It doesn't make any difference whether or not it's discontinued. Leupold will honor the warranty for anyone who owns the scope....even without a receipt or paperwork....forever. Leupold has "discontinued" all their scopes over time. The series of Leupold scopes is very, very long. There is nothing wrong with buying a "discontinued" model. Right now the VX-2's are selling like crazy on most web site "for sale" forums. They don't last more than a day or two over on Rimfirecentral. The fact that they are discontinued makes them an even better deal if you can find them on close-out. I recently picked up a new one that way for just over two hundred bucks. You'd be very hard pressed to find many negative reviews on this scope and it's easy to find an awful lot of very good reviews. There is nothing wrong with 12x magnification. I use it all the time to try out different loads (I can see my bullet holes on paper) and to shoot small critters at long distances. Yes, it's probably too much for shooting deer under a hundred yards, but if you don't have binoculars with you the 12x makes seeing horns, etc pretty easy. The fact that it's a variable allows you to choose which power you want to use. You don't have to use 12x if you don't want to. One of the biggest reasons Leupold continues to change their model line-up is that a lot of people are wanting lighted reticles and 4x or 5x zoom ratios. I don't feel that those are truly necessary, but marketing sells a lot of product when they offer new bells and whistles. Get the scope, you won't be sorry. If you are, you can sell it almost immediately and not lose much, if any money in the process.