Quite often, I’m rather surprised when I’m reading over the feedback for my weekly columns (at the moment, there’s only one of them, but I’m hopeful that at least one of the WoW TCG columns will also make a comeback once some things are sorted out in the near future). Some of the comments to last week’s article, How the Synchro Monsters revolutionized the game, left me a little confused to be honest.

For starters, I don’t quite get why people make a big deal of the headline. Granted, “How the Synchro Monsters revolutionized the game” might not be the most fitting title, however,

• “How 10 hyped revolutionary game concepts that came before the Synchro Monsters all failed” or
• “Hyped Yu-Gi-Oh! game mechanics and how they did not change the game” or
• “The Synchro Monsters were the first revolutionary game concept that actually lead to a revolution”

… or some other possible choices for the title were all

a) too long and
b) boring.

I understand that a reader might not be all that interested in the fact that no one’s reading a cool article because it’s title sucks, but I do. If this means I need to make use of some tabloid tactics and use titles that will make you want to click, I feel too bad about it. I hope you can live with it as well; please understand that this is one of the reasons why the weekly columns are as successful as they are!

Some of you said that I did not try to go into too much detail. That’s also true as I don’t see the point in explaining in another 1000 words how the Fusion Monsters were – if you took advantage of effects like Metamorphosis or Magical Scientist (“DJ”) – more or less playable for some time. The article was about “revolutionary game concepts” that worked out the way they were supposed to be. Fusion Monsters were never introduced so some Level 1 monster could Special Summon them from your Extra Deck by paying Life Points. They would have been called “DJ’s little friends” if that were the case…

Every single article is a compromise. I need to balance it’s length, depth, detail and find a fitting bottom line. I don’t want to write a novel every other week and throw 4000 words at you (besides, I don’t get paid for that). I don’t want to tackle subjects that will only make sense to 3% of the community (at least not all the time) and I don’t want to go into too much details when I’m mentioning something “along the way” (like the playability of the Fusion Monsters) when the article’s actually about something entirely different – readers would only lose track of what the article’s really about. I don’t want to give you the impression that everything’s been said and done after you’re through with one of my articles – I want you to think about the topic, make up your mind and come up with some cool ideas. If you learned something, enjoyed reading the article and actually want to contribute to the topic by posting something in the feedback thread, I did a good job. Which is one of the reasons why I’m not always posting in the feedback thread…

Alright, you got me there. If I don’t post in the feedback thread, chances are good I was simply too busy / lazy or did not feel like it. Last but not least, please keep in mind to support the respective websites and me when you’re browsing our sites. There’s a reason why we got some banners from our sponsors on the page.