As a former avid CCG fan allow me to try my hand at explaining why this is problematic:

At the core a CCG is fun because it produces different outcomes and different scenarios in just about every game played. This is why buying boosters and constantly improving your deck is supposed to be incentivized by simply playing the game. As with any game that has a skill component and a luck component the goal of a player is to minimize the influence of luck through use of skill.

With a CCG skill often presents its biggest impact in the deck construction itself. With widespread information and communities on the internet deck lists are easily attainable and thus the only limiting factor for cardboard CCGs is the availability of the cards. With that barrier removed the last skill aspect remaining is in game skill, which while it can make a big difference often leaves you at the whim of the opening shuffle.

The end result of this situation is that skilled players will quickly boil down the card sets to at most 3 deck types with minor variations in each. The result is that every match you play will boil down to an extremely small subset of scenarios determined by the 3 decks. In other words, very quickly things will either be so repetitive that there is little point in playing again or if you refuse to copy cards in this way you will find yourself losing...often....and horribly....

edit: I will add that there is no gaurantee this is the fate of the EoJ, but I can tell you that this issue where major deck types dominate the landscape are also major problem in cardboard CCGs where copying is MUCH harder to begin with.  I cannot imagine it gets better when that process is made easier.  And many of those cardboard CCG games have significantly more cards to draw apon which increases the variation.

They can always ban cards, limit the number of duplicates in a deck, etc. Availability of cards was never even a factor past the first few months of MTG. I followed the tourament scene for many years at all levels of the game.

Banning the cards, while able to mix things up again, only delays the problem from refestering. MTG proves this quite well as they attempted to clean up the extended and type 1 formats around late Urza block and realised that no matter what they did, the meta gaming going on on the internet was going to keep things locked into a very tight set of decks that would rule the roost.

The result there was they had to convince folks that type 2 becomes the only viable longterm format. Which for those who don't know, in MTG type 2 is basically a format where the core set and the most recent 2 blocks of sets (aka a total of 7 card sets) are tournament legal. In essence telling folks that not only are the cards they payed for a few sets back no longer allowed to be used in most tournaments, but they are going to continue to invalidate old sets as new ones come out. Forcing competitive players to constantly buy new cards.

You are largely correct that availability was only an issue for the first few months in MTG...but only to the extent of dedicated players.  Many people didn't want to constantly spend more money for the game and if it weren't for the initial level playing field to keep them interested its likely many would have stopped altogether before they felt like they were invested enough to continue. 

I know all this. I helped write the history of MTG. There's always draft.

 Do you have a source for these statements or are you just making stuff up, over at gametrailers there is a massive thread that is talking about the cards and the game, these people have played the game.  Strong cards do not make it easy to win the game, there is a limit to how many cards can be played of certain value, you cannot just play super cards after super cards the game does not work that way.

Plus killing off the other guys cards only hurts you in the end, as you get mana for losing cards, and from what i understand it is bad to allow the person you are facing to have lots of mana.  When you play online the game decides what cards are drawn or something from your deck of 30 cards.  The board is made up of different types of squares too, sea, land, grass and sand.  You cannot just place water cards on the sand even if they are strong and expect to beat a grass guy on grass.

The game is very balanced and the fact that you can copy cards or whatever has no bearing on the game.  It takes strategy to win. 

You may know all of this but a great many people on here do not and its a good point of reference for the kinds of influences that effect these games.

Just curious since you said you helped write the history, in what way? Wondering if I have heard of you or if you mean in more of a "I was there man!" sort of way.  If its the latter...then put me down for a "me too!" =)

@Griffin,

The actual strategy that ends up being used isn't important. It really comes down to a few simple facts. Is there a definable goal? Are there cards that when used together, can quickly and efficiently achieve that goal? If the answer is yes to those questions then people will begin to refine the process until they have reduced it to its simplest components. From there they select the cards that cut the crap and get right to the point.

Its been a while but in MTG type 1 and extended there are predefined deck types that basically all decks fit into. Decks that don't fit these preset descriptions are all called "Rogue Decks" and automatically assumed to be inferior. And if they aren't inferior it will only be a month at most before they take up a place as a new deck type and often times they displace an existing deck type by being either designed to defeat that deck or just coincidentally being good at it.

If the game can avoid this fate that plagues many many CCGs it will be off to a good start indeed. But a strong countefietting issue is a bad start.

Yeah, that part of card games is tricky. Magic the Gathering got it working, but honestly I think that was more a right place at the right time thing. They were the first to get big, and so they can stay big.

Not taking away from the designers but I think they once had a quote from a designer who wasn't thinking who said something like "50% of the set are throw aways, 30% are reworked versions of similar cards and 20% are playable."

Heh and those 20% are almost always the Super Rares. The way they have it set up prevents "Power Inflation" which is a better option since then atleast your old cards can be used in casual games, but I don't think you can get people in on that ina new game. It'd be like the whole Starwars Galaxies thing all over agian now a days.