Fellow Standard Pauper players, by now you've probably heard the news that Wizards of the Coast plans to remove the Standard Pauper filter from Magic Online on November 11th of this year.
Our MPDC and Standard Pauper Double League host Gwyned broke the news on his blog, Writer Adept, and you should visit that blog post right now and take the time to contact the appropriate persons linked to therein in order to make your own personal appeal to them to please, please not do this.
The sub-host of the SPDC series, rrmedio1, has also posted some very good reasons as to why this decision is just awful over at the Standard Pauper Players Clan blog, saying it better than I could. It leaves me no reason to compose a blog of my own on this topic, but I figured I'd make public the e-mail I sent to the people in charge of this decision in one last attempt to save the format. Quoted below is the full text of the e-mail I sent to all the people Gwyned suggested we all contact.
Dear Wizards:
I am writing you to urge you to reverse a decision that a Magic Online Player Run Event host, George Leonard, has made me aware of. He hosts a weekly Standard Pauper event and is about to play host to a Standard Pauper Double League which Wizards of the Coast is generously donating prize support for in the form of sealed product. He tells me that WotC has decided to retire the Standard Pauper filter on Magic Online.
I urge you to please not remove the Standard Pauper filter from Magic Online. The hosts of two weekly PRE's have put in so much good work fostering a community of players to play good games of Magic Online when we simply cannot afford any other format. Standard Pauper is an excellent, challenging format to play Magic and is extremely accessible for new players.
I have been playing Standard Pauper of and on since Zendikar. Often my breaks between gaming are due to depression, which has kept me unemployed for years now. Playing Standard Pauper is one of the few things in my life that works when everything else has gone wrong. The friends I have on MTGO are some of the few friends I have left because of how my bipolar mood swings have adversely affect my offline life. It would hit me rather hard if Standard Pauper were to leave me and I'm sure many other players feel the same.
I'm sure this is just a mistake that went unnoticed in your organization. It does not make sense to me that Wizards of the Coast would first choose to offer prize support to the Standard Pauper format only to turn around and make the format almost impossible to play.
In the past, we used the Pauper filter. However, there is a huge problem at present because Treasure Cruise is banned in Pauper but not in Standard Pauper. We would have to use the Freeform filter or something and that leads to a lot of confusion regarding deck legality.
I was very happy when we finally received a Standard Pauper filter on Magic Online to facilitate finding other players to ply Magic with. I was also very happy when Standard Pauper was added to the official formats web page on the Magic The Gathering website. And I was beyond overjoyed when I saw WotC finally offering prize support for one of our Player Run Events. I still hold out someday that WotC will host Standard Pauper Dailies.
But first I have to hope that the decision to retire the Standard Pauper filter on Magic Online will be reversed. Please do not take this from me or my fellow Standard Pauper Players clan mates. We really do love playing the game this way and so long as there is a Standard Pauper filter on Magic Online you can count on us picking up tickets in order to complete our modest collections each time a new expansion set is released.
Personally, I think Magic R&D is doing a better job than they ever have in the past at designing sets that make this format even more enjoyable. I understand we are not a large or particularly profitable group of player, but we do love the game that you produce and we would all appreciate it very much if you kept the Standard Pauper filter.
Thank you for taking the time to read and consider my appeal to keep the the Standard Pauper filter on Magic Online. GL & HF!
Sincerely,
Colin Abele (Cabel on MTGO)
Now your own appeal does not have to be as long or personally revealing as mine. I just wanted to put out there how much this format means to me (and all of us) in light of my unique individual situation.
To make a long story short, Standard Pauper has been one of the few things that keeps me going. I'd hate to have the last blog I compose here be an obituary for the format.
Thanks for taking the time to read my own personal appeal and for clicking the links provided above to add your voice to this movement to save Standard Pauper. The next update to this blog will, I hope, be about the success we all will be sharing in when Wizards of the Coast reversed this decision....or about how I give up on Magic Online for the last time.
Peace,
- C
