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Over my years of working at Pro Tours I made a habit, whenever possible, of being somewhere visible as players made their way to the venue on Thursday for registration. https://twitter.com/MTGZan/status/1263802143984795648">https://twitter.com/MTGZan/st...
It was always great for seeing old friends in some new city but mostly I wanted to be a friendly, familiar face for players attending a PT for the first time. I wanted to hear their stories, energize myself with their excitement and eagerness, and to get to know them.
But I also wanted to remind them that just getting to this level of play was a huge accomplishment in and of itself. To take a breath and appreciate the career benchmark. Later in the weekend I would seek out these players to see how they fared.
I would often do this with the Pro Tour debut records of various Hall of Famers to soften the blow of a disappointing record or to emphasize the accomplishment of making Day Two -- or even doing well enough to cash the event.
I have no idea when it will be feasible to gather people for these type of events again but I guarantee you that there are plenty of folks, like the person RT& #39;d above, who just want to have that experience of walking up those stairs into the toughest tournament of their lives.
I know Wizards has already backpedaled on a couple of aspects of this announcement and I would love to see them allow for deferrals for players like Morton who have dreamt not only of the PT opportunity but the PT experience.
I remember feeling overwhelmed by my first PT and also having it feel somewhat unceremonious. I have written multiple proposals to WotC over the decades about having a PT (and for that matter, GP) concierge responsible for new player orientation.
