The only time that happened was in the year of the Raven.
- The sets were really low power. Most of the balance patches had more cards outside of the Raven sets than actual Raven cards. Basically they cured the Mammoth sets slowly into this state of balance.
- There was a ton of neutral build arounds. So what was happening is that multiple classes were all running the same 10-15 neutrals, essentially creating a “Zoo meta” (Baku, Keleseth, Corpsetaker, Saronite Chain Gang, Carnivorous Cube, Firefly, Stonehill Defender, Tar Creeper, etc).
- The same decks remained high at the meta for multiple expansions, with slight modifications.
- Sales plummeted, because towards the end people figured out they didn’t need new packs to keep up with the meta. And then those people had very few Raven cards going into rotation, and a lot of them just outright left the game (for Artifact, lol).