You have to hand it to Wizards of the Coast.  These past few years they have really put their thinking caps on.  Every few months they announce some new product, or tweak something pre-existing and cause a fervor among fans of Magic.  In the span of less than three years they've put forth the following groundbreaking (for MTG) ideas: Planeswalkers, Premium Decks, Duel Decks, Planechase, From the Vault, Duels of the Planeswalkers, MTGO III, web-comics to go along with several brand new websites, and Mythic rarity.  That is a murders row of great ideas coming to fruition in an astonishingly short time period.  As fans, our collective heads are spinning.  However there is often a faint whisper of disappointment after each release.  Perhaps that is because perceived potential will always be greater than reality.  A point of fact, however, there is a reason for the disparity: poor execution.

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Video game reviewer and quasi-cultural icon Gabe from Penny Arcade once raved about Blizzard Entertainment because they did the best job of taking the artist's ideas and translating them to a playable game.  That is essentially what WotC's R&D team is attempting with each new product.  The difference is that Blizzard usually gets it right.  They capture the essence of each idea within the game.  Unfortunately for the average Magic fan, Wizard's ability to do this is hit-and-miss.  That is not to say they don't occasionally knock ideas out of the proverbial park.  When Planeswalkers arrived (months later than their expected release in Future Sight) they were fully polished and close to perfect.  They did a great job of embodying more than simply the powers of each color but also the attitude.  Reinhart doesn't feel a strong connection with Jace because he likes to mill, but because Jace represents 'blue wizardry'.  It seems that a small delay in release of these cards gave WotC time to correct any small flaws.  Perhaps WotC could have used that same delay to correct the once rather erratic Mythic Rarity.  The topic has been covered already, but it was obvious Alara mythics were hastily chosen and the guidelines for 'Mythic Rarity' were not fully in place.  By Zendikar, mythic rares were chosen near-perfectly.  Perhaps WotC needed a more time to develop what was a brilliant idea into actual cards.

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Too bad even without deadlines WotC can still disappoint.  Not with sales numbers necessarily (CCGs aren't really a meritocracy anyway) but with quality.  The best example is also the latest.  Premium Decks: Slivers could have been the sequel in perfection of From the Vault: Exiled but instead feels more like a gimmicky pre-con deck.  Exiled had an MSRP price tag of $34.99 and quickly sold for more than double that due to low print runs and extremely high demand.  What worked with Exiled (and From the Vault: Dragons before it) is exactly what would have been perfect for Slivers, include only great cards.  Only!  Instead Wizards continued perpetuating what Gathering Magic has come to call the Pre-con Glass Ceiling.  The PGC describes the strangely low power levels of decks built by WotC R&D and released for sale to the public.  Certainly in the case of starter decks players will want to tweak the cards they use, but why ask the same for a deck selling at $35?  Simply put: you shouldn't.  And if that means charging more for future Premium decks, then so be it.  People will pay for quality. The bottom line, this is another missed opportunity to make a great product.  Instead you end up with something appealing on its release, but losing its desirability quickly.  Duel decks have suffered even worse.  Garruk and Liliana might be worth the $20 MSRP because of both alternate art planeswalkers, but few would call either deck the definitive 'green' or 'black' build.  Again, why hold back when making a specialty deck?  Divine vs Demonic could have been the coolest MTG item released to date.  It wasn't.  From the Vault has proven that including better cards makes a product better, not only from a retail perspective but as a collectible.

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Cards and decks are not the only victims of this lack of follow through.  MTGO III, Duel of the Planeswalkers, and the Draft Simulator had difficulty reaching their ambitious potentials.  Faults and issues relating to MTGO have been covered ad nauseum here.  Needless to say, if the vision was a seamless way to play MTG with duelists from around the world the resulting software has not entirely delivered.  Duels of the Planewalkers was intended to take the weaker parts of MTGO, namely graphics and gameplay, and make them strengths.  Unfortunately, the developers failed to transfer the strengths of MTGO as well.  Creating a great-looking game with about as much depth as the Hotel 6 wading pool.  Another great idea that lived up to about half of its potential is the Draft Simulator.  Sharpening your skills by drafting 'random' packs of the latest core set against AI bots sounds appealing.  However the packs don't seem very randomized and you have little idea what your robot opponents end up with.  Meaning you may have drafted a great deck, but compared to what?

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Magic the Gathering is an amazing game.  That point is indisputable.  You wouldn't even be reading this if you did not agree.  The questions remains, why isn't it even better?  It should be.  With their brain juices flowing, WotC should have put up a pantheon performance these past three years and instead settled for good.  These products are playable and fun, but that is not the point.  This is about missed opportunities and what-ifs. For example:  What if WotC had released the Sliver deck we were all secretly hoping for?  What if the Duel Decks weren't intended for beginners?  What if every pre-con deck followed the path of FtV: Exiled and the PGC was gone?  What if MTGO and Duel of the Planeswalkers each had the other's strengths?  Fair questions.  The answer is something like this: we would all be much happier.  Execution is important.  It doesn't seem like too much to ask for a great notion to be delivered relatively in-tact.  Blizzard did it with Starcraft and WoW.  It is baffling as to why it is so difficult for Wizards of the Coast.