As far as supporting local stores go, WotC has a number of policies in place to support brick-and-mortar stores as best as they're able. Not that that has stopped the recent explosion of online retailers, but short of active subsidies of a retail sector that's not exactly known for sound management, there's not much more they can do.
I mean, I have no problem with the economic arguments or anything else like that. I understand the basics of supply and demand. The price is what it is and I've paid such prices myself on any number of occasions. And as much as I don't like it, I fully understand why Wizards has an official policy that quite literally pretends the secondary market doesn't exist.
What I think is silly about the whole thing is for everyone with any stake in a healthy game to ignore a few things:
1) MTG is a game targeted - at least at entry level - to an age group not known for having an unlimited income. trying to decide what cards "should" be worth may be an idiot's game, but there does come a price point beyond which the game suffers massive depopulation. Type 1/Vintage has already suffered this fate. The player base was
demolished and while the cards maintain their last known values, those values are absolutely flat and have been for years.
2) When considering the problem from the standpoint of economics, or even just basic common sense, there is no problem with prices. The market will bear what it bears. If not, it will self-correct, etc. However, this ignores the huge emotional component to the game. If the game begins to be "seen" by a substantial portion of the player base as "too expensive" (an incredibly subjective term), you will see that market correction. Unfortunately, for this to occur, it will have been preceded by a player exodus not seen since Darksteel's Affinity fiasco.
3) Type II/Standard was created to address issues with acquiring cards for competitive play. it's the whole reason the format even exists. It was the reason that Magic became the first collectible game to ever introduce set rotation or segregated formats. Yet we are coming perilously close to a point of "unavailable at any price.". Maybe leaving card prices to naturally balance themselves is fine in most formats, but there has to be at least one format left as an affordable hook for new players.
I don't sit here and harrumph about these things based on anecdotal or personal dislikes. There are a number of writers I follow who carefully gather large amounts of raw data that show that this is damaging the game's long-term viability. In spite of record numbers of new players, Tournament attendance is dropping (or is static at best). The greatest fear here is that these new players will have soured on a game whose cost to play has risen in real average terms by almost 50% over the past two years.
One other interesting point: Since the higher prices are all attached to Mythic rares, one of the facts that keeps getting touted as a benefit of the new higher prices is the decreased cost of regular rares. It's now a fact that a regular rare will rarely ever break $5 and for the most part is worth only $1 or less. However, a number of people have crunched the numbers and calculated that it now costs around 20% more to get a "playset of everything" in sets of equal sizes than it did prior to the existence of Mythic rares.
This may seem like more complaining again about natural market forces (which is dumb). But the real issue is trading. It's now almost impossible for a scrubby (or even competent) player to trade cards up, since the values of cards are separated by such a giant gulf and the middle is occupied by some kind of economic no-man's land. This used to be a common complaint about older formats, but now it's happening with current in print sets.
Make no mistake. From WotC's point of view attendance is up and they are selling product at volumes they've never before reached. The current system represents an unparalleled success for them. Nor do I think the game will die off, even if it takes a hit. However, I DO think this is extremely damaging to the market in the long run.
Over the past seventeen years, I've seen the rise in the cost to play MTG consistently exceed inflation. Like any good company, WotC is searching for their saturation point. However, the tradeoff has been that players now play the game for shorter and shorter periods (on average) than they did many years ago. Most new players last for maybe two years at most, when for a long while it was 3-4. I don't know that this will mean DOOM AND GLOOM. But there exists a theoretical tipping point that I'd really prefer WotC didn't flirt with quite so badly.
WotC is stoopid. Nothing new there.
