>>95980607
Correct. Final Fantasy writing was never stellar and the games weren't great to play even in their prime but Square was top tier at character design. Characters like Tifa have simple but memorable designs and are drawn as absolute semen demons so they gained a fandom. Wizards has always had terrible generic fantasycliche designs and they're far past their prime for character concepts, Loot is ample proof of that. The only Wizards adjacent character that's caught on with any sort of popularity in the last 10-15 years is Shadowhart from BG3, and even then she was created by Larian and she's just mildly popular.

Add in that every set is a disjointed mess that takes place on different planes where a bunch of the long running characters might not even show up and you have a recipe for disaster. No one gives a fuck about MTG outside of its card game aspect. It's a 30 year old franchise, one of the most popular TCGs in the world, has millions of players, and yet it has always had absolutely as close to zero pop culture impact and footprint as possible. League of Legends went from being a WC3 mod to having a highly successful show. The cannibal incest siblings from an indie RPG Maker tier game (The Coffin Of Andy and Leyley) have more fan love and pop culture impact than Magic has ever generated.

It's not wonder WOTC is relying on UB to try and generate hype for their product. They've consistently failed to do so themselves for 30+ years now.