MTG thread

Zodiac

Zodiac

Lord Nagafen Raider
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Xequecal_sl said:
If MTGO cards become worthless, then the real life cards also become worthless.
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Not if they stop doing card redemption. Sure, back when it was released card redemption was needed. People had a problem with paying RL money for virtual goods, but with all the FTP games with cash shops I think getting rid of card redemption and lowering the prices would be great for the game.
 
Heylel

Heylel

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MTG is bigger than it has ever been, and that's not really because of MTGO. It's just experiencing a renaissance right now because the set design has been pretty good and Ravnica block carried a lot of nostalgia. That being said, I'm bored as fuck with this Standard.

My local shop is closing, so I will probably be playing less standard and more older formats and commander for the time being. I am planning to sell out of Standard around March or April in favor of older cards and just keep one reasonably effective archetype for Standard (probably esper). I need to focus more on getting my legacy staples covered.
 
Xequecal

Xequecal

Trump's Staff
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Sterling_sl said:
Well they upped the redemption fee so it's not really a huge margin. And this has always been going on, people buy cards from drafters, redeem and sell sets for 30-40 dollars of profit. The big change to what crashed prices on cards is the redemption changes so trash rares are worth less than before.
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MTGO card prices (well, Standard-legal cards) have dropped 25% in the last week, before you'd just barely break even doing redemptions and selling the physical cards, now you can make a lot of money. Of course it's not easy to find a ton of buyers quickly, you have to actually be really good and experienced at mass selling on EBay in order for it to be a decent amount of $ per hour, but if the prices keep tanking at this rate it's going to be pretty trivial to do so soon.
 
Mist

Mist

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They haven't fallen that far. I wish they had, I'd have been able to make a lot more money if they did. And they've already rebounded significantly.
 
Xalara

Xalara

Golden Squire
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We will see if they fix MTGO. I doubt they will considering thus has all happened before.

Really, it will be sad watching Hearthstone eat MTGO's userbase because WotC/Hasbro doesn't have the sense to properly manage the project, or heck even pay developers a decent Seattle software developer wage.
 
Heylel

Heylel

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It's not their primary business, so it's a little understandable. They really need a new client though.
 
Xalara

Xalara

Golden Squire
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Not only is it a huge chunk but there is quite a bit of room for growth that won't be realized until real investments are made.
 
Heylel

Heylel

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In other news, looks like a very nice collection just hit craiglist near me. I can't remotely afford all of it, but some decent stuff at affordable prices I am going to try and cherry pick. Try to snag some legacy fetches, maybe a couple of cheaper duals for about 25% under par.
 
Zodiac

Zodiac

Lord Nagafen Raider
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Heylel_sl said:
It's not their primary business, so it's a little understandable. They really need a new client though.
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Some people figure online is waay more profitable for WoTC though, it's fuzzy math but still...

Post from another forum:

Wow.... check out this quote from wikipedia

Quote:
As of February 2007, Magic Online has over 300,000 registered accounts;[3] however this does not represent the true number of players, since people are allowed to register multiple accounts. At different times during the day and night, Magic Online hosts on average 2,000-4,000 simultaneously logged in accounts. According to Wizards of the Coast, Magic Online is "somewhere between 30% to 50% of the total Magic business."[4]
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so... with just 300,000 registered accounts out of a total 12M magic players worldwide, Magic online accounts for at least 30% of the business!!! 300,000 out of 12M is 2.5%. In other words, the 2.5% of magic players who play online account for 30% of the game's total income - so roughly speaking, online magic players are approximately 1600% more profitable than paper magic players!
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Heylel

Heylel

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I find that math extremely suspect. I also strongly suspect that large scale dealers heavily skew that.
 
Mist

Mist

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Magic in 2013 is a lot different from Magic in 2007. Paper sales were sluggish/almost dead at the time. FNM attendance was low. Now paper magic is going crazy, and MTGO has grown only modestly (because it kinda sucks.)
 
Xalara

Xalara

Golden Squire
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So last week at FNM I played blue devotion splashing green for Master Biomancer and Fog, both in my side board. I did well and went two for two but in the two matches I lost, I got absolutely wrecked by WR aggro due to Chained to the Rocks. Do you guys have any suggestions for dealing with it?

I was thinking of adding either Simic Charm or Naturalize. Simic Charm would probably be best since it deals with more than just Chained to the Rocks, though it has the downside of requiring me to leave two mana open.

Also the store meta is heavily skewed toward Rx aggro, which is why I had Fog in the sideboard. After that it is a wide smattering of decks but seriously like 75% of my matchups are against aggro.
 
Heylel

Heylel

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I'm sick to death of esper so trying to put together something else for this week. I'm debating trying BUG just for shits and giggles, but I can't really settle on a list I like. Might just put together Kibler's GB aggro and call it a day.
 
Xequecal

Xequecal

Trump's Staff
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Xalara_sl said:
We will see if they fix MTGO. I doubt they will considering thus has all happened before.

Really, it will be sad watching Hearthstone eat MTGO's userbase because WotC/Hasbro doesn't have the sense to properly manage the project, or heck even pay developers a decent Seattle software developer wage.
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I can tell you exactly what the problem is, MTGO is a legacy product.

You see, to corporate executives, any video game older than 18-24 months is a "legacy product" and is not worth spending more than a pittance on, period. This is why MTGO was still using the 1998 interface and had all the crash problems, it was designed for a much smaller user base and they simply never got budgeted to expand it.
 
Mist

Mist

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Xequecal_sl said:
I can tell you exactly what the problem is, MTGO is a legacy product.

You see, to corporate executives, any video game older than 18-24 months is a "legacy product" and is not worth spending more than a pittance on, period. This is why MTGO was still using the 1998 interface and had all the crash problems, it was designed for a much smaller user base and they simply never got budgeted to expand it.
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Er, no. That logic would make sense if they didn't continuously port every single new card printed into the MTGO rules engine (1000 cards a year or more), design the specific wordings of paper cards around the online UI, etc. This is also the 4th client release, with the client being built from the ground up each time.

The problem is that they have a policy of not fixing things until they're REALLY REALLY BROKEN. This isn't just MTGO specific, it goes for just about every organized play policy in the history of the game, and elements of card design as well.

The problem with the servers is that they never invested in any kind of load balancing infrastructure. They just threw more/newer hardware at the problem, but Moore's Law in the simplest sense of faster processors didn't keep up with the growth of the game or their ambition to host really large events online. It's a simple load scaling problem, and I'm willing to bet their server code for event hosting isn't even multithreaded, let alone takes advantage of virtualization to spawn virtual servers based on demand.

However, there's a hidden level of truth to what you were saying. Hasbro treated all of MTG, paper and digital, as a legacy product for a long time, content to milk some money out of the remaining players by pushing out a few sets a year. Then, about 4 years ago, it started roaring back to life, and then soon after, started making a lot of fucking money. WOTC is Hasbro's most profitable division currently, while tradition toys have taken a nosedive for them.
 
V

Vilgan_sl

shitlord
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The fact that they were bringing in some consultants for MTGO is a good sign, hopefully they continue that thought process and transition the development from useless overseas devs back to the US. I've seen some companies do okay at outsourcing menial work that US devs hate, but putting feature creation on a flagship product in the hands of overseas workers is friggin insane.
 
Heylel

Heylel

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I credit a couple of things with the current renaissance. First and foremost, the sets do tend to psychologically feel better thanks to NWO. Older players may not like it, but it's the truth. There's a lot more R&D spent on how a pack feels these days. Second, and nearly as important, is that the themes of the more recent sets are a lot more evocative. Zendikar had the eldrazi, which were incredible chase cards for new players. Scars block had a lot of nostalgia going for it with the Phyrexians, but it also just looked damn cool to newbies. The art style and themes present in the cards were quite strong and it made for a more interesting set. Innistrad rode the crest of the vampire craze to success, and Ravnica had the whole nostalgia thing again. It remains to be seen if Theros can sustain the momentum, but present sales suggest it can.

I'm 3 cards from finished with my legacy deck as of today, and also snagged the last couple of trades i needed for modern blue tron as a backup to melira pod. All in all, I feel like I'm in a good place to mostly ignore standard for a little while until the next set releases and it (hopefully) gets less boring. I'm not usually a format snob, but compared to last rotation I'm just not excited by any of the current "good" decks.
 
Xalara

Xalara

Golden Squire
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Ended up dropping out of a sealed PTQ today at x-3 after round five of nine. The deck was solid (5 colour good stuff due to 3 Nylea's Presence, dual lands, and other fixers) but I keep making a few key mistakes. For example, I cast a Griptide Prognostic Sphinx. Also I tapped out on a Nylea's Emissary Bestow which caused me to get blown out by Stymied Hopes at 4 health.

Besides making sure I announce steps and get more sleep anyone got tips howto avoid stupid mistakes like that?
 
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