The current state of MW

[Borg]

There have been multiple arguments made on the current state of MW before. Some claiming the game was ( as good as ) dead, others claiming the contrary.

I don't know the exact figure either of how many people are still playing the game but I figured there might be some "objective" numbers available somewhere who could give a good indication.

I took a look at Boardgamegeek. More specifically at the number of players who actually gave a rating to the game and its expansions.

This is what I found :

Dominion : 63.000 ratings
Mage Knight Board Game : 21.000 ratings

The Core Arena game : 6500 ratings.
Forged in Fire : 356 ratings
Domination : 140 ratings
Paladin vs Siren : 95 ratings
Forcemaster expansion : 14 ratings
Warlord expansion : 12 ratings

Obviously, the amount of players giving a rating to a certain expansion does not tell us exactly how many players are actually playing that expansion but I think it is safe to assume there is a good correlation between "number of people taking the time to give a rating on BGG" vs "people effectively still playing the game".


What do the numbers above indicate ?

MW core gets only about 10% of the ratings total of Dominion, indicating that the number of people getting into MW core is/was also roughly 10% of the number of people playing Dominion ( just to get an idea of the volume )

A game launched at approximately the same time as MW (2012) MageKnight (2011) has 21000 ratings which is more than three times the number MW got and I never got the impression Mage Knight was a hugely popular game. That number was a surprise to me. This indicates to me that the number of players actually playing MW was NEVER very high to begin with. Or at least not as high as people thought they were.

The most telling numbers however are those of the MW expansions.
Look at those numbers falling.
While FiF still gets 356 ratings, PvS only has 95 ratings and the latest ( small ) expansions can't even get to 20 ratings anymore.

This clearly seems to indicate imo that sales ( = players ) have dramatically dropped and are probably no longer enough to make a profit.

Chances are very high imo, we've seen the last of MW.

[RomeoXero]

Ok Borg. We get it. You don't like MW anymore. Ya know what dude? Just peel off then. Stop playing and leave us alone. Go back to MtG like you said you had and stop visiting OUR forum to hack up your bileous nay saying all over the place that's built for the active players to come and share info and enjoy ourselves.
Its bad enough that we have to deal with our own quibbles about game state and release dates without having folks like you, who don't even play, coming by here to tell us how happy you are by NOT hanging out with us, and how stupid we all are for playing a game we love. That's like me going to a Friday night magic or someones dnd game and telling them they suck and so does the game they are playing. And oh btw they should be playing gurps or netrunner because they ate much more fun! After all that's what YOU play so it must be superior.
Get over yourself! If you really think we are all stupid for playing MW and you don't wanna, then go away and leave us alone while you giggle to yourself about all us saps I  the corner having fun with it our "dying" game and be done wirh it.
I personally will be much happier not having to see your specific brand of holier-than-thou bull shit.
Peace.

[Biblofilter]

I won´t let MW die 

[jacksmack]

While I don’t quite agree with the interpretation of the numbers here are my thoughts:

The game is dead in the sense that we won’t see more content than a maximum of 2 academy releases - and I’m starting to doubt that we will even see that.

Unfortunately the whole rule frame for this game is too clumsy to ever survive in the long run.
It’s fun and easy enough for those of us who have been around since the rerelease or a year or so in.
But very very few new players will bother learning all the rule details that this game requires to fully playable.
It’s not that it’s not worth it in the sense that you will get (IMO) the best 1vs1 game out there. But it’s so much to learn and it’s so much to memorize that doesn’t make sense.

AW has steadily or even increasingly done the same mistake over and over... releasing content that has interaction conflicts with already released cards, thus increasing complexity,  without even being able to answer how the rule applies for these cases.
Back in the days a fairly standard reply would be: “I’m waiting for Bryan to get back on this one”. And we would see no update for months, sometimes for more than a year(s).
An example of this is how do you deal with Akiro’s favor (both revealed and in revealed) vs temple of the dawnbreaker temple.... it was never answered prior to release of PvsS. Yet they released the PvsS expansion with the Paladins basic ability interacting with both these cards.
There are many many more examples of rule clarifications which came months or even years later, and there are probably still unanswered conflicts of how to resolve various interactions.
With release of academy which has different wordings on the cards this has (imo) grown from a significant issue to a death threatening issue (for this game).

Sometimes I wish they could make a reboot of the whole backbone of the game so to speak without adjusting the cards
The game is simply to messy, clumksy and complex in some situations as it is.

[farkas1]

Alright Borg I’m about to throw some tomatoes your way.  I just checked board game geek and your ratings and numbers are crap.  Now those numbers maybe accurate the real comparison is the magic the gathering numbers of ratings from expansions.  Since mage wars is a similar duel card. magic expansions most range from below 10 ratings.  There are some high ones in 90s and 50s ect but we all know the popularity of mtg.  But what is so surprising the mtg has so many in the single digits.  Is magic going to die?  no I don’t think so and neither is mage wars.  Get your statistics and get out of here.  Stop bashing mage wars.  Let us enjoy the game.  No need to continually come on the forum and bash unless it is constructive. 

Tomatoes thrown 

[farkas1]

That said I hear your concerns jacksmack.  I don’t agree on everything you have said but I agree a new edition chiseled down and less bloated will help this game a great deal.   I don’t have a crystal ball but if a game is good enough it will get a new edition.  And hopefully AW does not wait too long to make it happen.   

[RomeoXero]

Well said fark! Here here!

[Sailor Vulcan]

@Borg Also your statistics neglects the fact that many of the sets have been replaced by newer editions. Did you look at ratings for both editions of each set? Particularly including the ones before the "Arena" rebranding?

Mage Wars was never as popular as other similar games because it's made by a SMALL COMPANY.

Arcane wonders has never had more than 5 total employees and right now it only has 3. It does not have the ridiculous amount of money to throw around on advertising like wizards of the coast does. Nearly all other customizable strategy games are tcgs, and those are usually produced by bigger companies. Mage Wars was probably more popular when it was new BECAUSE it was new. Now it's no longer a shiny new toy to add to a casual gamer's board game collection and the current popularity probably reflects that.

Mage Wars likely has a low popularity in large part because there are a low number of people who even know about it. That doesn't mean its popularity is consistently going down over time. It could be about stable, neither going up or down much. And even if it is decreasing in popularity, if the rate at which the popularity goes down is also decreasing then you should expect the size of the playerbase to stabilize at some point. Based on what I've seen and heard of OCTGN as well as the German and North Carolina MW communities the game is still thriving in some places.

Mage wars isn't dying, you're just using the wrong standard to measure arcane wonder's and MW's success.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-J327A using Tapatalk

[Borg]

@Borg Also your statistics neglects the fact that many of the sets have been replaced by newer editions. Did you look at ratings for both editions of each set? Particularly including the ones before the "Arena" rebranding?

Sailor, BGG doesn't make a distinction between MW versions. The old page just gets updated and keeps all it votes and all I'm doing is looking at the number of voters on these pages.
I can only conclude that the number of voters go down with every new expansion.
Here, see for yourself
https://boardgamegeek.com/geeksearch.php?action=search&objecttype=boardgame&q=mage%20wars

Academy got a decent amount of votes at the start, suggesting a good number of people picked it up, but it goes down quickly afterwards too.

Domination did not get a lot of votes giving me the impression it was not very successful.

Those votes are not "exact science" but I think they do "mirror" sales and success somewhat.

Also, this has nothing to do with AW having only 3 or 5 employees.
They could have 1000 employees. If the game doesn't sell enough, or make enough profit,  eventually it'll stop.

I also never compared with Magic. I compared with Dominion and Mage Knight which also have a CORE box.
I found it interesting to see how many votes those games had received so far, just to get an idea and to give me/us some kind of comparison.

Mage wars isn't dying, you're just using the wrong standard to measure arcane wonder's and MW's success.

Maybe.
What would be the right standard to measure arcane wonder's and MW's success then ?

[silverclawgrizzly]

Actual Mage Wars players hang out on this forum. Both perhaps you'd be happier on another forum? Sucks you can't get a game. I average a fair number each month and teach new players fairly often. In your case it must suck to suck huh?

[SharkBait]

Get over yourself! If you really think we are all stupid for playing MW and you don't wanna, then go away and leave us alone while you giggle to yourself about all us saps I  the corner having fun with it our "dying" game and be done wirh it.
I personally will be much happier not having to see your specific brand of holier-than-thou bull shit.
Peace.

Actual Mage Wars players hang out on this forum. Both perhaps you'd be happier on another forum? Sucks you can't get a game. I average a fair number each month and teach new players fairly often. In your case it must suck to suck huh?

Gentlemen,

Regardless of agreement with the original post's point, this is not how you get new players to want to join/old players to want to return. Take a look below for examples on how to disagree and still contribute to the discussion

That said I hear your concerns jacksmack.  I don’t agree on everything you have said but I agree a new edition chiseled down and less bloated will help this game a great deal.   I don’t have a crystal ball but if a game is good enough it will get a new edition.  And hopefully AW does not wait too long to make it happen.   

While I don’t quite agree with the interpretation of the numbers here are my thoughts:

...
Sometimes I wish they could make a reboot of the whole backbone of the game so to speak without adjusting the cards
The game is simply to messy, clumksy and complex in some situations as it is.

Banana God, serve a couple up here for Farkas and jacksmack for a good display.





I don't have a problem with disagreements, but I would prefer if we could do this in a bit more of a civil manner please. 

[farkas1]

Another thing and I don’t want to gang up on you Borg here but you cannot compare mage wars to mage knight or dominion.  Mage Knight was popular during its realease. And dominion is an evergreen title and has spawned so many copies of the deck building genre.

  Again if you want to compare votes it has to be towards a similar genre.  Mtg is similar and has similar statistics in number of ratings for expansions.

 Thus your argument is bogus.  I am a board gamer too and understand the rating formats and not many people rate expansions especially for a card dueling games. 

Please keep coming back to the forums because like Captain America I can do this all day! 

[Borg]

Farkas,

I'm not comparing MW with Mage Knight or Dominion as a game, I'm only looking at the number of votes those games have gotten to get an IDEA about the popularity/success these games have had in terms of sales and how they rank with regards to each other.
Again, no hard science but I do think that votes and sales somewhat correlate.
Those numbers hint at Dominion selling about 10 times more than MW and MK about 3 times more.


Mage Knight was popular during its release ( I went to pick up an early copy of it at Essen Spiel that year ) but so was Mage Wars.
I also chose these games because they have a CORE box + expansions. ( Unlike magic )

Magic may be similar to MW as a game but that is not what I'm looking at. I'm trying to get an idea about how much MW sold and how those votes clearly indicate ( at least imo ) how the interest in MW went down.

Comparing MW with Magic expansions is flawed imo because Magic has an expansion every few months like clockwork and has been having that for 25 years.
MW expansions are few and far between and are like an EVENT when there actually is a new release. People are much more likely to comment on their purchase in MW's case imo because they are so rare.

Thus your argument is bogus.  I am a board gamer too and understand the rating formats and not many people rate expansions especially for a card dueling games.

So, are you saying then these ratings indicate nothing and those MW expansions sold incredibly well ( = made a lot of profit ? )

My question in general would be then: If Arena was actually such a profitable game, why haven't we had an Arena expansion in more than a year then, with nothing on the horizon either?
If you had a say in this, would you stop releasing expansions for it while it's succesful (in terms of sales) or would you make sure your fans stay interested/happy and provide them with new content ?
There's abolutely no reason to wait so long with a new Arena expansion if the game is healthy. So ... does that make sense to you ?

[Reddicediaries]

I have one question for you Borg: why do you care about showing that Mage Wars is dying?

You aren't an active member of the community any more and that is totally fine. You've found a new passion/rekindled an old one (Magic) and I'm glad for you.

I just don't understand why you made an effort to come back and tell us the numbers if you don't really have much of a taste for arena anymore. My first assumption would be that someone who left would not want to deal with the left community, especially if they think the game is dead. I would not expect them to look at the numbers of why the game "died" and relate these numbers to the still playing community.

[Biblofilter]

It’s not that it’s not worth it in the sense that you will get (IMO) the best 1vs1 game out there.

I think this is what we should focus on.

And then how to make the game better and how to get new players in to it and how to get old players back