Editorial Section:
More prizes vs higher prices:
A recent thread about wanting higher priced singles on the secondary market got me thinking. There really is no way to achieve higher price singles without vastly changing the current supply/demand dynamics that are currently in play, or in the battlefield, or whatever. This is a grand aspiration to be sure. To get higher prices for singles helps drafters redraft more often. But that thread made me think about the topic and also about some related topics as well. Like, lower prizes for events. I've said it fairly frequently, WotC had been sacrificing the spike's prizes to build up the player base of new players. And if you're a Spike player, I am still very sorry about the loss. But I don't think we've seen the end of the cuts, and I believe that in future, it will be across the board.
How come? Well, as it has been mentioned on the boards, singles prices for what ever the currently in demand set are very depressed after the release events are done. Huge supply, not huge demand. Demand being casual players, competitive players, redeemers, collectors, etc. But is cutting prizes really the right answer for WotC? It might be, sadly, even though I don't like it. Assuming that WotC does want to impact the secondary market for card prices, there really is only so much that can be done on WotC's side to increase demand, which of course is the only natural way to increase prices on the secondary market. The most obvious is constructed demand and they've done a lot of work on lately via MOCS, etc. However, even if they manage to double constructed attendance of Standard I don't think that the overall price of cards, and it certainly wouldn't help the crappy rares suddenly get back to three for a ticket. Because even if the player base increases, the drafter base generally increases too. Even without more drafters sealed and more constructed players, there's not a ton more demand that can be created for the majority of cards that come out of boosters. Another way they can increase prices is to increase redemption request which would therefor lower supply and would again, increase the prices. Another option is to actually get less cards into the market in the first place. They don't really control the demand for sealed. Players will play as much as they can... and that's the crucial piece to this pressure valve. If WotC reduces prizes, they reduce the amount of people who can re-draft, re-sealed, etc. Less re-drafting means less cards and less re-invested packs. Notice how the pack prices and the card prices are both decreasing at the same time? A large part of this is due to the ticket price increasing (which of course is another indication of of higher competitive play statistics).
Quite simply it's one of the last bastions of control they have over the price of the single card market. What? Well let's look at the way the WotC can help keep the single market strong. Remember! Increasing constructed by increasing prizes is counter-productive to getting single prices to increase since as pack prices decrease and more people draft the winnings from the constructed players, the demand for singles restores itself downward again.
Banned and restricted impacts of special products:
Kind of along the same thoughts of economic impacts the MED3 list was announced, and has been pointed out that changing the banned and restricted shortly after a set is released can often create a lot of ill will with the community. This applies both to special full sets like MED3 and to 'promo' style sets like From the Vault: Exiled and so on. The last time this happened with Duel Decks: Divine vs Demonic it was a rather bad black eye to both the WotC Banned and Restricted folks and the MTGO folks for not coordinating even remotely close enough. We are at the precipice of another round of special events with the aforementioned products getting ready for launch on MTGO. I have high hopes that they don't repeat that mistakes of the last round of special items and Banned and Restricted lists.
Financial impacts of special products:
Speaking of special items... we have some MTGO only items coming up that will exist only on MTGO. Those being the Commander decks. What we'll have is essentially ultra-rare commons again for formats like Pauper. Cards like
Discussion Items:
Card price deflation:
Some good thoughts about the state of the MTGO single prices and essentially what spurred my thought stream about the MTGO economy this week
New Commander Decks!:
These are new, MTGO only theme decks that will, of course, contain cards that don't yet exist on MTGO. Expect these single prices to go pretty high...
Master's Edition 3 Full Spoiler:
The full list of the cards coming at the end of September is quite solid, actually. A lot of good rares and uncommons to choose from, and even the bottom is not as bad as MED2's bad cards.
PTQ's on MTGO!!!!:
As announced this week, there are upcoming PTQ's on MTGO. These are going to be hot hot hot! I kid you not not not.... or something. But seriously, look for these fill fast or large, or maybe both.
Huge WotC Message Board Downtime!!!!:
A huge, huge downtime while they upgrade the community site to a new, apparently much more amazing, site. Hold your breath! From what I've seen of it, it looks pretty slick. I can't say anything yet of course, but I'm pleased with what they have done so far!
Card Price Discussion:
Ichorid leaps up on the back of MED3 news. If you didn't hear, the Bazaar of Baghdad has been confirmed in MED3, making manaless Dredge/Ichorid a huge contender for the Classic Metagame. In fact, I look towards some aspects of that deck to get restricted in the not too distant future if it proves to be as powerful as it's been in Vintage, which it could be pretty close. Also coming up is Preeminant Captain whom most of expected to come as he's essentially a Soldier Lackey for the new Siege-Gang Soldier card from M10.
Speaking of M10... wow. Taking a beating would be putting it mildly. The demand for M10 sealed and draft is hugely outstripping the demand for the set. However, it's a good time to get ready for the MTGO Constructed events that you're sure to want to get in on in the next 12 months.
Card Price Charts:
Conclusion:
Sorry for the lack of fancy graphs, et al that you've come to expect. I ended up going out of town for some rather unexpected training this week and am currently ~400 Miles from my computer that has my card price lists. *frown* Rest assured that things will be back to normal next week as I return to my lair of numbers and statistics refreshed and ready to tear apart the data trends! Until then, best of luck with your M10 events!
35 Comments
Hammy, I think one of your sentences got cut off:
"Financial impacts of special products:
Speaking of special items... we have some MTGO only items coming up that will exist only on MTGO. Those being the Commander decks. What we'll have is essentially ultra-rare commons again for formats like Pauper. Cards like"
And thanks for wishing me luck in my M10 events. I apparently need all the luck I can get :rolleyes:
Assuming an ideal system where every card is opened by play in a 8-4 or swiss draft, each set of 36 boosters costs (24*3.99$ + 16 tix = ) 111,76$ to open. If every paper player bought cards by the box, they'd be paying only 99,99$ per booster box - and we're not even talking about an even ideal-ler system where players buy by the case.
Because we don't get cost reductions on bulk purchases (most of the time anyway), we are paying a lot more for our boosters than paper players, even taking into consideration how much easier it is to increase pack value by drafting. I don't think it would be fair to decrease payouts, and the end result would likely just be to decrease overall interest in the game - where's the advantage in increasing costs for both limited and constructed drafters? I'd say you'd just get fewer players interested in the game, and a lower rate of acquisition, for no benefit that I can see.
The big difference in card prizes in paper comes from two things, IMHO: 1) there is possibly a higher rate of boosters being opened "optimally" on MTGO, although I'm not certain that's actually true, since there are probably more dealers just buying cases and selling the content (not to mention immoral dealers cracking nothing but the good packs and selling the chafe) offline than online, 2) the dealers online are much more efficient and have fewer collateral costs, and more importantly, 3) there is probably a much higher proportion of limited-only players online. There is also 4) the way redemption lowers the cost of rares by leaving more rares in the system than mythics, but that's inevitable I think (unless they make redemption different).
I didn't really understand why you think higher prices are good, and for whom. They might be good for limited players, but, if they come at the expense of fewer prizes for limited players, it just balances itself out - lose on the prize payout, win on the card value, and raredraft more. Eventually, we'd get to a new equilibrium where the cost of drafting AND the cost of playing constructed are both slightly higher than they are now, but what have we gained? A more valuable collection for which we've paid more? We gain nothing on value, just lose on the amount of play you can get out of any given amount of money.
There are several things that WotC can do to affect card values outside of decreasing prizes.
1 - For new/current cards, they could offer two types of redemption, with Mythics and without Mythics. I am not sure what the impacts of this would be to printing because I do not know their exact printing process. If it is from a computer file, it does not seem difficult to have 1 file that has the set with sheets that contain mythics and another file that does not.
2 - For older/historic release cards they can offer more formats like Build Your Own Standard and Block Wars that would help boost demand for cards that are not good enough to compete in classic.
I am sure there are more, but these two were the first to come to mind.
Redemption without mythics makes a lot of sense if they don't have a different print run for MTGO redemption, because then for every set they redempt they are stuck with extra rares in the same way MTGO is.
However, if they do have a print run exclusively for the sake of redemption - and that seems quite likely to me - then they have no benefit whatsoever in offering two types of redemption.
Besides, that might not increase the value of collections so much as balancing the values of mythics and rares, although I might be wrong.
...I want the prices to be as low as possible. I want access to all the cards so that i can play well and be competitive at the same time. Sure this is an age-old debate, but i'm throwing the gauntlets down and saying i want more product out there. I got giddy when i saw second chart w/ the price drops. For $10 i can find someone to sell me 4x Honor of the Pure now instead of maybe being able to afford 1x. MTGO is a far cry from my paper days when i'd buy a half-dozen boxes of the new set for a huge discount online and just rip packs open until i got what i wanted. I've found that i have to be choosy about what decks i construct and what cards i buy cause i have a limited budget. this makes deck building a challange for me and my limited supply because i can't test every deck i want to, i can only test the decks i can afford. i want to be competitive just like everybody else, but i don't have the money to spend on top tier decks. so putting more product out there allows somebody like me to be more competitive in the long run.
Agreed. There is no problem with low card prices except for people who want to profit from them (in other words, people who have lot of cards already)
This is what i see, when i check the availability of m10 cards for sale by mtgotraders I often see zero or low single digits in supply for staple cards, yet their prices keep dropping. What this means is that either they are bad at doing a supply and demand ratio (not buying for enough and/or not selling for enough to keep stocked) or they are gaming the market and stocking up supplies on the cheap while limited players and pack openers suffer in lost trade and sale value from their events.
eg. birds of paradise: ravnica, 10th or eighth ed versions in stock 49, sale price 3.5 (100% higher)
M10 version in stock 2, sale price 1.75 (50% lower)
pithing needle: 10th edition in stock 24, price 2.5 (similar price disparity to birds)
M10 in stock 1, price 1.3
siege-gang commander: 10th ed in stock 10, price 2.5 (150% more)
M10 in stock 0, price 1.0(alot less)
Howling mine: 7th 8th 9th and 10th ed versions in stock 51, price 3.5-4.5(almost 3x higher)
M10 in stock 5, price 1.5 (almost 3x lower)
Read into it what you will, I've come to my own suspicions.
mtgotraders is a trendsetter and has the ability to warp the market, its what is generally used to mediate trades casually (I've never had anyone ask to use any other reference).
Could it be that M10 is so vastly popular that everyone and their mother is drafting this set to oblivion? Could it be that M10 supply ACTUALLY IS far higher than 10th, 9th or 8th edition?
Could it be that players are hesitant to sell cards that are nearly worthless in light of the fast deflation M10 is experiencing?
Could it be that this always normally happens in the second week of Release Events?
MTGO Traders is very fair with its prices. If you see this set losing value fast consider this: Redemption :D
The QP totals would support this. During Season 5, Week 3 (week one of M10 pre-release), over 14000 QPs were earned, shattering the former record of ~9700. Now, there were some changes to how QPs were given out this season, but these come far from explaining the huge increase.
There are Mythics in M10. A M10 BoP is half as rare as a 10th BoP.
Duh.
doesn't MTGOtraders get their prices from Cardbot? aka, the man behind the man?
I imagine that people who paid market prices for their 10th ed or Kamigawa block Pithing Needles have lost a few tickets in value. They were selling for 6 or 7 tix, I think, prior to M10. MTGOtraders was obviously stockpiling them to lose between 2 and 3 tix per transaction.
Paranoia about mtgo bots/shops is unjustified. Having fair prices and a good selection builds loyalty, a huge factor in a perfectly competitive market as it is defined in classical economic theory. Trying to 'game' the market just doesn't pay off. Starting a free website and paying writers for content works way better at establishing market presence and customer loyalty, as far as I can tell.
Well said!
This article really offended me. Seriously, you aren't smart enough to think of another way of increasing demand other than cutting prizes?
Small horizons.
More people playing, increases demand. Of course for that to happen, Wizards would actually need to fix the program... implement leagues, revamp the trading system, fix multiplayer, make clans matter... basically let the program bloom. They aren't competent enough to do it.
I don't think you need to cheerlead for prize cutting, and the very fact you are doing it annoys me.
First of all, thank you for taking the time to comment! It's important for me to get feedback from all sides of the discussion!
Secondly, two of the things you mentioned would actually *decrease* single card values, despite them being good things in general for the program.
Leagues introduce larger amounts of cards as the pkayer come back to MTGO to play in them. If WotC does want higher card prices for the players, leagues would not help that. Even though I love leagues and want them back very badly. Leagues would not help increase individual card prices.
Better trading is something I'd love to see. And it would undoubtedly decrease card values as suddenly every card in every collection finally becomes tradeable. Again. More cards in the market would not help prices to increase. Again, I want this and hope for ot to happen.
The few ways to increase card prices are increased demand and/or reduced supply.
As I mentioned, there's a limited amount of valves that WotC can control directly. Redemption, prizes, others have mentioned there are ways to change somethings that could help. Modified redemption, new formats, etc. I don't see WotC adding too many new formats in the near future, although I'd love to see choose your own standard as an official format.
This article isn't a list of things I *want* to see happen. It's a list of things that I think WotC may do if they decided to increase individual card prices.
Lastly, MTGO is growing, very fasr, and this growth is part of the reason for the bigger and bigger release turnout which, of course, is part of the card price plummeting we've seen accelerate with each release.
I don't neccessarily agree that a revamped trading system that makes cards in collections more liquid would decrease prices. I think the following is quite plausible: collections more liquid->decrease in bid/ask spread->you don't need high volume to "play the redemption game"->higher demand for redemptions->better equilibrium with paper prices.
Just a thought.
More people playing means more people drafting, it would (assuming that people drafted the same amount each) leave prices as they were, at least for the current sets, it would actually boost the prices of old cards a lot, but that point isn't really related to the reason they might want to raise individual card prices.
Personally I'd rather keep the singles prices low, I don't draft very often but I enjoy making different decks and playing constructed.
I have another suggestion that could help singles prices.... Larger sets. I mean the return to 120 rare sets. or 110 + 10 mythics or something drastic. Personally I liked when there was a large variance in sealed pools etc... cept when there weren't enough answers to the great cards :)
I'm 100% in agreement. Bring back the big set. It might help card prices. It might make limited more fun/varied. It might stretch R&D thin and let a few mistakes through. So crank the set size back up and keep a watchful eye for the next skullclamp.
Or it might not have a material effect. But what the heck... change for change sake.
Im not a collector, nor an investor, but I am a player.
I wish I didn't have to worry about what the cards cost. To me the perfect mtgo online would be a Premium service with a monthly charge for $20 or even $30 where I can use every card online and as many copies as I want.
This way I can play whatever crazy classic off the wall deck I want without having to pay a couple hundred dollars to do so. I could then afford to put together k-scope decks with all the cool lands, decent commander decks, Emperor or 2hg/3hg specific decks and more.
Wotc could still sell tickets for entry fee's but prizes would have to be in tickets only. You could still run regular mtgo for people to draft, constructed, redeem, and win boosters etc.
I haven't put a bunch of thought about how it would effect things or if it would even be beneficial to wotc, just seems like something I would be interested in.
RagMan
Never going to happen. And if it did, mtgo would quickly become boring. Try playing a game on the beta servers (where everyone has x4 of each card), all that happens is everyone tries to make the most broken decks possible, no casual decks. Plus if it was switched to a monthly fee, what would happen to peoples collections? My collection is worth over $500 easily, i wouldnt be to happy if that disapeared.
That plan would kill mtgo for me. Some months money is so tight food is a worry. Having a sizable collection (8k or so cards) means I can trade out what I don't need and still play constructed if I can't draft in a particular month. Paying a premium would make this impossible for me as well as hundreds (if not thousands) of others I suspect.
"Some months money is so tight food is a worry."
You could always sell your guitar ;)
or blood.
Id rather sell my limbs. My guitars are like children. They would feel abandoned. No I am happy to worry a little to avoid that drama.
The "deflation" is probably more of a product of over-valuation of a new set rather than too much product being in the pool. Magic Online is an example of a global market place. Every piece of product ever "printed" is accounted for, no cards get lost or damaged, they stick around and they're easily traded and sold. Expecting Magic Online cards to go for the price of their physical counterparts is faulty logic.
Physical cards are significantly harder to obtain, require shipping and countless hours sorting and keeping stock, with MO it's all done for you. A brick and mortar store or even an online shop require physical space, storage, a staff to sort and package cards, a web designer, and management. An MO store requires a $200 bot and capital. Overhead decreases and so does product price. Trying to artificially increase is directly contrary to a free market. They already charge MSRP for boosters which increases their value immensely.
As long as I can't bring my entire collection of paper Magic cards to a store, wait 30 seconds and have the guy automatically remove all of the cards he's interested in, and quote me a price, MO cards are going to be cheaper because 99% of people's junk cards sit in a closet.
"Speaking of special items... we have some MTGO only items coming up that will exist only on MTGO. Those being the Commander decks. What we'll have is essentially ultra-rare commons again for formats like Pauper. Cards like "
C'mon Ham, cards like what? Don't leave us hanging!
"There are Mythics in M10. A M10 BoP is half as rare as a 10th BoP.
Duh."
As far as who sets prices cardbot or mtgotraders I have no idea, either way some company is at the source and mtgotraders has an intimate relationship with the other.
The idea that merely because mythics are in M10 that rare values go down that much is just silly. You could certianly argue that it reduces the value of all versions of the card or similar versions of the card but not just the one with the little m10 logo on it, the 10th birds version and the m10 version look nearly identical, in this kind of market the preference because of scarcity value might be 10% not 100%(when there is actually different art or border or the card is from it's original printing there can be big differences), that's what's obvious.. duh.
I disagree , I like alot more players was a league player , now i play drafts since there are no leagues and i crack alot more boosters then i did
when leagues are back , i will crack less boosters , alot less
i play 1 -2 leagues a month (about 9 boosters each if i remeber ) now i draft every day and its 3 boosters a day, so its about 100 boosters i crack VS 18
i know alot of players would switch to leagues as soon as they are up , but its not gonna happen since the Wotc know they will lose money..
I sincerely hope you are wrong since that really IS gaming the market. If WotC is so busy worried about selling boosters that they can't see they are alienating a market base then they are eventually going to be so shortsighted that the game will not last. ("The sky is falling! The sky is falling!").
I truly don't believe these people are that evil. I know a few of them personally and they are conscientious hard working and love the game. Yes WotC is a corp and corps suck because they are life-draining, soulless machines but they are made of people and these particular people do care about the game they are working on, I think. That is of course my opinion. There are probably some people there who don't care so much and who are more interested in pleasing the parent company etc but I think most of WotC's problems with Magic Online stem from poor decision making, mistakes and just the general screwedness of life. When they realize their mistakes they fix them...eventually. At least I hope they will in terms of League Play. To say that it just isn't profitable enough would be a huge mistake imho. Some people who spend nothing on magic now would be far more inclined to buy into leagues where they get bang for their buck than they are now.
I think I am the counter-example. I used to play leagues, as I can usually only find an hour or so at a time for MTGO. Now there are no leagues, I mostly just fiddle with my old casual decks, or tweak some pauper lists. I reckon at the moment I am spending about 10 tickets a month on MTGO. I'd usually enter a league every month back in the day. (On a vaguely related topic, I played 3 leagues with lorwyn and opened Liliana, Garruk and Wild Ricochet in all three, but that's another discussion)
You see, your problem lies in the assumption that MTGO is a normal product, and its not, i mean its not normal in the sense of us the customers of that product, we are addicted to it much like there is an addiction to gambling and cigarettes.
they can bumb up the booster price for 6$ and we still gonna play , they can have lag problems , crashs, bad CS , and so on we still gonna play , why ? because its an addiction much like alot of things in life that we get addicted to (poker, smoking, etc.. ) we can quit playing poker, sure but we don't quit unless something radical happens.
So some folks on the WoTC have that knowledge and with that knowledge they have the numbers, and they see that since V3 started they are more drafts , (hammy i think you have that information ), i mean compare the number of drafts fired when V2.5 was up , and now the number of drafts i think there is big difference between those numbers even if you take into consideration the increase in the number of players i belive that numbers are alot bigger..
when the Wotc look at these numbers they know that leagues will not mean more money but less. so they take their time and its on the bottom of their todo list ,
for example a WOTC manager look at these numbers,
hmmm
on V2.5 i had "X" players on avarage , with "Y" drafts for day and "Z" leagues a day
thats about "ABCDE" boosters sold for months (+event ticktes)
(each league is 6 boosters X 128 players)
on V3 i have "Q" players on avarage, with "W" drafts for day and 0 LEAGUES , now where did i made more money and are these leagues players worth more without leagues ??? the answer for that is YES THEY DO..... and thats why we wont see leagues for a long time , you ready belive that leagues are that hard to implant ? WAKE UP they are not...
some ppl there love magic but its business and the numbers speak more then anything else.
i wish hamtastic would share some of his statistical information on that issue
@Who me?
I think we will just have to agree to disagree. I for one don't feel I have a problem. You are the one stating a problem and I disagree with that assumption. Your assumption is based on conjecture and loosely gather "factoids" that we can't be sure of the source of.
For example in 2.5 (one of the main reasons for the upgrade btw) drafts crashed often enough to keep the numbers down. I am not claiming this is the sole factor in the increase. (The servers being better and multiple.) I am just saying it's a large factor and you aren't even crediting it. Also I don't think that league players are necessarily the same players that play draft every day, every tuesday or once a month.
As far as addiction goes...well that is a personal statement. As an addict (recovering and in sobriety for 25 years) I can assure that is not something to lightly label someone who engages in a passionate hobby. I have walked away from magic for years at a time and only occasionally have I spent money directly on the game. Have I spent a good deal of time on it? Sure, but then I don't spend that time on my other hobbies as much any more because their availability and the opportunity to engage in them has diminished.
I also disagree that the WotC People think the way you say they do. It is dangerous thinking for a company to become complacent because they believe their market has become hooked enough that they can act without consequence. Most companies shy from this sort of thinking unless strongly encouraged by circumstances.
All I am saying is don't make blanket statements about other people when you don't have all the data. On the other hand thanks for responding to my rather long post.
Well i agree we disagree.
if this game wasn't this addictive then we wouldn't have V3 , they would shut it down on V2.5 already , i can't see any other reason for a game that's crash's , have poor payouts,its CS is not the best ,have a lot of connections issues , and cost a lot way more then it should cost,have poor UI, and its a very complex game would be successful , the game is not user friendly from installation to playing , hell i even told my brother about it and he couldn't get pass the connection screen , some times you couldn't even register as a new player (does that sounds like a good and friendly game /?)
I'm not saying that all the magic players are hooked , but i believe that a lot are , and therefor they will keep playing even if the Wotc would change a lot of things like booster prices and prizes , sure they keep it in their interest to keep us happy but keep in mind that its money , (see MED1-MED3 for money).
if i was running the show i would do the math , and i believe that after doing the math i would say no to leagues.
I wish hammy would give some information about that.
I think Leagues, or the lack of them, is a lot more complicated than just looking at the bottom line. Well I hope it is and I'll explain that in a second.
I used to play Leagues and loved them. They were the only way that my cash got into the MTGO economy when they were running. This was back in the Kamagawa days and I even managed to sell off enough cards to build a block constructed deck and T8 with it. My best ever achievement in MTGO! Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that they were the foundation that my MTGO playing and spending was based on.
Real life happened and I didn't have the time fot MTGO so I stopped playing. When the free time came back I got interested in other online games like WoW & EVE and it wasn't until they started to bore me that I looked again at MTGO. What I came back to was the mess that was V3 and the fact that Leagues were missing but the promise of them coming back.
There is still no sign of Leagues and I personally have given up on them ever coming back. That's a big problem for me as an individual because I'm still trying to find a new 'home' within the game. I've tried a lot of things. I draft a bit but I'm so bad at it that I can't afford to draft much which has the knock on effect that I can't play enough to get better. I play Pauper a bit because that is a fantastic format for people with limited MTGO budgets but I miss not getting to play with the more exciting cards in the uncommon and rare slots. I played classic for a while as my most favourite deck ever has to be goblins. Sadly with FTV:E on the horizon giving me a key goblin card I have to accept that I just can't drop the cash to get a playset which means that it's probably the end of my classic playing adventure. I've dabbled with Commander which is great fun to play but I'm not sure it's enough to keep me collecting.
I beleive that peoples playing experience is based on three things. They need a format that they like to play. They need the cash to play in that format. They need the free time to play. There is a section of the player base who can only get those three things from Leagues, they have no real viable alternative.
I have no facts or proof to back me up, that's true. My feeling that Leagues are just a lower priority than everything else that is going on and it's human nature to promote the 'new' things rather than spending time and money replacing the 'old'. If you look at everything that is going on at the moment, M2010 and the rules changes, The normal release of new sets, the MED sets, the release of the old sets online, the special sets like duel decks, FTV:E. There is just too much going on to find the money and manpower to implement Leagues.
So I don't beleive that a person at WotC is sat there saying that Leagues must not be implemented as there is a potential they would cost the company money. What I do beleive is that there is a person sat there at WotC who has to decide what projects get the limited funding and manpower that's available and Leagues just don't factor high enough on that list to be considered. Sadly I doubt that they ever will.
Ooops. That turned into a rant and is far too long to be a sensible comment. Oh well, can't be bothered to delete it now.