Many valid points and all I have had in the past. I still think charging the full $4 a pack online is ridiculous, but I rarely have to purchase packs, so I am not always miffed at it.
I wanted SO bad to do pre-release events on MTGO, but I finally pulled myself out that mindset. I resigned myself to waiting until today for the release events while playing the PTQ on Sunday. If I had my way, MTGO can keep pre-releases sealeds at 30 tickets, but have the same support as release. I think the prize payout is the biggest issue.
MTGO is a way for me to play more Magic, since I usually only play at Limited FNMs. I hope it improves more and more in the future.
I played against that wizards deck you mentioned in the casual room a few days ago, and to be honest I never stood a chance! If you so badly want to beat it, then my suggestion will be to play something mono Red. I'm sure you won't like the idea of Goblins but what about Soldiers or Warriors or even Elementals? With some good amount of cheap burn back up. An aggressive deck looks like the best option against that deck.
Oh and of course my vote is for Elesh. I like me a good +2/+2!
This is the first time that I have read one of your articles and to be honest I don't know what to think. The content was fine and I understood where you were going with it but there are two things. One, this topic has been done over and over and over and oever again so it come off as a huge whinefest. Two, drop the explicatives. It is just a sign of lazy writing when you cannot think up any better words than ones you have to put little ***** after the first letter. We are all intelligent, rational human beings and using college level words would be fine. Just my two cents.
I do think you have a valid point though. I have recently sold my online collection because I no longer found the game fun without the interaction and part of the problem was the pricing. I mainly played commander to a great degree of success and love to build decks that destroy people (preferably with a large degree of interaction). Unfortunately commander cannot inherently pay for itself and prices of singles only seem to got up. There is one part that I don't know if it interacts with the paper community is the redemption process. The other day a foil Sphinx Ambassador was 20tix. Yeah. 20 Tix. 20. Foil mythic that noone really kept track of and now i need it to redeem my foil M10 collection. Redemption alone might be why some of the prices are that high. You CAN in fact get paper cards from these digital ones. A uncolated set of m10 = x dollars, so therefore packs are going to cost x dollars. I dunno. Just a thought to throw out there.
Unfortunately, world-wide... small retail is going downhill. Based on the type of industry it's a different gradient of slide, but it's there for the majority.
It's getting a massive hit in Australia at the moment because we're the least effected GFC country and our dollar has gone up massively. Almost any type of product you can think of can be bought online from America for $100 when it will be anywhere between $200-$400 in the store in Australia.
I think it's a real sad thing about small retail, because those shops bought life and culture to areas... a Wal-mart doesn't. But it's the way of things :(
I don't agree with much Alternate said, but the game will be all-online one day. The next generation of Magic players will still hang out around the kitchen table, but they won't shuffle cards, they'll connect their ipads to the network and load up their decklists. Count on it.
Or another game will come along that uses the available technology better and they'll be playing that instead.
But admittedly that's many years in the future and not relevant to this discussion.
1) Just because Sun Titan is in demand doesn't mean that it's in limited supply. We don't know what the supply is, and also don't know what the demand is.
During my spec articles, I wrote about some cards that were reprints, and you called me stupid for suggesting reprints. Well not only is Sun Titan a reprint, but it was also an MTGO promo card. There must be massive supply out there.
In Eco 101 you would know that even if there is demand, there is a huge amount of supply out there. The price going up is based purely on bots and people who don't want to create original deck lists.
2) I do think the game is going to be primarily online.
Think about it. All things in life are shifting online, from your mail to your grocery shopping. It is just a progression. And playing online has the major advantage that playing on paper doesn't.
Availability.
If you play paper, then you go on Friday and Saturday nights. There might not be the large amount of events or people needed to make it a good experience. While on MTGO, you can play all day long at any time, you can buy cards on demand, and you have access to tournaments on your own schedule.
Also think about how easy MTGO is compared to paper. MTGO does things for you, like life loss, transformations, legal blocks, things that playing in a store might not guarantee you.
For the last thing, look at the dwindling amount of stores that are TCG stores. I live in NY, the largest market in the US, and there was only 3 pre-releases in the city, with 1 of them having only 8 people there and the other had probably less than 20. Compare that to the times when Neutral Ground was open and there would be 3-400 people at each pre-release.
If you don't see MtG shifting to a primarily online game and the paper game going away then you haven't noticed the world around you. Lets see:
1) If you work a lot, MTGO allows you to play casually.
2) If you don't have a store near you or choose to go out on a Friday/Saturday night, you can play on Sunday.
3) Card stores aren't profitable in the largest markets.
- I have seen many card stores close in NY, Chicago, and LA over the years. These are major markets, and if you are like me, returning to the game after a layoff of a decade, MTGO is the only thing that makes sense.
If you don't see a progression from paper to MTGO then when your groceries are delivered to your door from Fresh Direct or have your bills payed automatically through your bank online, maybe you will see that all things have a natural progression. It would be so cost effective for WotC to switch only to online since it would cut down on costs massively, and don't think Hasbro won't want all their subsidiaries to start to cut costs. The first things to go are paper and printing. Why print 1 card 3,000 times when you can make that card once and just have it randomly generated 3,000 for less than 1:100th the cost?
Alternate, what I gleaned from the end of your wall of text is a rather simple lack of understanding of the "demand" in "supply and demand". Prices of cards, like Sun Titan, go up because despite the huge supply, it's in the top standard decks and people _want_ to play with Sun Titan, making his demand rise. Sun Titans are still getting opened, true, but less and less now that Innistrad has come into the system and drafting M12 isn't getting done as it was in July.
If there is a lack of demand for a card, the price goes down. Relatively simple explanation for this is Ravnica duals. Up to PT Philly, watery Grave was going for around $10 (rough estimate). After PT Philly, I picked up mine for $5 apiece - the card's supply didn't change, there was just simply no demand for Modern staples with no relevant tournaments upcoming. Now that Modern PTQ season has been announced, Watery Grave is back up to $7.65.
Also, this is laughable: "If you stopped playing on Paper then WotC would be put in a position where they would have to shift their entire focus online. (WHICH IS WHERE I THINK THIS GAME IS GOING)"
-emphasis mine.
OMG, wait. Is this coming from that stupid "occupy Wall Street" thing? Haha. That is the dumbest thing ever. Me and my friends pass by them on W. 4th and either laugh at them or join the other kids from NYU that throw Eggs at them. They don't even know what they are protesting.
And nothing says "RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE" like an internet protest. You can protest and then they will fire off a Innistrad Sealed pre-release every 10 seconds from beginning to end.
I'm angry, I'm going to post on Twitter and make a facebook page about it. WAAA.
Haha. Btw, those "Occupy Wall-Street" protestors are not there to protest Wall Street. They are there because you can buy weed for $15 and heroin for $10. If you don't believe me, go there and see how many people offer to sell you stuff.
The only thing you can do is actually do something. Get off your asses and stop playing. If you really think that will matter.
I hate to break it to you all, but this is a business model that continues to work, and as long as people play it, it will remain this way.
You don't think costs go up? My cable bill is $250 a month when the "intro" price was $99 for the IO triple play. I wish there was a better package, but it's called, a MONOPOLY!!!!
See WotC can do what they want because there is only 1 Magic the Gathering. But as of right now, most people choose to play 2 different Magic the Gathering's. You have made the choice whether or not to play online and in a store.
To be honest, it's your fault this occurs. Even if you "boycott" Pre-Releases, you still play on both paper and online. If you stopped playing on Paper then WotC would be put in a position where they would have to shift their entire focus online. (Which is where I think the game is going)
But right now you choose to play both online and on paper, and WotC will continue to do this because this makes them money. And last time I checked, Hasbro is a Publicly Traded Company which means they are on the NYSE and therefor their earnings reports are projected quarterly and they have to make those earnings reports.
I played paper. and when I played there was really no "classic" or "modern" there was just Type 1 and Type 2. I saw no reason to buy cards since I didn't play type 1 and type 2 was changing every 6 months. Not to mention getting the cards for decks was impossible since the only way was 1) Buy a massive amount of packs, or 2) go to Neutral Ground and buy each card individually.
But MTGO is better than paper. I mean it doesn't take up space, allows you to play any time of day, and gives you access to every card available.
So unless you stop playing paper entirely, and that means everyone that plays paper, this is the system because it is profitable.
You want to bring the price down? Well here you go.
1) Only play MTGO
2) Less paper means everyone would be on the same level when it comes to pre-releases instead of players that only play MTGO and are way behind in terms of how to play new sets.
3) No paper and more printed MTGO cards means that there would be more available to more people. I mean like the only cards would be online, therefor MTGO packs would remain the same price, but the price's on the secondary market would be more accurate.
4) Make incremental tickets. By that I mean make tickets in 1 penny, 5 cents, 10 cents, 25 cents, etc.. This would mean that you would no longer have the "credit" system.
5) WotC would need to print out how many cards they make per pack per set. For example, how many Lilliana's there are in INN. Then you can get a completely accurate price point for cards. Since you would know how many boosters are sold and how many of each is printed.
*I'm the only person thinking this, but I get the feeling that there were a ton of Lilliana's printed in INN. Just based on talking to people and seeing the results of people opening boxes, it seems like there is an almost 3-1 or 2-1 difference between the amount of Garruks and Lilliana's released.
6) Get on Mac. Opening your exposure means you would have more customers.
7) Make the client better. I mean it sometimes feels like I'm playing something made for DOS. I have seen better programs on Facebook. When your program looks worse than Farmville, you know you have problems.
8) Get rid of deck lists online that win tournaments. When you post a deck list, it means that people will just copy it and bots then manipulate the market to make those cards more or less expensive. That takes away from new decks being build, and less use of cards so the main ones will cost the most money and take original deckbuilding out of existence.
and the most important.
9) Get rid of Bots.
Bots create the market based not on supply and demand, but rather what deck lists are the most popular. If S&D was in effect, then you know that cards would go down. In theory, there are plenty of Sun Titans out there. But since Sun Titan is used in STD decks, it makes the price of the card go up regardless of supply.
And where do card prices come from? You can't possibly tell me that they have to do with paper prices. So you are telling me that you know how many packs are produced, and how many of each card exists?
Look, if you don't like MTGO, then all you have to look at is yourselves. You choose to play on both paper and MTGO. That seems rather profitable to me since you are selling twice the product and only having to make half the overall product. You are paying them double. So for people like me who only play online, I am saving money here since I don't play on paper.
If everyone converted to MTGO, would you see pre-releases as viable? Would they become more interesting to you?
And of course they would never have the pre-release the same time as the paper pre-release. The same people, a lot of the people complaining here, would then play both instead of just playing 1.
You guys have very quickly forgot that you are complaining about MTGO on a website that is one of the main prognosticators of MTGO. MTGOtraders is no different than WotC. Do you think they are angry about pre-releases online? Hell no, because they actually make money on online pre-releases. It's all about profits, and if you want to play, you have to give into that fact.
I respect Ted, and I wanted to make sure his words got to as many people as possible. Thank you all for replying and discussing and reading the article.
I'm not all in on the #occupymtgo movement, but I agree with a lot of what is said here.
The current Solar Flare seems to play a lot like the initial Dredge (before all the techy stuff happened to next level it.) I think the name sticks because people want to play with a deck with a cool name regardless of its context. Im thinking of calling my latest concoction Super Rockets Flare, being that it is Esper Colored.
I am loving the Skirsdag fellow a lot to the point where he might be my new favorite squire. Ever. And a close second is his friend the Stitcher's Apprentice.
The Horse is dead Jim! Dammit I'm a Doctor not a Miracle Worker!
Oh and pretty much echo what Kuma said above. It isn't so much that the article is wrong on any particular point but that it comes off as both elitist and populist (which is a really nifty trick to pull off but despite being impressive is off-putting) to me.
Also saying they get a pass on the UI issues and then getting into UI issues is rather odd. Give them a pass or no but don't mislead us. :)
Josh thanks for reposting but imho pure can do without Mr "I horde $10k of duals just to make a point".
I'd say the biggest obstacle between making the game more profitable or less wallet-raping is the complacency and ignorance of its players. I personally have not put my own money into the system (but I do generate profit for wotc by forcing my opponents to pay $$) for more than a year. I am in the minority.
My format of choice for the last year was 4 Pack Sealed, in the Sealed Swiss room. Since you don't pay any tickets to play, just the packs you open, it turns out for most sets that getting a 2-1 record gives you positive EV after you sell back your rares. For example the EV of SOM block 4 pack sealed is around +.40 right now, probably more since the packs have dropped in price. BUT I noticed that ever since the release of the M12, the SOM queues rarely fire compared to the M12 queues. That's odd, I thought, because even going 2-1 in the M12 queuue, the EV is negative, about -.70 last time I did the math.
So, the majority of players would rather play whatever the latest set is than play what it is more rewarding. That's reasonable. Fun comes first to them at the expense of money. But what is more frustrating to someone in my position, who wants the best paying queues to fire more than the queues I will never enter, is that even the SOM block swiss drafts, which are the same block as SOM 4 pack swiss sealed, fire more than the 4 pack queues. But the EV in the draft is far far worse. So it's not only a matter of people wanting to play with the latest set, it also seems that the majority of players are totally oblivious to the presence of better alternatives. Not only are they complacent with having their wallet raped, they prefer it.
As far as getting restructured events with better EV, like reintroducing the 5-3-2-2 or just dropping the 2 ticket fee for every draft or giving more prize support to ptqs, I don't expect anything to change. There are too many people who don't care about price.
I think most people would be OK with paying some premium for the prerelease, but I find it a bitter pill to swallow at $1 per pack sealed, $2 per pack draft, Swiss only.
The price of the drafts is just outrageous, I would never enter one for any reason. The price of Sealed is still outrageous, but due to the early inflation of card value it is possible if you sell everything and open well to break even if you only do a few sealed, although that isn't saying much.
The prize payout is absolutely unjustifiable. Winning the sealed swiss is the only way to come out ahead, and you are still being cheated a pack (10 instead of 11). 9 Points is worth 4 packs instead of 6, and 6 points are worth a measly pack. Considering the extra money to play in the sealed, you would think they could at least maintain the standard prize support. It isn't like the nonredeemable promo cards represent any cost at all to WOTC, so I can't see how they can justify their 6 ticket cost along with a reduced payout.
If the release events were even slightly more favorable, I would do more of them, and might even participate in a draft. When the promo card is weak (Mayor is only a rare compared to Sun Titan or Wurmcoil at Mythic) it becomes much harder to justify entering any release events.
Release events should be a time people are ecstatic and excited to play, not a time to that induces cognitive dissonance and stirs up mixed emotions.
Many valid points and all I have had in the past. I still think charging the full $4 a pack online is ridiculous, but I rarely have to purchase packs, so I am not always miffed at it.
I wanted SO bad to do pre-release events on MTGO, but I finally pulled myself out that mindset. I resigned myself to waiting until today for the release events while playing the PTQ on Sunday. If I had my way, MTGO can keep pre-releases sealeds at 30 tickets, but have the same support as release. I think the prize payout is the biggest issue.
MTGO is a way for me to play more Magic, since I usually only play at Limited FNMs. I hope it improves more and more in the future.
I played against that wizards deck you mentioned in the casual room a few days ago, and to be honest I never stood a chance! If you so badly want to beat it, then my suggestion will be to play something mono Red. I'm sure you won't like the idea of Goblins but what about Soldiers or Warriors or even Elementals? With some good amount of cheap burn back up. An aggressive deck looks like the best option against that deck.
Oh and of course my vote is for Elesh. I like me a good +2/+2!
Good job as always.
LE
You should read the beginning again. Josh did not write this. He reposted it from an article Written By Ted Knutson.
Josh,
This is the first time that I have read one of your articles and to be honest I don't know what to think. The content was fine and I understood where you were going with it but there are two things. One, this topic has been done over and over and over and oever again so it come off as a huge whinefest. Two, drop the explicatives. It is just a sign of lazy writing when you cannot think up any better words than ones you have to put little ***** after the first letter. We are all intelligent, rational human beings and using college level words would be fine. Just my two cents.
I do think you have a valid point though. I have recently sold my online collection because I no longer found the game fun without the interaction and part of the problem was the pricing. I mainly played commander to a great degree of success and love to build decks that destroy people (preferably with a large degree of interaction). Unfortunately commander cannot inherently pay for itself and prices of singles only seem to got up. There is one part that I don't know if it interacts with the paper community is the redemption process. The other day a foil Sphinx Ambassador was 20tix. Yeah. 20 Tix. 20. Foil mythic that noone really kept track of and now i need it to redeem my foil M10 collection. Redemption alone might be why some of the prices are that high. You CAN in fact get paper cards from these digital ones. A uncolated set of m10 = x dollars, so therefore packs are going to cost x dollars. I dunno. Just a thought to throw out there.
But they won't "Know" know, if you know what I mean. Ya know?
A creative is slightly short than I expected article. Keep the toons coming :)
Great read. Reflecting on oneself is something few people can do, but is necessary to improve at anything.
I think the biggest problem is that there is no meat in this article. You don't have decklists and didn't link a single card for reference.
http://puremtgo.com/articles/pauper-people-second-pe
is an old article that does the same thing you did but actually explained each archetype via examples.
White Men Can't Jump is an excellent movie.
Unfortunately, world-wide... small retail is going downhill. Based on the type of industry it's a different gradient of slide, but it's there for the majority.
It's getting a massive hit in Australia at the moment because we're the least effected GFC country and our dollar has gone up massively. Almost any type of product you can think of can be bought online from America for $100 when it will be anywhere between $200-$400 in the store in Australia.
I think it's a real sad thing about small retail, because those shops bought life and culture to areas... a Wal-mart doesn't. But it's the way of things :(
Part of the problem with the NYC market is the insane cost of a storefront there... NG did good business but just couldn't afford to stay in town.
I don't agree with much Alternate said, but the game will be all-online one day. The next generation of Magic players will still hang out around the kitchen table, but they won't shuffle cards, they'll connect their ipads to the network and load up their decklists. Count on it.
Or another game will come along that uses the available technology better and they'll be playing that instead.
But admittedly that's many years in the future and not relevant to this discussion.
1) Just because Sun Titan is in demand doesn't mean that it's in limited supply. We don't know what the supply is, and also don't know what the demand is.
During my spec articles, I wrote about some cards that were reprints, and you called me stupid for suggesting reprints. Well not only is Sun Titan a reprint, but it was also an MTGO promo card. There must be massive supply out there.
In Eco 101 you would know that even if there is demand, there is a huge amount of supply out there. The price going up is based purely on bots and people who don't want to create original deck lists.
2) I do think the game is going to be primarily online.
Think about it. All things in life are shifting online, from your mail to your grocery shopping. It is just a progression. And playing online has the major advantage that playing on paper doesn't.
Availability.
If you play paper, then you go on Friday and Saturday nights. There might not be the large amount of events or people needed to make it a good experience. While on MTGO, you can play all day long at any time, you can buy cards on demand, and you have access to tournaments on your own schedule.
Also think about how easy MTGO is compared to paper. MTGO does things for you, like life loss, transformations, legal blocks, things that playing in a store might not guarantee you.
For the last thing, look at the dwindling amount of stores that are TCG stores. I live in NY, the largest market in the US, and there was only 3 pre-releases in the city, with 1 of them having only 8 people there and the other had probably less than 20. Compare that to the times when Neutral Ground was open and there would be 3-400 people at each pre-release.
If you don't see MtG shifting to a primarily online game and the paper game going away then you haven't noticed the world around you. Lets see:
1) If you work a lot, MTGO allows you to play casually.
2) If you don't have a store near you or choose to go out on a Friday/Saturday night, you can play on Sunday.
3) Card stores aren't profitable in the largest markets.
- I have seen many card stores close in NY, Chicago, and LA over the years. These are major markets, and if you are like me, returning to the game after a layoff of a decade, MTGO is the only thing that makes sense.
If you don't see a progression from paper to MTGO then when your groceries are delivered to your door from Fresh Direct or have your bills payed automatically through your bank online, maybe you will see that all things have a natural progression. It would be so cost effective for WotC to switch only to online since it would cut down on costs massively, and don't think Hasbro won't want all their subsidiaries to start to cut costs. The first things to go are paper and printing. Why print 1 card 3,000 times when you can make that card once and just have it randomly generated 3,000 for less than 1:100th the cost?
As long as everyone is talking economics, let's look at it this way.
There is a VERY LARGE supply of criticism and suggestions for improving Magic Online.
There is not much demand for criticism and suggestions for improving Magic Online.
Therefore the value of criticism and suggestions for improving Magic Online is very low. WotC can pick and choose who and what they want to use.
I've never heard of a problem from WTC with altering your MTGO cards.
I record stuff as well... So if a wizards guy watches, then they will know.
Alternate, what I gleaned from the end of your wall of text is a rather simple lack of understanding of the "demand" in "supply and demand". Prices of cards, like Sun Titan, go up because despite the huge supply, it's in the top standard decks and people _want_ to play with Sun Titan, making his demand rise. Sun Titans are still getting opened, true, but less and less now that Innistrad has come into the system and drafting M12 isn't getting done as it was in July.
If there is a lack of demand for a card, the price goes down. Relatively simple explanation for this is Ravnica duals. Up to PT Philly, watery Grave was going for around $10 (rough estimate). After PT Philly, I picked up mine for $5 apiece - the card's supply didn't change, there was just simply no demand for Modern staples with no relevant tournaments upcoming. Now that Modern PTQ season has been announced, Watery Grave is back up to $7.65.
Also, this is laughable: "If you stopped playing on Paper then WotC would be put in a position where they would have to shift their entire focus online. (WHICH IS WHERE I THINK THIS GAME IS GOING)"
-emphasis mine.
OMG, wait. Is this coming from that stupid "occupy Wall Street" thing? Haha. That is the dumbest thing ever. Me and my friends pass by them on W. 4th and either laugh at them or join the other kids from NYU that throw Eggs at them. They don't even know what they are protesting.
And nothing says "RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE" like an internet protest. You can protest and then they will fire off a Innistrad Sealed pre-release every 10 seconds from beginning to end.
I'm angry, I'm going to post on Twitter and make a facebook page about it. WAAA.
Haha. Btw, those "Occupy Wall-Street" protestors are not there to protest Wall Street. They are there because you can buy weed for $15 and heroin for $10. If you don't believe me, go there and see how many people offer to sell you stuff.
The only thing you can do is actually do something. Get off your asses and stop playing. If you really think that will matter.
I hate to break it to you all, but this is a business model that continues to work, and as long as people play it, it will remain this way.
You don't think costs go up? My cable bill is $250 a month when the "intro" price was $99 for the IO triple play. I wish there was a better package, but it's called, a MONOPOLY!!!!
See WotC can do what they want because there is only 1 Magic the Gathering. But as of right now, most people choose to play 2 different Magic the Gathering's. You have made the choice whether or not to play online and in a store.
To be honest, it's your fault this occurs. Even if you "boycott" Pre-Releases, you still play on both paper and online. If you stopped playing on Paper then WotC would be put in a position where they would have to shift their entire focus online. (Which is where I think the game is going)
But right now you choose to play both online and on paper, and WotC will continue to do this because this makes them money. And last time I checked, Hasbro is a Publicly Traded Company which means they are on the NYSE and therefor their earnings reports are projected quarterly and they have to make those earnings reports.
I played paper. and when I played there was really no "classic" or "modern" there was just Type 1 and Type 2. I saw no reason to buy cards since I didn't play type 1 and type 2 was changing every 6 months. Not to mention getting the cards for decks was impossible since the only way was 1) Buy a massive amount of packs, or 2) go to Neutral Ground and buy each card individually.
But MTGO is better than paper. I mean it doesn't take up space, allows you to play any time of day, and gives you access to every card available.
So unless you stop playing paper entirely, and that means everyone that plays paper, this is the system because it is profitable.
You want to bring the price down? Well here you go.
1) Only play MTGO
2) Less paper means everyone would be on the same level when it comes to pre-releases instead of players that only play MTGO and are way behind in terms of how to play new sets.
3) No paper and more printed MTGO cards means that there would be more available to more people. I mean like the only cards would be online, therefor MTGO packs would remain the same price, but the price's on the secondary market would be more accurate.
4) Make incremental tickets. By that I mean make tickets in 1 penny, 5 cents, 10 cents, 25 cents, etc.. This would mean that you would no longer have the "credit" system.
5) WotC would need to print out how many cards they make per pack per set. For example, how many Lilliana's there are in INN. Then you can get a completely accurate price point for cards. Since you would know how many boosters are sold and how many of each is printed.
*I'm the only person thinking this, but I get the feeling that there were a ton of Lilliana's printed in INN. Just based on talking to people and seeing the results of people opening boxes, it seems like there is an almost 3-1 or 2-1 difference between the amount of Garruks and Lilliana's released.
6) Get on Mac. Opening your exposure means you would have more customers.
7) Make the client better. I mean it sometimes feels like I'm playing something made for DOS. I have seen better programs on Facebook. When your program looks worse than Farmville, you know you have problems.
8) Get rid of deck lists online that win tournaments. When you post a deck list, it means that people will just copy it and bots then manipulate the market to make those cards more or less expensive. That takes away from new decks being build, and less use of cards so the main ones will cost the most money and take original deckbuilding out of existence.
and the most important.
9) Get rid of Bots.
Bots create the market based not on supply and demand, but rather what deck lists are the most popular. If S&D was in effect, then you know that cards would go down. In theory, there are plenty of Sun Titans out there. But since Sun Titan is used in STD decks, it makes the price of the card go up regardless of supply.
And where do card prices come from? You can't possibly tell me that they have to do with paper prices. So you are telling me that you know how many packs are produced, and how many of each card exists?
Look, if you don't like MTGO, then all you have to look at is yourselves. You choose to play on both paper and MTGO. That seems rather profitable to me since you are selling twice the product and only having to make half the overall product. You are paying them double. So for people like me who only play online, I am saving money here since I don't play on paper.
If everyone converted to MTGO, would you see pre-releases as viable? Would they become more interesting to you?
And of course they would never have the pre-release the same time as the paper pre-release. The same people, a lot of the people complaining here, would then play both instead of just playing 1.
You guys have very quickly forgot that you are complaining about MTGO on a website that is one of the main prognosticators of MTGO. MTGOtraders is no different than WotC. Do you think they are angry about pre-releases online? Hell no, because they actually make money on online pre-releases. It's all about profits, and if you want to play, you have to give into that fact.
I respect Ted, and I wanted to make sure his words got to as many people as possible. Thank you all for replying and discussing and reading the article.
I'm not all in on the #occupymtgo movement, but I agree with a lot of what is said here.
The current Solar Flare seems to play a lot like the initial Dredge (before all the techy stuff happened to next level it.) I think the name sticks because people want to play with a deck with a cool name regardless of its context. Im thinking of calling my latest concoction Super Rockets Flare, being that it is Esper Colored.
I am loving the Skirsdag fellow a lot to the point where he might be my new favorite squire. Ever. And a close second is his friend the Stitcher's Apprentice.
As usual LE great article. :D
The Horse is dead Jim! Dammit I'm a Doctor not a Miracle Worker!
Oh and pretty much echo what Kuma said above. It isn't so much that the article is wrong on any particular point but that it comes off as both elitist and populist (which is a really nifty trick to pull off but despite being impressive is off-putting) to me.
Also saying they get a pass on the UI issues and then getting into UI issues is rather odd. Give them a pass or no but don't mislead us. :)
Josh thanks for reposting but imho pure can do without Mr "I horde $10k of duals just to make a point".
I'd say the biggest obstacle between making the game more profitable or less wallet-raping is the complacency and ignorance of its players. I personally have not put my own money into the system (but I do generate profit for wotc by forcing my opponents to pay $$) for more than a year. I am in the minority.
My format of choice for the last year was 4 Pack Sealed, in the Sealed Swiss room. Since you don't pay any tickets to play, just the packs you open, it turns out for most sets that getting a 2-1 record gives you positive EV after you sell back your rares. For example the EV of SOM block 4 pack sealed is around +.40 right now, probably more since the packs have dropped in price. BUT I noticed that ever since the release of the M12, the SOM queues rarely fire compared to the M12 queues. That's odd, I thought, because even going 2-1 in the M12 queuue, the EV is negative, about -.70 last time I did the math.
So, the majority of players would rather play whatever the latest set is than play what it is more rewarding. That's reasonable. Fun comes first to them at the expense of money. But what is more frustrating to someone in my position, who wants the best paying queues to fire more than the queues I will never enter, is that even the SOM block swiss drafts, which are the same block as SOM 4 pack swiss sealed, fire more than the 4 pack queues. But the EV in the draft is far far worse. So it's not only a matter of people wanting to play with the latest set, it also seems that the majority of players are totally oblivious to the presence of better alternatives. Not only are they complacent with having their wallet raped, they prefer it.
As far as getting restructured events with better EV, like reintroducing the 5-3-2-2 or just dropping the 2 ticket fee for every draft or giving more prize support to ptqs, I don't expect anything to change. There are too many people who don't care about price.
I think most people would be OK with paying some premium for the prerelease, but I find it a bitter pill to swallow at $1 per pack sealed, $2 per pack draft, Swiss only.
The price of the drafts is just outrageous, I would never enter one for any reason. The price of Sealed is still outrageous, but due to the early inflation of card value it is possible if you sell everything and open well to break even if you only do a few sealed, although that isn't saying much.
The prize payout is absolutely unjustifiable. Winning the sealed swiss is the only way to come out ahead, and you are still being cheated a pack (10 instead of 11). 9 Points is worth 4 packs instead of 6, and 6 points are worth a measly pack. Considering the extra money to play in the sealed, you would think they could at least maintain the standard prize support. It isn't like the nonredeemable promo cards represent any cost at all to WOTC, so I can't see how they can justify their 6 ticket cost along with a reduced payout.
If the release events were even slightly more favorable, I would do more of them, and might even participate in a draft. When the promo card is weak (Mayor is only a rare compared to Sun Titan or Wurmcoil at Mythic) it becomes much harder to justify entering any release events.
Release events should be a time people are ecstatic and excited to play, not a time to that induces cognitive dissonance and stirs up mixed emotions.
I agree with Ted completely on this one. Thanks for reposting this Joshua.