MTG: War Of The Spark Mythic Edition Disaster, Cancelling and Refunding Over 30k Orders

Published: May 3, 2019 2:15 PM /

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war of the spark

Wizards of the Coast are almost certainly having a bad time right now. Recently the release of a limited product known as Magic The Gathering: War Of The Spark Mythic Edition was announced and it through a lot of fans of the game into a tizzy, offering a whopping amount of Mythic Rare Planeswalkers for the world most popular card game. The product was recently put up for sale on Hasbro's eBay store, where it quickly sold out in a matter of minutes.

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like the eBay store accurately reflected that and has left many players in uproar after their orders failed or went through successfully and were canceled after the fact. All in all, over 42 000 units were sold on eBay, prompting the virtual marketplace to step in on Twitter and confirm that only 12,000 units were actually available.

https://twitter.com/AskeBay/status/1123751821451911168

Fans on Reddit expressed outrage at certain elements of the MTG community known as 'flippers', those people who are purchasing the products because they will sell for a much higher value than the purchase price and therefore can reliably be bought and sold at a profit. Many fans of the games who want the cards to actually play with were more than a little annoyed at people buying the cards for their own gain, especially with such a limited number of products available.

https://twitter.com/wizards_magic/status/1124053663645827072

Wizards claim to be working with eBay on contacting all customers who purchased a copy of the product via the online marketplace and informing those who will and will not be receiving the product they ordered. The latest shambles of a Mythic Edition release is not helping the overall success rate of the product line. The Guilds of Ravnica Mythic Edition set was released on Hasbro's own website but was met with dramatic criticism from fans for being overpriced, and eventually, the site also crashed. The next blunder came with Ravnica Allegiance: Mythic Edition which was instead sold on eBay but this time was so badly overpriced that it undersold by a considerable number of units, with the eBay listing closing after only 200o of them had been sold.

A possible cause of the large overselling of the boxes is Jace, The Mind Sculpter, an insanely popular card in the game which almost always goes towards throwing the desirability of a set or product through the roof. Since the card was first released it has remained at a price point pretty consistently over $100 and is a prized possession for many MTG players. The latest Mythic set featured a unique full art version of the card, which alone was expected to fetch in particularly high prices from players looking to 'bling' out their decks.

It also seems like Wizards aren't the only ones capable of committing a faux pas. eBay has been caught sending out an e-mail to people who attempted to purchase the Mythic Edition offering them another look at scalpers selling the boxes for incredibly inflated prices. Many on the Reddit page featured below were, understandably, less than thrilled with what can only be seen as eBay rubbing their faces in it, intentionally or not.

https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/bk07wf/wotc_and_ebay_working_towards_relaying_news/emct3…

 


Quick Take

Okay, so this is one hell of a situation for the MTG community. After the complete disaster that was the release of the past two mythic editions, Hasbro and Wizards should have been extra careful about how they handled the release. Of course, it also won't be helping the perception of the MTG finance part of the community but they're already not exactly a popular bunch with most players. It's exactly this sort of thing that stopped me playing Magic in the first place, and it's also the sort of thing that's likely to stop me ever going back again. 

What do you think about the War of the Spark: Mythic Edition situation? Do you think that more products should have been printed in the first place? Let us know in the comments. 

Have a tip, or want to point out something we missed? Leave a Comment or e-mail us at tips@techraptor.net


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| Staff Writer

Will has been writing about video games professionally since 2016 and has covered everything from AAA game reviews to industry events and everything in… More about William