It's common knowledge that the headlining band at a concert will intentionally make the audience wait until the performance starts. The goal is to build up the tension in the crowd so that, if timed correctly, the release of pent up relief and excitement swells when the band finally steps on the stage creates a wave to easily kick off the main act.
I don't think that's happening with Blaseball's return.
Fans didn't surface the "Artifact." A few days later, the counter on Blaseball.com is hovering around 9,000 clicks below what it needs to surface the Artifact, and I don't feel motivated to click it again. My Twitter timeline (my usual barometer for all things Blaseball) may not be the useful tool that it used to be to measure the community's excitement since Elon Musk's aggressively ham-fisted attempts to ruin the platform as some sort of Brewster's Millions long-con. However, it is hard to ignore the fact that players like Mooney Doctor and Justice Spoon fell with relatively silence or a shrug from the majority of my timeline.
I'm not worried at this point. It simply feels like a stage director has misjudged the crowd's restlessness and has let the purposeful delay before the main event drag on a bit too long. However, if the Game Band's plan is to continue this slow drip for another 8-9 weeks until the team rosters are completely full, then they are going to have a huge problem to manage once proper play is prepared to proceed.
It feels like we've reached the point where the wave of long-dormant fan excitement has broken, hit its high-water mark, and is receding back into the sea. There is no reason to expect this vibe to change unless Blaseball is able to give the fans something new to get excited about or hints at a new mystery to sink our collective wits into deciphering.
