True to its name, The Secret Lair Chaos Vault sale of Magic: The Gathering's 'Zeta Set' was absolute chaos, marred by site errors and sparking hundreds of complaints on social media. Wizards of the Coast has been rather frank about that fact. "It was a disaster - there's no other way to say it," the company posted, in an article published September 2, shortly after the sale ended.
Created by American art collective MSCHF, The Zeta Set is an extremely unusual Secret Lair product. Rather than a small batch of cards, MSCHF created an entire 121 card MTG set, and instead of a fixed selection, buyers would receive a randomized seven card booster pack. With public domain artwork and 'dodgy photocopier' art treatments, Zeta was designed to look like the playtest cards used to create Magic: The Gathering's very ruleset and its first release.
The unusual idea and the sheer number of cards in this drop raised a lot of buzz, and when the sale went live on September 2, it appears WotC's website couldn't cope with the numbers.
"You might have experienced a number of possible issues," says Wizards' statement. A quick look at Reddit, where one complaint thread has gained more than 900 comments, shows that these issues were varied, but included the queue system going on pause for 90 minutes, estimated wait times fluctuating, errors on the checkout screen, and completed sales receiving no confirmation - perhaps being dropped altogether.
WotC admitted that it was a "frustrating and disappointing experience" for the fans and promised "we are going to try and make this right", asking those affected by the sales experience to get in touch with the company's customer support team.
It also promised to share more information once it had figured out what caused the issues, "be it an internal systems issue or external tampering".
When highly-desired products are sold online for a very limited window, there are often problems like this, but it seems they've become more common for Magic's Secret Lairs of late. For instance, while it didn't suffer the same degree of technical problems, the Goblin Storm Secret Lair deck kicked up controversy for its long queues and the speed at which it sold out. In that instance, the artist behind the drop, Wizard of Barge, expressed disappointment with how it had been handled.
However, WotC has shown a willingness to change its approach to address these problems. For instance, in what it openly stated was a direct response to the Goblin Storm incident, the company is now selling certain products with a 'print-to-demand' guarantee for the first 24 hours. This was first used for the recent Hatsune Miku commander deck and it's expected to be deployed for the upcoming deck Odds and Ends as well.
Perhaps this situation will persuade WotC to extend that practice to a wider range of Secret Lair products.