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Why magic players like goblins

In the lore, 99% of the time, goblins fuckin suck. They're violent creatures that hurt everything around them. And that's just from the flavor text that quotes goblins. Most flavor text outright mocks them and, if we're to believe it, for good reasons.

However magic players don't hate goblins. d&d and lotr depict goblins in similar ways and there's more animosity in those fanbases. Something is up, and I think it's the mechanics.
When you play a goblin deck, it does two things: First, it ties their success to yours. You and goblins are on the same team. Suddenly you're rooting for that goblin king to find his friends. Secondly, it highlights their strengths(unless you're playing with bad cards). Each card is succeeding at what it was literally made to do. Skirk Prospector is cracking rocks, the assassin is trying to kill stuff, and the chirurgeon is well... trying his best.
No matter the flavor text, you and goblins are BFFs.

Why magic players like cards

The functionality of cards goes a long ways towards how much you like it (duh) and the people/things they represent. Even if you think you don't like the character depicted on card X, if it has flying and double strike, you're gonna play it. and you're going to like it. Not in the sarcastic, in the actual way above. And over time, you're probably going to like the character, or at least find them significant.

The whole mechanics first, character second thing seems to extend further. I may have just been lucky with play-groups, but I've never heard someone react to finding out they're playing against Meren with "heh you're playing as a girl" (Only "fuck this, it's a lunch game, and I actually want to have a board state"). People judge the characters on cards by what they function as, not what they are. I'm way out of my depth here, so this is an anecdote I feel weird telling, but I was watching a game where someone learned that Alesha was trans and they responded with "neat, anyways Rav Chup."

tl;dr The mechanics of a card bring familiarity and identity to the characters they depict

How does the magic story work?

The magic story, however, is backwards. Over time there the story has gone from being in books in Fat Packs, with disparate events depicted on cards, to being watermarked onto cards. Which to say, it's been pushed forwards. * And that can do cool stuff. Storytelling is an awesome thing. It's just that marketing story-telling is... not ideal.

When the story leads the cards, it spoils them by making them pushed, stupid, or both. Stories can lead cards by how characters have acted in the past, as well as what they will fulfill in the future. In order to make some cards be popular, they need to be retconned.

Push: Friendship ended with Urza, now Urza is my best friend

Take Urza for example. From the old books, he's a genocidal shitbag who has more in common with beings of cosmic horror† than any human character. This got to lead to some cool and interesting stories and characters. The crew of the Weatherlight being manipulated, fractured alliances within the resistance, and Karn just fucking well off at the end.
But then they started humanizing him. In the past, Urza cards were his tools and his possessions. So by playing them, you weren't empathizing with Urza, just making use of his rage, guilt, mine, etc. Urza tended to be depicted in ways congruous to the story, raging, guilty, possessive, etc.



And then they printed Urza's Hot Tub. That fucking atrocity of a card.Urza, this character who everyone was glad to see die, is now a head in a pool floaty, with a tropical drink, chillin' with babes. See? He just wants to hang out! Not perform thousands of years of eugenics in seconds!

Next, there's Urza, Academy Headmaster, which is also stupid. We get the first actual Urza card and what is it? Just a bunch of random abilities with no agenda, a pun, and stuffed monkey. Now Urza just wants to do stuff, hang out, and teach!

(High Artificer was a hit though 'cause fuck that card. Shout out to Yawgmoth here too. That card drips evil.)

Finally BRO, where the entire bro storyline doesn't if you hate Urza. And marketing storytelling demands that you don't tell stories with unpopular characters. So they had to make cards of him being a prince, prodigy, leader, and protector. "Hey see, Urza wasn't all bad! He just cares too much."

While the story of magic became pushed, the cards followed suit and we got a compelling, horrific character given a 100% sympathetic backstory. ‡ We got bland cards, that needed to be pushed because the story needed it.
The popular way to write stories is have have all the characters be likable or understandable. See also: Disney having fewer villains. § The natural progression here is a magic storylines where all characters are good, then the cards need to match. And every card can't be good. Well they can, but it makes the other cards less special. So while it is possible to have cards reflect the story, if the storytelling is limited, the cards will be too.

Stupid: idk what to say

As for the "stupid" side, the gatewatch storyline gave us the Defeat cycle.


tl;dr The magic story is getting mainstream, mainstream characters are limited, so the cards become limited

Outro

There's two ways of making you like something, emergent through mechanics vs prescriptive through story. "Goblin Engineer is cool because the card tutors artifacts" vs "Elspeth is cool so Elspeth's Smite is cool." ¶ (those are opposites, right?) While both can be done well, the emergent method is more timeless and feels more authentic.



Nice, I was able to say all of that without saying "hasbro gotta move product"