Read on Twitter
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
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'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.
