Please Fill the Gaps In For Me: a LOTR History from ROTK block to now

[putridbreath]

So when the movies came out, I was but a lad and found LOTR cards at a game store where I purchased baseball cards. My dad bought me an Aragorn starter and  I started collecting and playing. Because that store went out of business, I lost contact with the LOTR world right around TTT and its expansions. Finally, a store near my home sold individual boosters of ROTK and then it too, closed its doors to card players. I lost contact with the game until jackmaclintock and I decided to pull out our old collections and play (a couple years ago). We suddenly wanted to know what happened with the game? We decided to not go above set 10 because suddenly every character had resistance (wtf?), new keywords were added (hunter, lurker, etc.), cultures were lumped together (all encompassing men and orc cultures) and cards just seemed more complicated than they needed to be.
Other than what the LOTR Database could show us through cards, we had no idea what happened to the gaming community or how long this lasted. Decipher's LOTR website seemed oddly unfinished, still having articles about NEW Ents of Fangorn changes the game! and etc. Nothing past movie block there...
I guess what I'm getting at, is I'm curious as to what happened post movie block, not only with Decipher, but with the game itself and how things ended up with a Last Homely House for players to come to out of the shadows. As players debate the future of LOTR and a PC, I find it'd be useful to first look at the journey that got us here in the present.

[putridbreath]

Does anybody know?

[MR. Lurtzy]

Go ahead, but everyone else should beware of your extreme movie block bias.

[Gil-Estel]

Well, here I go, others can adjust when needed.

Since Return of the King, Decipher found out that they were paying a lot for the licence that made it possible for them to even produce the cards. They needed to make more money, so they took a few measures to do so:
- Increasing the strenght of the cards, degenerating earlier cards
- Making new mechanics that led to overpowered combo's
- Introducing Decipher dollars, when playing a tournament you could only win Decipher dollars, which was, especially for the tournament players not very interesting. A lot of players quit and started, or returned to either WoW, Magic and a lot of players started playing poker, Texas Hold'em.
- No testplaying. There was at the end only 1 designer, that didn't do a lot of testplaying, which was sad. There were soooooo many players, that were dedicated to the game in all so many ways, that offered to testplay free of charge, in order to help the game, but all were neglected.

Again, feel free to add, where I am missing things, or where I am off

[legolas3333]

I think the power level started going up with Fortress Never Fallen, it started a trend followed by cards like blood runs chill, catapult, etc... that let cultures do things they were never meant to do.

[Gil-Estel]

Maybe if we had a PC they could make this dream a reality!
-wtk

Mhuahahahaha

[Jerba]

Go ahead, but everyone else should beware of your extreme movie block bias.

Extremism in the defense of movie block is no vice.
Are there any other blocks? I argue, no. I'm with Ket. 

[MR. Lurtzy]

Are there any other blocks? I argue, no. I'm with Ket. 

What?

[Jerba]

Are there any other blocks? I argue, no. I'm with Ket. 

What?

I don't like using cards from Shadows and after.

[Sam, Great Elf Warrior]

I dropped out when they nixed all the old shadow cultures (except and [gollum]), too.

[Cw0rk]

Well, here I go, others can adjust when needed.

Since Return of the King, Decipher found out that they were paying a lot for the licence that made it possible for them to even produce the cards. They needed to make more money, so they took a few measures to do so:
- Increasing the strenght of the cards, degenerating earlier cards
- Making new mechanics that led to overpowered combo's
- Introducing Decipher dollars, when playing a tournament you could only win Decipher dollars, which was, especially for the tournament players not very interesting. A lot of players quit and started, or returned to either WoW, Magic and a lot of players started playing poker, Texas Hold'em.
- No testplaying. There was at the end only 1 designer, that didn't do a lot of testplaying, which was sad. There were soooooo many players, that were dedicated to the game in all so many ways, that offered to testplay free of charge, in order to help the game, but all were neglected.

Again, feel free to add, where I am missing things, or where I am off

How can anyone still enjoy playing Standard after reading that?

[Sam, Great Elf Warrior]

- Increasing the strenght of the cards, degenerating earlier cards

For example, the hunter keyword, which basically says "all characters from earlier blocks are automatically weaker when skirmishing this character." That's not just escalation, that's completely brazen devaluation of earlier sets.

[jdizzy001]

i loved sets 11-19.  however, i hate the hunter keyword.  Movie block is the way to go, unless you're looking to power game.  nevertheless, most people collect sets 1-19.  there is a definant power creep starting in set 7 which grows exponentially until you hit set 19.  Set 19 was good but more of a farewell to the gamers than a good solid set.  you should look at the WDT format if you're curious about the latter sets. (wink, wink, plug, plug.)

[MR. Lurtzy]

It's funny because SoG got me out of the game, and Hunter's brought me back in.

[Rathmaker]

I have to agree with a number of sentiments here.

Most of the people in our area got out when Decipher hit the reset button with Shadows.  Between the change of cultures and the power escalation the game just died here, and got much worse as the sets went on.  When the few of us still play every once in awhile here (once a month or so) we tend to use almost exclusively cards from sets 1-10 even though I have 4 of practically every card in the game.  It is not an enjoyable game when I use cards from the Hunters set (and beyond) against my opponent who has primarily cards from the movie blocks. 

If I could go back in time I would try to make sure the reset button was never hit.  To me, that was what killed the game the most for the players in our area....