I'm just going to chime in here and say that gamers come in all different varieties. Some players will get bored after a few months of no new content others take longer. That said I am and always will be a gamer who enjoys new content but does not need a steady stream of new stuff for me to enjoy the game.
I do agree with others that no news or updates does look bad for the company and the brand of Mage wars.
I do know they are winding down or finishing up a very busy convention season and as others noted the company is small. I don't want to give them excuses or speak for them but I do believe it would be nice to hear the happenings and inner workings of what the future of Mage wars is.
Some gamers here play video games, where dev diaries are common; it helps give insight as to what the developers are planning in terms of content for their games as well as providing a link between the developers and the community. While the board gaming industry does not follow the same guidelines and the computer industry, a little bit of interaction helps create a bond between consumer and company. Laddinfance did a good job of keeping us interested in the Paladin Vs. Siren process with the card reveals, and I would love it if Arcane Wonders would try to keep a similar interest in between their products and their costumers.
No matter what the size of the company is, it is essential for AW to maintain its consumer base. Wizards of the Coast and Fantasy Flight Games are popular because they have a great variety of games at their disposal encompassing various themes, whereas Arcane Wonders has released a very good mage fighting game, with not much else on their roster; and if money is an obstacle, there have been great games out there that have been funded via Kickstarter, games that are created by companies with little to no reputation and are suddenly they are some of the most popular companies around. Mage Wars and Sheriff of Nottingham were great Arcane Wonder releases, but they cannot be the flagship of the entire company forever.
I like Mage Wars as much as anyone here on this forum, but Arcane Wonders really needs to 'step up its game'. Sheriff Of Nottingham and Royals are interesting enough to catch people's attention, but a game such as "Speechless" is just so similar to another popular game (charades), and there is therefore little market appeal for the product. The future of Arcane Wonders is not on Mage Wars, but whether or not it can release innovative games that feel fresh and innovative in today's board game market; at the same time however, discontinuing Mage Wars content means that Arcane Wonders will lose the majority of their player base.
Who said anything about discontinuing Mage Wars product? There will still be more Arena sets in the future besides just the academy ones. We haven't lost the net majority of players. If anything a significant number of online players have returned in the past month or two. Right now the community feels the most active its been since 2013 if I recall correctly.
Don't get me wrong, it was a ghost town for a while before that though. The online community comes and goes, and the entire franchise is a hit or miss in terms of popularity depending on location. But the game is not in any danger of disappearing or almost disappearing.
If you're having trouble promoting the game as easily as it would have been when it first came out, it might be because of a combination of the game becoming more difficult for beginners to get into over time, the people who left because of the wizard shenanigans before his errata who might still have a sour taste in their mouths, and sheer bad luck with your location. It doesn't mean the game as a whole is still losing popularity, just that it has lost some previously.
And even if it is still losing popularity a little bit now, that isn't necessarily indicative of a long term trend. Maybe it just goes up and down every time they release an expansion? There are other possible explanations besides the whole franchise being in any kind of jeopardy.
Things are going well overall, but they could be going a lot better. I think the significant lack of communication from arcane wonders is not a sign of a larger problem, it IS the problem, and possibly the only significant problem they have.
I'm not going to tell you guys to give it a rest, since that wasn't helpful for getting me to stop worrying about this and it won't help you. What will help is having things explained clearly in private messages instead of large public arguments like this one.
If you guys still don't believe me about this talk to Romeoxero. He is very good at explaining this stuff.
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