Magic: The Gathering's Secret Lair has been on quite a tear lately, with a ton of new products dropping in a very short span of time. This includes brand-new Commander precons, exciting and unexpected crossovers like Lofi Girl, and the expected Universes Beyond companion drops like The Hobbit and Marvel Super Heroes.
Following a recent disastrous launch for The Zeta Set, a situation that still feels somewhat unresolved, with plenty of players not getting the chance to purchase it, and even some of those who thought they did are being told they would receive nothing, it wasn't looking good for the Masters of the Universe superdrop. However, this latest drop went surprisingly well, although we'll never know if that's due to reduced interest as a fallout of the recent Zeta Set issues or because the process was streamlined in anticipation of the drop.
For a drop like Masters of the Universe, only Wizards of the Coast would know how much stock was on hand to sell across its Secret Lair regions. What we can see on our side, though, is that most of the larger bundles of cards have sold out, as have some of the individual bundles, with just a few remaining in each region and all being labeled as "low stock."
What surprises us about this is the fact that, according to those who purchased products from the drop on Reddit, the queue times were practically nonexistent, with some only waiting five to ten minutes to get in, while many others were surprised to be sent straight to the checkout without having to sit in a waiting room at all.
This is a stark contrast to the Stardew Valley drop, where people sat in the waiting room for up to an hour and a half before they could complete their transaction. Both drops didn't sell out immediately, so it leaves us wondering whether the bandwidth for active customers was raised for Masters of the Universe to allow for more people to check out at one time, or whether there was just less interest and Wizards was able to foresee this using their data and managed to get everyone served very efficiently.
Just like when we talked to Steve Sunu from the Secret Lair team at MagicCon Amsterdam, and he revealed that there are Secret Lair products that reach late-stage development but still don't come out, we may also never know exactly how a Secret Lair drop is organized and how much stock is ordered for each one.
The contrasts between the Stardew Valley and Masters of the Universe drops certainly don't add up, especially given that the Stardew Valley drop still has bundles available today, despite the huge queues to purchase in the first place.
Most importantly, for now, is the fact that the Masters of the Universe Secret Lair drop went off without a hitch and was perhaps the most efficient limited-availability drop in some time, following the failure that was The Zeta Set. It's probably bought Wizards of the Coast a little bit of grace back with some players, but it needs to find a way to quell those who are still wondering if they'll ever get a fair crack at purchasing The Zeta Set again.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.thegamer.com/mtg-secret-lair-masters-of-the-universe-performance/
