notreallygoodatcommingupwithname asked: Mister Rosewater do you think Wizards has failed to keep true on the original definition of what a mythic rarity card is? So many tournament level cards these days are mythic rares which was something you yourself said would not happen (Planeswalkers aside).

The article that everyone quotes is from when I first introduced mythic rarity to the public. I explained how at the time R&D viewed mythic rares. Has there been some evolution to both how we think of and execute mythic rares? Of course. Magic is a living game that is constantly evolving and mythic rares were introduced seven years ago. The game and its design and development can and should change over time.

The point I disagree on is that we broke a promise. People keep using one specific line from the article as a sign that we promised something, but if you read it closely, you’ll see we didn’t.

Here’s the quote in question:

“They [mythic rare cards] will not just be a list of each set’s most powerful tournament-level cards.”

Many people want to interpret this as me promising that we would never make powerful tournament-level cards at mythic rare. But if that were true, the word “just” wouldn’t be there.

I was, in fact, promising that some powerful tournament-level cards *would* be mythic rare but that mythic rares wouldn’t just be that. And they’re not. I know that because I still get people complaining about how we make mythic rares that aren’t good enough. (See the question several above this.)