| You said that they release more and more "to obsolete the old." My point is that was not their goal. Their goal was always to have spells and creatures roughly balanced. Their original thinking was that creatures were a repeatable source of damage and thus should be costed as such. Turns out they overestimated how much rarity mattered and underestimated the power level of creatures. As a result, we get pretty mediocre creatures and ridiculously powerful rare spells. If every set were trying to outpower the last, then we wouldn't still get functional reprints of Llanowar Elves or Grizzly Bears, both of which were in Alpha. Really, the power creep from year 1 to year 10 or so was a desire to see creatures played in competitive magic and a desire to see more actual games of magic (if your opponent wins the coin flip and goes Mountain, Black Lotus, Channel, Fireball then no actual magic was played). Since then they've actually been doing a sort of power oscillation. Different parts get more powerful over time, then go back to weaker again. They mostly focus on Standard and Limited where the power level of older cards matter less. In summary (I've already written too much) there's simple proof that the power level isn't endlessly increasing: look at Legacy and Modern. Every set that comes out adds between 0-3 cards that see Modern play and 0-1 cards that see Legacy play. If power level were just flat going up, that number would be much much higher. |