Soon after Wizards of the Coast announced the double Wildcard costs for Magic: The Gathering Arena's Historic format, a former Magic Online employee has revealed poor pricing tactics.

Over on Twitter, former Magic Online employee Joathon Loucks talked about Wizards of the Coast's scandalous pricing tactics. Loucks said that WotC usually announces the higher price ption when given a choice between price queues, and if the Magic community complain about it, WotC would change it to the lower price option.

Twice during my time on MTGO, when we wondered what to price a queue between two options, we announced the higher of the two, and after players complained about the bad EV, we announced a change to the lower price. Arena using the same tactic I imagine. — Jonathon Loucks (@JonLoucks) August 30, 2019

The pricing tactic Loucks mentioned reminds us of the pricing scenario that occured with the reveal of the Core Set 2020 Mastery System on Arena. Some players criticized the Mastery rewards system for punishing those who didn't play daily and free-to-play players. After receiving a lot of complaints from the Magic community, WotC revised the Mastery by removing the "pay to play" option.

An Magic judge on Twitter (via Dotesports) backed up the former Magic Online player's tweet by saying that these pricing practices are standard procedure for Wizards.

“Can confirm this tactic is rampant in WOTC,” said the Marc DeArmond. “[I] have used it at the urging of people that are now in charge of various parts of MTG Arena. However, it is frequently used to get people to accept a bad option because at least it is better than a worse option. I hated it because it worked.”

Here's the explanation Wizards provided for the double Wildcard cost for Historic cards:

Wizards went on to explain how Wildcards are redeemed if there are Historic versions of cards currently in a Standard set:

"If a Historic card also appears in a current Standard set, players will be able to redeem one Wildcard for one copy of the Standard version, however, the Historic version will still require two. For example, you can play Luminous Bonds in Historic whether it's the Rivals of Ixalan version or the Guilds of Ravnica version, but starting in November the Rivals of Ixalan version will cost two common Wildcards, while the Guilds of Ravnica version will cost one common Wildcard. Both versions will be playable in both Historic and Standard."

WotC hasn't made any announcements following the complaints yet but I won't be surprised if they change the cost back to one Wildcard per Historic.

Do you think it's fair for Wizards to require two Wildcards for one Historic or do you think they should change it? Let us know in the comments section below.



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