When will Wizards run out of good names for new cards?

Vedrfolner · Joined: 04 Apr 2006 Posts: 1401

I think that most new cards have a lot worse names than older ones. Ballynock Banneret, Loyal Gryfalcon and Hotheaded Giant just don't sound as interesting as Wrath of God, Disenchant and Terror. There are still good ones coming up, though, like Hateflayer, Endless Horizons and Flickerwisp.

By 2084, will MTG card names be Upprooo Xzillimupp and stuff like that?

I hope not!

Trotsky1 · Joined: 12 Apr 2005 Posts: 905

I think they will keep coming up with good name's for a while wizards have an extensive vocabulary too draw from. Although it is conceviable that wizards start running out of card names we would probably have to worry about the sun cooling down first.

Eldariel · Joined: 15 Jun 2006 Posts: 203

English is getting more new words per year than Magic is getting new cards. To that end, there are already 1000000 words to draw from. Seems HIGHLY unlikely that they'll run out of good names especially given how they're already recycling names and coming up with words that fit the setting. Also, they've shown they have no trouble borrowing from other languages and foreign mythologies (most recent example being Jotün).

Mirage · Joined: 31 Jan 2006 Posts: 96

They're smart guys. Hopefully they are never reduced to Science Soldier ala Yu Gi Oh.

"Soldiers equipped with state of the art weaponry to face unknown enemies"

Seriously, pick up a pile of your little brother's Yu Gi Oh cards. Some of the names are awful enough, but the flavor text is redonkulous

Mad Dog of Darkness

"He used to be a normal dog who played around in a park, but was corrupted by the powers of darkness."

ILikeBananas · Joined: 01 Aug 2006 Posts: 157

Probably never, or until they go out of business. Reason is they can always create new names. For example, Boggarts instead of Goblins.

Or until they use up every combination of english alphabets which won't be for a long long time.

CMA-Flippi · Posted: Sun Jul 13, 2008 10:11 am Post subject:

Balduvian Hordes, Baron "Sengir", "Serra" Avatar, "Lich", Several Portal cards, "Lhung Zing Dong..etc", "Kjeldoran Royalguard" - Yes, clearly "bad names".

Eldariel · Joined: 15 Jun 2006 Posts: 203

tinman · Joined: 05 Nov 2005 Posts: 180 Location: Winter par

i really do not think that is so much the issue as when will they run out of interesting ways to make new mechanice for the game. I mean they have already starterd taking old abilities, renaming them, and passing them off as new mechanics. Shroud, and reach are the 2 that come to my mind... so far anyway

nico · Administrator Joined: 28 Oct 2003 Posts: 832

Shroud and reach never were passed off as new abilities, they were always anounced as keywords for abilities that already existed. Same goes for fear.

Greetz Nico

tinman · Joined: 05 Nov 2005 Posts: 180 Location: Winter par

you have my humble apologies for the bad error in judgement and reading nico

Shocked

so sry

tinman

Chaosweaver · Joined: 07 Apr 2005 Posts: 1327 Location: Igloo town

I think they should rip names from Shadow Fist, which is another card game that didn't really break through...

C'mon a suicide monkey named Ka-Boom

Epic-Juzam37 · Joined: 09 Jul 2005 Posts: 11

their is already a card called kaboom

Vedrfolner · Joined: 04 Apr 2006 Posts: 1401

But I mean; Disenchant and Terminate are saying what the card does as well as sound good. Bitterblossom sounds good, but it could do virtually anything if you were to guess at its ability given only the name... The question is whether there is a movement towards worse names in the recent sets, or if there was equally many bad card names 10 years ago as well.

I think that there is such a movement.

gypsy · Joined: 15 Jun 2007 Posts: 904

the designers of sets are moving away from just regular names and are going towards more specific set areas, like kamigawa was like ancient japan etc, so they use names more traditional to those settings

Alandariel · Joined: 17 Jan 2006 Posts: 145

Who says cards have to say exactly what they do? Hell, it hasn't consistently been that way (in my opinion) since Alpha/Beta.

Creativity is a beautiful thing. I would much rather my card be named Bitterblossom than Faerie Token Maker.