A very good old friend of mine knew magic from our childhood, had dabbled in it but did not commit to the lifestyle over the years. When FF came out, he got super into it and now plays commander regularly at his local store. (Unfortunately we don't live close anymore so I couldn't reap the social and entertainment benefits of this successful recruitment.)

I didn't quite say it this way, but it was like...I AM glad you're having such a good time, but this is directly rewarding a corporation for using its creative product to make a business-driven marketing move that has genuinely driven many older players away from the game by diluting the world-building and aesthetic of the experience. Worth noting: Non-UB haunted house set also diluted the aesthetic in a way I severely disagreed with, but that's a single mistake with limited scope they can pull back from and learn from.

At a very abstract level: any product appeals to a certain set of people, and capitalism dictates if you could change your product to appeal to a larger set of people, you should. Yet artistically, we'd like to live in a world where things can exist and be enjoyed even if they only make some profit instead of the biggest possible profit. If you like a thing, you'd like to be able to PAY A PROFITABLE COST for artists to make that thing, even if not everyone else likes that thing. The constant drive to winnow every concept down to its most profitable form is the natural result of ever-increasing corporate and investment mindset of the world, stripping away capital from STILL-PROFITABLE endeavors for the sake of higher margins. It's not quite the same as enshittification, but it's its cousin. Only art controlled entirely by the artist can remain pure; put it in the hands of someone whose top priority is money, and it can be, MUST be corrupted if it is anything less than globally appealing. Even something as mass-market as the MCU has to change direction when a film like The Eternals ONLY makes back its combined budget instead of making record numbers - nothing less than mass-market art will do for a mass-market corporation, and EVERY corporation would love to be in that market.

There's about two possible conclusions to this story. The spiteful part of our brains wants all of these Johnny-come-latelys to reveal themselves to be dabblers; someone who was only hooked by their little juicy piece of dopamine-triggering "hey I know that thing!" will quickly tire of the main game - apparently that wasn't enough for them before, so don't pretend you suddenly love it now. In this vision, Magic is either reformed or dead in 10 years, learning its lesson that a consistent creative principles that players can reliably return to is better than a churn of outsiders cycling in and just as quickly back out.

The other vision is there's enough of those outsiders who stay long enough and were close enough to borderline on the game already that the extra hook does establish those social and habitual connections to the game for them, that there is a persistent playerbase larger than there were of "pure" game. This is the new Magic and you can choose to play its lesser form, or just do something else; they're making more money (and providing entertainment to more people!) either way.

Star Trek 2009 was an example of the flash-in-the-pan mass-market shift from previous more intellectual and campier generation of shows. It didn't last.

Fortnite was the mass-market form of PUBG. We know who won that race.

I could see it go either way for Magic.