In and out of The Helvault

I guess it was too much to hope for that some dink would refrain from opening WOTC’s Helvault ahead of time, then taking photographs of the contents and posting them online.  Even worse, reportedly someone else unsealed the Helvault and posted the contents for sale on eBay.  A quick search on eBay didn’t turn up any currently running auctions for one, so hopefully it got pulled fast.  Luckily, the first set of photos got pulled down as well but some other twits have bragged about copying and reposting them. If a store owner cracked open the Helvault , I certainly hope WOTC finds out whom and pulls their store status permanently. WOTC had set up a very cool promotion, especially by not telling anyone, except for those within the super secret circle at WOTC, what it contained.  This essentially made the Helvault a giant booster pack with Magic players free to project onto it what it concealed.  There was even an amusing Twitter feed #intheHelvault, with people tweeting what they thought it held.  Me, I hoped for a set of revised Dual Lands and a new Spindown counter. 

Point is, whatever the Helvault held would be nowise as cool as what people thought it held. It couldn’t be, that is the strength and the curse of our imagination.  Paraphrasing Mr. Spock from the Star Trek episode Amok Time, “You will find the having is not as pleasurable as the wanting.” Cracking it open and posting the contents likely made the person who did it feel like they were important for a period of time and drawn some attention to their website or Tumblr.  Meanwhile, WOTC now has an event they put a lot of time and effort (and money) into that won’t have nearly the impact that it would, store owners who won’t have a big a turnout for the opening of the Helvault as they expected prior to the breach (I have already seen postings from players who are skipping the pre-release as a result of finding out the contents of the Helvault) and players who had a potentially dang cool event ruined.  Here’s hoping most of them haven’t see the posting of the Helvault contents but given the pervasiveness of the internet, it’s not likely, unless they actively avoid the information.