known for decades have actually quit. UB has brought in a lot of new people, but even they lament about Magic’s 90s storylines being a thing of the past. It seems like no one actually likes UB, except for a franchise they do like, which they jump all over, without realizing that’s what everyone else is doing.

WotC may also be juking their stats on the success of each UB. Their distribution model is they sell to vendors way below MSRP, who then sell at MSRP or higher. Once product leaves Hasbro’s print shops, they mark that as a sale. Whether or not customers actually buy that product isn’t their problem. If another local game store goes under with a bunch of unsold stock, who cares? A new one is always being opened by some naive late-20s/early-30s guy who thinks running a very specialized pawnshop is the same as being good at games (nevermind if he’s actually good at the game).

In other words, WotC sells a $60 booster box to a game store. The game store sells it to players for $120. If the box never sells, Hasbro still marks it down they made a sale, because they did. So when they say “best-selling set of all time” for the fourth set in a row, they don’t mean “players bought more of this set than anything else.” They mean “we made vendors buy more product than we printed last set and threatened to pull their distribution/sanctioned event status if they didn’t buy what we demanded.”

Should this probably be illegal or raise some questions from shareholders? Probably. But they’re making more money than they’ve ever seen. A decade ago, Hearthstone was pulling in more each month than all of Hasbro annually combined. MtG and D&D are the only things keeping them afloat, with D&D getting less and less profitable each year.