djscrub asked:

I remember an article of yours, probably 10 to 15 years ago, where you talked about how you found it strange during the first few years of Magic before you got hired that none of the major characters from the story had cards. You corrected that with the Weatherlight saga, and Magic has continued to get it right for 20 years. Then this year, you change how the story is done so that the connection with the cards breaks again, and you act like a magical force field is making that impossible to fix.

There’s a choice that has to be made. We can write everything internally and have a lot more cohesiveness or we can use top-notch fantasy authors and have some disconnects. It all comes down to what you choose to prioritize - cohesiveness or the best writing.

Right now we’ve chosen to prioritize having the best authors, so that comes ar the cost of the occasional disconnect. We’re working on improving the system, but I and my fellow designers can’t design to things that haven’t been created yet and the authors can’t write about worlds that haven’t been formed yet, so somebody has to go first which means someone is working without knowledge of the other.