Helvault vs. Implicit Maze

I got to ruminating about why Dragon’s Maze pulled in significantly fewer players than did last year’s Avacyn Restored pre-releases, even though Magic sales have increased significantly since Avacyn Restored, then it hit me, so I hit myself, right smack across the forehead.   Avacyn Restored, Helvault, duh!  Remember the Helvault and the hype surrounding its opening last year?  Even the trending hashtag on Twitter #IntheHelvault?  This year, the release had the Implicit Maze, with the winning players getting a badge on their Planeswalker page. Nowise as cool, or intriguing, as the opportunity to see what lurked inside the Helvault last year.  Curiosity is a major driver of human behavior, just as it is with cats and mice, so if you can keep parts of your event secret, and customers/players know that parts of it are secret, they will come to it out of curiosity.  WOTC made all of the details of the Implicit Maze available ahead of time (of course, in fairness, the company had to in order to make sure that tournament organizers knew how to run the event), ergo players were not as intrigued by it as by the Helvault so numbers dropped a bit.