MTG Product Exhaustion is Real – WotC to Print FEWER SETS in 2025

Last updated on December 20, 2024

Malevolent Hermit – Illustration by Daarken

WotC has realized Magic's output pace is too much for the majority of players to follow, and they are reigning in their releases.

Answering a question in his personal blog about whether or not product exhaustion was a concern, Magic's Head Designer Mark Rosewater wrote: “2024 had nine main products. 2025 has seven. We’re making less.”

Rosewater's reply is a clear indication that information overload was one of the reasons for this slowed down pace.

“Complaining here is helpful,” Rosewater had said back in January this year, answering to a poster communicating their desire  for a slower release schedule without voting with their dollars. In that same reply, Rosewater said that the message was “being conveyed (by me and others that interact the most with the public) to the people making the calls about how many products we produce.”

Looks like the message was received.

2024 vs 2025

Time Walk | Illustration by Chris Rahn

A quick comparison between 2024 and 2025 releases, and assuming none of next year's MTG sets deviates from the norm (about 400 cards per set between new cards and reprints, and 2-4 Commander precons with each set), confirms MTG Head Designer's assertions:

Rosewater didn't specify in his reply which products are considered “main products,” but an educated guess shows that:

• Comparing the first halves of each year, 2025 will probably have six less EDH precons than 2024: We know that Aetherdrift will have only two (rather than the usual 4), and 2025 doesn't have anything comparable to Fallout;
• For the second halves, Edge of Eternity will be a fully-fledged Magic set, and therefore much bigger than Assassins' Creed – but there's nothing in 2024 that is comparable to Foundations.   

And the above doesn't include 2024's Mystery Booster 2.

All in all, it looks like 2025 may again be a year in which Magic releases less than 2,000 brand-new cards, something that hasn't happened since 2021.

Is Just a Flex

According to Rosewater, in the last few years Magic has undergone a fundamental design change.

“For many years,” he wrote in January last year, “we made Magic trying to get the audience to act a certain way. We would put focus on certain ways to play to influence the audience to play that way.”

Magic was all about Standard during that time. Standard-level sets, Standard sanctioned play, and Standard getting the competitive spotlight – if you've ever heard an MTG old-timer fondly reminisce about the good ol' days, this is probably the time they are talking about.

But then things changed. Magic reached a flex point: a moment when a product evolves to match the needs of its audience.

“Eventually, we realized Magic did better if we reflected what the audience wanted rather than tried to influence how people played,” Rosewater wrote last year. “You tell us how you want to play and we’ll make Magic that lets you do that.”

So Magic started making their offerings broader: different kinds of boosters, of frames, of art. And they started making more releases. According to Rosewater, the result was a huge success, with Magic having its best years.

“You seem to think your inability to focus on everything is a bug, rather than a feature,” Rosewater wrote in reply to a poster worried about product exhaustion. “You can’t absorb it all, so you’re choosing what you care more about and are just focusing on that. Great! That’s where this process is going.”

Less Is More? Six-Course Standard

Having a few less Magic sets per year may all be well and good to combat product fatigue…

… but Standard will have to accommodate most of them, and go from four to six Standard sets per year.

“They’re making less, but it almost all goes into Standard,” complains redditor u/Chilly_chariots in a thread commenting Rosewater's post. “Seems to me that if fatigue is a real problem (and I guess this is him admitting it is?), that’s going to make things much worse for people trying to keep up with Standard.”

“This is exactly it,” agrees u/HumpbackWhalesRLit. “You made 9 products last year but I could ignore 5 of them. Next year if I want to keep up with Standard I have to pay attention to 6 sets.”

Players on MTG Arena already had problems this year completing their Mastery passes for Bloomburrow & Duskmourn, since they had to rush through them in two months rather than the usual three – a rush that, unless MTGA revamps their reward structure, will be the new normal in 2025.

“Six standard sets is going to amplify the fatigue,” notes u/gully41. “By the time a set releases, it will be spoiler season for the next set in a few weeks.”

Magic Like Garfield Intended?

Richard Garfield, Ph.D. – Illustration by Dave Dorman

Rosewater seems to think (or at least though two years ago) that it took all these years for Magic to reach a point when it can be played like Magic's creator Richard Garfield intended.

“You can [now] run into cards you didn’t know existed,” Rosewater wrote last year. “That was Richard’s original concept. The problem was the internet was exploding at the time and there wasn’t a means to withhold the information. Plus, the game just wasn’t that big yet, so players could literally know every card. Richard’s vision was great. It just wasn’t viable at the time.”

There can also be too much of a good thing, though – and if Rosewater's latest post is any indication, Wizards of the Coast is aware we're past that point: nine main sets in 2024 may have been just too much.

We'll see next year if seven Magic sets is the charm.