Magic will either become "generic TCG that's unrecognizable to the original" or it's going to pay a very painful long-term cost for their short-term gains.
The MLP cards aren’t legal in any format and Transformers, legal in commander yes, was a very small set.
You can’t deny the popularity of the Final fantasy set. Selling that well indicates a desire.
I don’t think the small secret lair releases deserve the hate.
Wizards is still committed to making in-universe sets. The first novel in years was just published with the release of strixhaven. Every in-universe set has come with a short-story/novella length addition on the official site.
FWIW, I don’t love the marvel collab and I don’t think it fits at all. But I’m sure someone does.
I think criticism should be focused on the actual design and mechanics of sets rather than the IP. Since Wizards is committed to both their own and others. The latest Marvel set for example enables way more infinite combos in standard and is an example power creep gone bad.
People are trying to rationalize their behavior based on their hurt feelings
It's also probably worth pointing out that Lego was nearing bankruptcy and was saved by a ton of licensing (and Ninjago, to be fair). Fortunately, they've used that income stream to still consistently put out a lot of high quality first party sets. Hopefully WotC doesn't lose sight...
The sets also increase the number of legal cards you have to purchase to keep up with the meta.
There's quite a few new cEDH staples from UB sets as well.
also shortly after we see new sets stopped getting their own wiki articles
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Magic:_The_Gathering_s...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Magic:_The_Gathering_n...
Not to mention that it's the Arena workers, they are downstream of the card design process.
