When did 4 player pods become the default?
I mean this as a legitimate and genuine question; I want to know the history of it.
I used to play EDH back in the day, between about 2012-2016. We played the same evening every week - the one weeknight the FLGS would stay open after 6pm, which people used to arrange DnD campaigns, tabletop games, board game meets, etc - and we'd play EDH with whoever was present from the same core group of ~10 people. Usually games were 3-8 people - rarely hitting the top end because usually at least *somebody* would have something else on, but running with "only" 3-4 people was a rare occurrence too and felt like it was just making do with the few people we had. The existence of the precons coming in cycles of 5 made it feel like 5 players was the default, and we'd occasionally play versions that relied on 5 players such as "Everyone runs an unmodified precon from the same batch" or the Star variant (five players in a circle. You win if the two players who are opposite / aren't adjacent to you die. Encourages politicking rather than pure every man for himself). Occasionally played games of Emperor with 6 people, and I think once a four-way eight person two headed giant.
This sort of fluctuating group size with occasional formats to change up the dynamic is how I'd always experienced casual Magic before EDH became mainstream with the precons (with EDH providing a foundation that the PTQ/WMCQ/GP grinders could engage in to play actual casual multiplayer), and from what I remember of online discussions and in person conversation at tournaments is how a lot of people played EDH back then. Ten years out of Magic later and I've become aware of the *massive* rise in popularity for the format and its position as being the most popular way to play the game. Nowadays, every single discussion I see online takes a four person pod as the default, to the extent that it doesn't need mentioned and any math on scaling effects always talks about 4 player pods.
So that leads to my question: does anyone know *why* this happened? I'm not bemoaning it - I don't actively play the game, and consistently of expectations is good even if I do fondly remember things like star and emperor - but I'm curious. Did the rise in popularity lead to stores / clubs having too many players such that splitting the players into separate pods became the norm? Were there some content creators (similar to Critical Role's impact on DnD) or online tabletop sims that set it as a standard which people would copy? Am I just misremembering and underestimating the popularity of the 4 man pod back in the day?