Not really sure yet. They used to announce bans at 12:00 PST, then they moved it to the morning update of the website at 9:00 PST, but Pioneer bans have happened later in the day, around I think 5 PST (not sure exactly, but it was definitely after the daily update).
If I had to guess, I would say announcements will be at the usual 9 AM pacific time, since they haven't said they were going to change the time.
Especially with ban updates now being sporadic instead of at a fixed interval where we know we would be getting either something or a no changes announcement, I think they'll look to be very consistent on the time, so that if noon hits on Monday and there isn't an update, people know there won't be one until the following week at the earliest.
[mention]ktkenshinx[/mention]
I am so cynical of Wizards right now, and their desire to hide information from players that I'm completely willing to buy into a conspiracy theory that they've actively curated fracturing the community specifically to prevent players from effectively communicating with each other and understanding a format.ktkenshinx wrote: ↑4 years agoI totally agree with you that Wizards has encouraged this type of behavior. I also agree with your edit: the overall state of Magic communication (communication generally?) has moved away from long-form discussion and debate to soundbites and hot takes. It's a bad state of affairs. Although I'd like to see this change for all areas of Magic, I'd settle for just Modern-specific changes right now. Players should hold their content creators to higher standards, as well as holding their own contributions to a higher standard. This would increase our understanding of the format, lead to richer, deeper conversation, and create a more welcoming environment for a struggling format. I don't think this is going to happen without some serious work by all parties, but it's one of many things that needs to change about the current state of Modern if we want to recover from the last year.
It's my opinion that players and WotC are currently in an information war. Wizards wants to prevent information from reaching players because they can't make formats new and exciting at a rate faster than players can solve them anymore, and this goes double for non rotating formats. On the other hand, players crave the stability that solved metas bring because they can effectively sideboard, tune, and buy certain cards with confidence. Every time players figure out a new way to extract information, Wizards finds a new way to clamp down on things.
The latest breakthrough here was the self reporting of matches using DCI numbers and published pairings information. It was a brilliant way to circumvent Wizards no longer providing meaningful statistics at GP's and appeared as a direct response to Wizards clamping down on automated event reporting that sites like mtgtop8 were doing. Which itself was a response to Wizards curating decklists to show variety instead of reflect the metagame. I suspect they will eventually find a way to shut down the self reported GP info (maybe an app that sends each participant a text with their table and opponent, rather than make full match pairings available to all).
Communication is a problem, especially between players, but I think Wizards actively doesn't want that communication. I know they maintain a Reddit presence, but in my time working on MMO's I know first hand what game companies think of official and unofficial forums. And they do not think well of them... they would prefer players not communicate for a variety of reasons. On the other hand, they definitely love what magicTCG is now, which is 99% arts and crafts of their game.