With the first sets, most of this story was told through the cards' flavor text, and because most of the creatures and the keywords were based on common fantasy tropes (flying dragons, for example), there was no significant driver for a backing narrative.
In some cases, the narrative was demanded to help with new gameplay mechanics and keywords that did not fit standard fantasy tropes, but these were still limited to flavor text.
[5] With the demand for more expansions, several different teams within Wizards of the Coast's research and development department worked separately on these upcoming sets, with the card designers taking the lead in creating their narratives.
Elias planned out elaborate timelines, but as the set was only 100 cards, most of this was left on paper, giving players only glimpses of the larger picture through flavor text.
In fact, the idea of 'The Revision' stemmed in part from WotC publishing novels based loosely on many of the stories told in these comics.
[7] Wizards wanted to try to create a more cohesive universe with the next major expansion, Weatherlight (1997), comparable to other works like Star Wars.
Mark Rosewater and Michael G. Ryan developed a long-term story arc that would cross through several expansions as well as into comics, magazines, and novels.
With the cards, a small team of dedicated writers was used to make sure there was a consistent voice in the flavor text to help emphasize the story elements.
"[13] The pre-mending and post-mending monikers come "from the event known as the Mending, which fundamentally changed the nature of Planeswalkers from near-divine beings to mortals with a bit more oomph".
[14] During this time, Wizards further transitioned to ebooks as well as having their creative staff write more in "Uncharted Realms", a weekly column on the company's website.
[9][19] In 2013, Wizards saw that even with continued growth in player numbers, printed novel sales had fallen greatly and ebook sales remained flat, and made the decision to discontinue the larger narrative works in favor of having the creative team provide story coverage and shipments as of the "Uncharted Realms" column.
[20][21] Clayton Emery, on why he no longer writes Magic: The Gathering novels, wrote that after being invited to Gen Con he "arrived to find waiting for me — nothing.
And hey, you promoted Jeff Grubb's latest Magic book, advertising it on the inside front cover of every DC comic for three months during one summer.
'"[21][22] Sam Keeper, for CoolStuffInc, wrote "I can't attest to the accuracy of Emery's recollections, but it certainly feels familiar.
Kelman's task was to assemble all of the lore established from previous card sets and the published novels, comics, and other materials to create the game's "cosmology" or the story bible that established all the known planes and elements of those planes, the individual Planeswalkers and their connections to others, and other details that they could be passed not only to the teams developing new cards but also to those expanding the franchise with new novels and other content.
[23][6] This allows for highly connected events between the external media and the game; one example established the death of a major Planeswalker in the novel War of the Spark: Ravnica that was published just prior to the release of the new set War of the Spark, the first novel published by Wizards in several years, with the set containing cards referencing that death.
In 2018, as part of MTG's 25th anniversary, IDW began publishing another four-issue comic mini-series — this time centered around the Planeswalker Chandra Nalaar.
[26] In November 2019, War of the Spark: Forsaken (2019) was widely panned[27][28] and Wizards of the Coast "canceled plans for the book that was intended for the game's next set, "Theros: Beyond Death".
[33] In the lore of Magic the gathering the Multiverse is a collection of planes (described somewhat like pocket universes) which are usually named after the primary planet contained within them.
[35][36] Aether (previously spelled Æther) is the main type of energy filling the blind eternities, although it can also appear in variable quantities within the planes.
Kunzelman wrote: "This is the smallest trickle of narrative, literally buried at the bottom of a card, and yet it allows a player who is familiar with the game to grasp onto it and get a huge amount of new contextual information about the world [...].
[6] In 2018, Sam Keeper, for CoolStuffInc, wrote "It's bewildering that the main website of this game offers no comprehensive list of all the art books, novels, comics, and webcomics, with new releases coming out this very week highlighted and promoted all over every relevant article.
This is the kind of thing bloggers and webcomic artists recognize the need to establish, so why does a company owned by Hasbro have such a disorganized back-and-current catalog?
For goodness sake, this has actually gotten worse recently, with the former list of ebooks getting killed in the still buggy and archive-destroying site redesign a few years back.
Even that, mind, was a bizarre mess, with single books missing from trilogies on different platforms, and no mention of Godsend, which had come out a month before this archive capture.