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Wow, that has got to be the most accurate and absurd statement I’ve ever heard…
It’s just like most online games, if skilled players win, people get fed up and leave rather than get good at it, but if whoever plays for the longest time wins, you get a hundred thousand addicts playing it for 40+ hours at a time.

I always try to get my group to draft, primarily because I need an excuse to get my decks weak enough that the rest of them are competitive, and they all fink out for the same reason as yours.
It’s weird how they’d rather lose by a landslide to me because I’ve been playing four times longer than most of them, than to have an almost fair game (but lose more than win) because I’m decent at drafting.

Oh well, I finally managed to get a four-man Lorwyn draft together last week, and everyone enjoyed it. The newest player in our group came out with the strongest deck, a surprisingly robust treefolk deck featuring two copies of that “all treefolk are indestructable” guy, and multiple Changeling Berserkers and Titans, plus a splash of white for Kinsbaille Balloonist. Flying Indestructable 7/7s hurt in a draft.

If you had the free time, I’d recommend teaching more people to play in your area, I’ve built up two different playgroups that way when I moved into an area. It has the drawback of not having anyone skilled enough to give you a challenge, but if you’re in it for the social aspect and are a Jhonny like me, it’s fine anyway. Unfortunately, I’m going to be moving out of the second one any month now. Grr, more work just to play a game.

I’ve been there before with the local playgroup. I really don’t understand the logic behind “the game is skewed in the favor of the best player”, and I never will. If your local group is like that, I would like to point out some other options:

You can connect with other people in places like mtgsalvation (which I know you go to) and set up a draft to meet on ccgdecks.com or by using netdraft.

You can use the draft queues in mtgo (loses a lot of the human aspect though, and costs money)

The third drafting option would be to take advantage of local fnm’s. They tend to do drafts. You can bring along the friends who like to draft there… the problem is that you may run into jerks there too.

Finally, you can try a sealed league with trade possibilities? that way you get the cool card possibilities? Maybe you can make a hybrid; you could order cards all together. Whenever you do so, everyone gets the same amount of money to work with, and everyone contributes their own money, and everyone is required to work with the same budget. A little complicated, but it may end up merging the best of both worlds.

I like to play casually, but with good cards–i.e. ones that don’t work in competitive play, but are just fine casually (e.g.Autochton Wurm). But yeah, it’s too bad about your group. At least you had one

Also, how ’bout that Shadowmoor? Some of those cards are amazing.

It’s sad to hear about your Magic woes. Happened to my group too - two guys got so into the tournament scene everything else stopped. We do draft now and again - everyone likes draft in my group but no one is really willing to pay to do so. The only guy who regularly goes to tournaments drafts the boosters he wins and that’s it. :/

Nice of him to do even that, though.