The early Pro Tour seemed amazing. When I followed the pro your ten years ago it was still extremely interesting. But I started interest years before the MPL. They have continually de-emphasized draft. They killed Rochestor draft in ~2005. Then they got rid of the all draft pro tours in 2008. In 2020 they completely removed draft from ‘players tours’.
De-emphasizing draft was bad enough. But the real death kneel was when they moved the Pro/Player’s Tours so far back from set release. I am not sure exactly when they started doing this but it feels like it was a few years ago. For a long time, the PT was around two weeks after the set released. Players were incentivized to form testing houses. Usually, the format was still fresh by the time the Pro Tour rolled around. As I recall sometimes sets were even delayed a little on MTGO which helped a bit. If anything the PT should have been a little closer to set release but ~2 weeks worked well. Now the Pro Tours are usually stale formats. Sometimes exciting stuff comes out. But ever since they moved the PTs so far back I have lost interest.
For many reasons, I don’t play serious magic. But I have been a fan and player for many years. I am very sad about what happened to the Pro Tour.
The early Pro Tour seemed amazing. When I followed the pro your ten years ago it was still extremely interesting. But I started interest years before the MPL. They have continually de-emphasized draft. They killed Rochestor draft in ~2005. Then they got rid of the all draft pro tours in 2008. In 2020 they completely removed draft from ‘players tours’.
De-emphasizing draft was bad enough. But the real death kneel was when they moved the Pro/Player’s Tours so far back from set release. I am not sure exactly when they started doing this but it feels like it was a few years ago. For a long time, the PT was around two weeks after the set released. Players were incentivized to form testing houses. Usually, the format was still fresh by the time the Pro Tour rolled around. As I recall sometimes sets were even delayed a little on MTGO which helped a bit. If anything the PT should have been a little closer to set release but ~2 weeks worked well. Now the Pro Tours are usually stale formats. Sometimes exciting stuff comes out. But ever since they moved the PTs so far back I have lost interest.
For many reasons, I don’t play serious magic. But I have been a fan and player for many years. I am very sad about what happened to the Pro Tour.