The part of the player base that cares deeply about the lore of MtG was skeptical of having My little Pony, Warhammer 40k, Lord of the Rings, Fallout and Street

The part of the player base that cares deeply about the lore of MtG was skeptical of having My little Pony, Warhammer 40k, Lord of the Rings, Fallout and Street Fighter cards (all real btw!). The other thing is that there's a certain product-fatigue and format fatigue in the community. There are so many releases each year that it's increasingly impossible to give the monetary and time commitment to follow 100% of MtG. It was never a cheap hobby, but the price increases and the proliferation of products really is noticeable. The old-school entrenched playerbase is also noticing that the formats they grew up with are becoming increasingly irrelevant. In-person standard-events in local stores are increasingly harder to find (and even if an event is planned it often fails because not enough people show up). The competitive tournament scene is almost completely dead. The big money-maker for wizards is Commander and you are thus seeing more and more cards aimed at that format, even in standard-sets. In short: the extended universe is not aimed at the old-school base and can be seen as an unnecessary money-grab at best or as an "they killed my preferred format for this?!" outrage condensation point. You are seeing the same thing in the MCU: it's hard to follow /all/ movies and TV shows and even worse: some of the shows are not aiming at the classically young singe male audience and thus shows aimed at female teenagers are produced. Some part of the nerd community sees that as a direct attack on their identity.