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Originally posted by Cyno:
For those that didn't attend it was horrible. WotC dropped the ball bigtime covering the first 3 days. No live feeds, live chat thingy wasn't up half the time, standing updates were 2 hours late. Best updates we had were from people that twittered a pic of the standingsheet from the tournament floor.

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Originally posted by stab107:
Yeah I'm kinda bummed I didn't have the chance to go this year. I went last year when it was in Japan and it was an amazing experience. The sad thing is Worlds being gone forever when it should be THE event of the year for people to try and attend. If you want to talk about dropping the ball, that's where I would start.

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It wouldn't matter anyway, since all the invite-only events were going to be private. Even without the changes, you would either be qualified or you don't go.

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MOTL's Most Likely to Play in the Pro Tour - 2007, 2008, and 2009
(My Nationals)

I got to be a fly on the wall while Pat Chapin was talking with Mark Rosewater about design and specifically the color pie (discussing Desparate Ravings) and the role of randomness in red.

I talked to lots of people and traded all day long. I played a game of Momir Vig and got crushed by a guy who got Dragon Broodmother, while I blanked out on 3, 4, and 5.

I got a bunch of cards I wanted through trading, including another Thrun, another Batterskull, 4 Japanese Green Sun's Zeniths, 2 Japanese Primeval Titans, a Genesis for my EDH deck, two foil Mirran Crusaders (one promo, one not), a foil Beast Within, Elspeth Tirel, Mox Opal, a Japanese Inkmoth Nexus (I now have 3), a full art Electrolyze for my cube, and best of all, some cards for my Magic Secret Santa recipient.

The Magic trading sharks were definitely around all day long and it took me four unsuccessful trades before I finally got a Genesis, because everyone valued theirs at $14 or $15, while lowering my cards very low. One guy had a Genesis with obvious wear and I asked for its value and he said $14, until I pointed out that the back had dime sized white abrasions on the back, which made him remember that it wasn't NM, and he lowered the value to $10. One guy quoted his at $15, then I talked him down to $13, just to see where he valued MY cards, then he started pointing towards thing I owned and said,

"Kessig Wolf Run - $2?"
"Daybreak Ranger - $1?"
"Sulfur Falls - $3?"

"Well, if you don't want to trade those, the only thing I would consider doing is Primeval Titan + Splinter Twin for it."

So, I refused and walked away. My friends thought I was being FAR too kind when he was quoting retail price for his card and vendor buy prices for my cards.

I also saw something kind of shady - there were a couple of Japanese guys just sitting at the regular player tables with binder after binder of Japanese foil cards with prices on them and they claimed that they were representing Saito (his store) and were doing cash transactions literally under the table for cards without a real vendor's table. It didn't bug me enough to tell anyone, but I thought that it was pretty nervy while still in trouble with WotC to be doing something that's prohibited - there were signs in the venue reminding people that selling and buying were only allowed by the authorized dealers, places like GamingEtc, StarCityGames, and ChannelFireball.

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Originally posted by yakusoku:
I also saw something kind of shady - there were a couple of Japanese guys just sitting at the regular player tables with binder after binder of Japanese foil cards with prices on them and they claimed that they were representing Saito (his store) and were doing cash transactions literally under the table for cards without a real vendor's table. It didn't bug me enough to tell anyone, but I thought that it was pretty nervy while still in trouble with WotC to be doing something that's prohibited - there were signs in the venue reminding people that selling and buying were only allowed by the authorized dealers, places like GamingEtc, StarCityGames, and ChannelFireball.

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Sorry if I'm clueless here... I just thought that Worlds was THE main event in all of MTG? Are they going to replace it with something else?

How are they going to crown World Champions then?

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WotC:

For the first time since the creation of the Pro Tour, Magic: The Gathering will have a single tournament to determine the best player in the world: the 2012 World Championship.

To accomplish this goal, the World Championship is changing from a Pro Tour-sized event to an exclusive sixteen-person tournament. These sixteen titans of Magic will battle for a $100,000 prize purse at Gen Con 2012 in Indianapolis (August 16-19).

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Also important to note:

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National Championships will no longer be feeding a larger global event. With the World Championship moving to its new model, as well as a growing need for individual regions to tailor their organized play offerings, it was necessary to separate Nationals from a larger organized play path. This change helps individual regions develop the right tournaments and events—from Wizards Play Network events up to National Championships—to meet the needs of their region's player base.

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Finally:

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The field will be made up of the following players:

* 2011 World Champion
* 2011 Magic Online Champion (determined at the 2011 Magic Online Championship held at Magic Weekend San Francisco)
* Winners of the previous three Pro Tours (Philadelphia, Dark Ascension in Honolulu, and the second Pro Tour in 2012). Pro Tour Philadelphia champion Samuele Estratti is the first invitee to the 2012 World Championship.
* The top-ranked player from each geo-region (Asia Pacific, Europe, Japan, Latin America, and North America) in the Planeswalker Points 2012 Professional Total who are not yet invited based on the above criteria.
* The top-ranked players in the worldwide Planeswalker Points 2012 Professional Total who are not yet invited based on the above criteria sufficient to bring the total number of invited players to the 2012 World Championship to sixteen.

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Originally posted by yakusoku:
I also saw something kind of shady - there were a couple of Japanese guys just sitting at the regular player tables with binder after binder of Japanese foil cards with prices on them and they claimed that they were representing Saito (his store) and were doing cash transactions literally under the table for cards without a real vendor's table. It didn't bug me enough to tell anyone, but I thought that it was pretty nervy while still in trouble with WotC to be doing something that's prohibited - there were signs in the venue reminding people that selling and buying were only allowed by the authorized dealers, places like GamingEtc, StarCityGames, and ChannelFireball.

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none of the vendors with tables there would complain about saito.. he ships them business, and vice versa.. and it's pretty common knowledge he does this.. but still mostly trade.. he buys mainly from a few of us.. and prob small transactions on the floor only..

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-Christopher Hitchens