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Why Magic Online Will Suck
An anonymous reader sends us a link to this funny dissection of online gaming. The writer obviously speaks from bitter experience. :)
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Half the entertaining value of a Magic "gathering" is seeing the people who show up...some are quite interesting based on my memories from high school a few years ago.
Online version just won't have that for a draw.
-Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
If there's one thing I've learned from watching Buffy over the years, it's that magic ALWAYS has consequences. Look at Willow this year. She nearly destroyed the entire world because she'd gone insane with magical fury.
And look at earlier this year, after they brought back Buffy. She brought something with her that nearly killed them all! And who can forget Amy's mom who is destined to live eternity as a cheerleading trophy... or Amy that matter who was a rate for years! And Warren... poor, poor skinless Warren. He just didn't realize what his actions would lead to.
And of course, even our trusty Giles has had to learn this lesson the hard way, as the demon he played with a young man came back and tried to kill while posessing his one time (now dead) girlfriend Jenny Calendar. And she could've told you a thing or two about magic not working out! If her family hadn't cursed Angel with a soul w/ a happiness clause, she might not be dead.
So, anyway, be careful with the magic. Don't destroy the world!
Magic the Gathering?!? Oh, yeah... I remember...
cardboard crack.
I was hooked big time, but the thing I liked the best was the interaction and watching your opponents face when you whipped out that killer combination on them.
I tried the software version and it left me cold. The AI stunk and there was no joy in owning rare cards (anyone wanna buy my REAL cards, PLEASE?!?).
The online version can only be better as far as gameplay, but given the number of enterprising hackers, they'll ruin any chance the online version has for success.
I think I'll pass...
Don't anthropomorphize computers, they don't like it.
I always called Magic the gathering as "Five Color Crack". Its about as addicting, and nearly as expensive.
I read this when penny arcade posted a link to it. I, unfortunatly, would have to agree that the unpleasent population in many online communities is much too large. I haven't tried magic online but I do know a couple of things that can help clear some stuff up in the article. The article talks about duping making everyone's account get erased. They have a protection mechnisim in place that goes like this. Each card is "born" when a deck is opened, it has a unique identifier to that specific card on the server and using that they keep track of all transactions the card has been in. Thus, if a card was duped, they could follow all the transactions back to the original duper and >ONLY ban their account. I beleive that in the contract it does say that you do own your virtual cards, not them. This would probably protect you from some of the nastyness. Now, granted, there's a lot more that can go wrong, but I don't think it's as horrible as the article implies.
And yes, it's the game that "you-know-who" plays.
... Voldemort?
Yes, I did play with him. For a long time, actually - don't ask about it.
Who is "you-know-who"
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
The author goes on and on about how cheating will be rampant online and if you dup cards that we could end up with lots of dupped card being traded or worse yet that these cards could be traded in for actual magic cards.
On and on he goes about how dangerous this online version will be... but here's the catch:
If you can get physical cards for your online cards then you're playing Magic Online when you play at your local store. The meta game is now the same game. How can you tell if someone's "real life" deck isn't stacked with duped cards from his online deck?
Well you can't. And guess what, the game was hacked a long time ago, in real life. Richard Garfield never envisioned people buying crates of the cards to get four of the rare ones in their deck... the game was hacked with money.
So next time you lose at Magic the Gathering at your local hobby store, you can call the guy a cheater. I mean, can he prove he actually bought all those cards?
And for all your *REAL* gaming needs, your source is Gamemaster Online!
I have some hope that M:tG:OL might actually work -- unlike other online games you have something serious to lose besides access -- the card collection you have built up. The biggest problem with online games, as this article points out, is the lack of repercussions to being an ass.
If you've invested a lot more that time into something (eg. bought lots of boosters) then getting kicked off for breaking the terms of use might be enough of a feedback loop to keep some modicum of control.
On most online games you just re-register under another name.
Of course then the issue is -- will they really kick off somebody who has bought $10000 worth of cards ...
They will just have to have a very anti-cheating policy.
That and if it is a least reasonably popular, it will make a whole lot of money, and they will be able to hire alot of coders to stay ahead of the cheaters.
Blizzard, Everquest, and games of that type are at a disadvantage because they only get like $10 a month from their subscribers, MtG subscribers will pay much more as they pay $3 dollars per pack of cards. Adding the fact that the cards can be redeemed for real cards will really draw the MtG fans as well.
As long as WotC pumps a good portion of the revenue into coders to fend off the cheaters, I don't think that they will have much problem. Bandwidth wise WotC is looking at a much more attractive position then the MMORPG's as the ping times won't have to be nearly so low to have a good game.
So lets add up the points shall we?
1. Less Bandwidth required (Less cost)
2. Higher Subscriber Revenues (More revenue)
3. Tangible product extremely cheap to produce
= a large amount of profit to pay coders
Sure their will be bugs, I wouldn't recommend trading with people in the first 2 weeks, for example. But I believe that it won't be nearly as much of a problem as this article's author seems to believe.
I remember a few years ago when the PC version of Magic was released. I thought it was funny. The original game's advertisement was "All you need is a deck, a brain and a friend." I guess that last requirement was a bit much for some of them.
"An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it." Col. Jeff Cooper
The problem is on one hand you have to consider it as a Role Playing game. Don't take this out of the context of "Real life" because some people get far too into RP in these games I think.
If some script kiddie is pissing you off just move on, it IS a game afterall. And I would know as well as the author, the games can be addictive and all, but the fact that you'd start saying "Man, I have over $1500 in rares and skills if I sold my acount" means you think about it a little too much.
The point of the games in the end is to have a little fun, even if you do have to ignore a few morons.
- tristan
Now my victory dance will be substantially less embarrassing.
Welcome to the land of the free...pay toll ahead...no photography...please open your bag...
And of course they are charging the same and in many cases higher prices (as you can find them in card stores on sale for cheaper often) for the virtual cards. Who in their right mind is going to pay more for a virtual sealed deck than they would a real life one. I don't see it happening. (Well its going to happen, but not in the long run)
... but an accurate description of the current status of Diablo II online. The supposedly secure realms have been hacked to pieces. Many people charge items to help other players, sell items on ebay, and focus on the repetitive play that the game rewards.
One of the latest hacks, for example, which I find particularly funny, can program mouse and keyboard actions so that you keep creating games and killing the same monster over and over again soley for the purpose of getting the items the monster drops. This bot works - the prices within the trading economy have already gone down about one half because of the flood of all the items from players running it.
A good online game should not be based on rewarding this kind of repetitive behavior that a bot can perform (quote stolen from LB talking about Tabula Rasa.
I've played this game years ago, back when legends and the Dark were out. Well, after looking what they were doing, they were adding "new" rules and making half-assed cards basd on older, and more powerful, cards. Then you have the Tier1 and Tier 2 playing sets. To play on the upper set, you have to BUY NEW CARDS.
This continual upgrading scheme (for paper,. nonetheless) is what ran me away. I play for fun now, and spend half the time trying to figure out the stupid new variations on the original rules.
Then again, the rules change every other week. How can they update the game so that the new rules are correctly in effect? Still, Online or offline, the game still stinks these days.
nt
The simple fact that many "hardcore" Magic players who have a real-world card collection worth hundreds or thousands and numbering in the many thousands of cards, will most likely not want to effectively start over building their cardbase online, esp. given the very valid points that the author of the article set forth.
I used to be into Magic, and still have my collection, but, if I'm going to pay for cards, I would much rather play with the whiny post-pokemon chits up the street at the card shop who throw a fit about me being cheap because my deck "isn't Type II"....Because next time when he comes up to me begging for a sweet trade for the foil whatever he got, i can smile and say "not interested." Can't do that online. at least, not with the same effect
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
Richard Garfield never envisioned people buying crates of the cards to get four of the rare ones in their deck...
Never envisioned it without also having visions of dancing dollar signs, you mean.
Seriously, the whole point of putting rare cards in any collectible card game is so that people will buy crates of cards to get them...
Something tells me the sysops over at starcitygames.com aren't laughing right now as they're being paged on a SATURDAY MORNING to come in and fix the crashed web servers.
The slashdot effect -- gotta love it.
Alot of nerds on this board. All played Magic at some point. \
I still have original icy manipulator and complete revised edition and fallen empire set.
Magic was good until they came out with a million expansions. Impossible to follow with out going broke.
repeat...
When you play Magic at your local card store, you're playing against people you know and respect.
I don't give a damn what Geordie Tait thinks about online magic, I want to know - Where does he go to play cards? Damn, his e-mail is Canadian.
Now, Shadowfist, there's a game. I want to see an online version of Shadowfist+Necromunda. Here's how it would work:
You have a squad, ala X-Com, that fights other people's squads. In addition, you have a virtual deck of Shadowfist cards. The deck of Shadowfist cards contains cards that are tied to the stats of the characters in your Squad; so if a character in your squad gains the Infiltrate skill, his corresponding card in your deck gains the Infiltrator ability from Shadowfist (attack backrow sites.)
That game would rock.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
I used to be a Magic tournament judge, so I had to know the rules and sets backwards and forwards. He may be referring to the Type I (Classic)/Type II (Standard) "tiers", or he may be talking about the Beginner Level (Portal)/Expert Level (current edition and expansion sets) "tiers". Clarification would be helpful, as either one works. I also haven't dealt with tournament-level Magic in three years, so take my words with a grain of salt. I used to play the pro-tour qualifier circuit (never was good enough to break through, though) before I moved on with my life...now I play casually with my friends and don't even know what edition WotC is up to or what crazy errata they've got going fo rit.
If you want to avoid cheaters, play online with your friends. Playing anonymously is for chumps.
Mirage was a fun set...that cycle was nice in general (Visions was one of the most underrated sets of all time). Then the Tempest block was good, then Magic went to hell. If those are the "Old cards", then they're old but good...oh for a taste of Alliances, or good old Legends...
Is because the Wizards have the intention to charge full retail price for virtual cards. That's right, the same money you could spend in a store, and get real physical cards and at least have something to look at (or take elsewhere) when you're done playing. For this idea alone, I don't see how it can work very well beyond a very dedicated core of people.
Unlike most MMORPG games, MTG: Online isn't going to charge a monthly fee. The draw for EverCrack, Ultima Online, etc is that you pay your 10 bucks same as everyone else, and it's what you do in the game that makes you better or worse than everyone else. MTGO, it's all about the size of your wallet and how much you can afford to spend on getting better. Sure, some of you can say "but you still have to know how to play the game or 10,000 dollars worth of cards don't help". Yeah, true. But during the beta, I estimated that it would cost well over $500 to become "competitive" at the game, with little or no way to change that. Things would be pretty even for about a month, and then the "Mr. Suitcase" players would overwhelmingly dominate the game, much like that one guy who figured out Magic just a little too early at your local comic/card store and whipped the crap out of almost everyone on a regular basis.
My major attraction though, was Tournaments. This is where MTGO really lacks IMO. A typical tourney with 128 players (or so) can and will take up to 8 hours to finish. 8 hours! And you can't leave and go anywhere else either, cause the round might finish early and you'd default by not showing up! I tried a few of these tournaments and they don't have the appeal of a physical tournament where you can go and mess around doing other things (like side tournaments) since you have to sit at the game for a solid 8 hours (or until you lose).
Yeah, it'll suck if hackers do their thing, and if people rip other people off.. but it has to get people to play first if that's going to happen, and I don't think it will.
What they should do (this is just a thought of mine) is sell the regular cards in stores, but print a unique serial number on each one, then you can enter those serial number onto your online account. That way your virtual deck can be the same as your real deck.
People guessing serial numbers shouldn't be a problem if there is a delay in entering the number and it uses a large enough base with enough digits.
Careful kids!
This card game is WAY to addictive. You are much better of sticking with Grass.
I mean, really, how dare they bring out M:tG online during an economic recession?
:)
From what I can see, the online cards run the same as the paper cards, which means every damn cent you can beg, borrow, or steal.
I wonder how many people won't be able to pay their ISP bill because they spent all their money on virtual cards.. Pity we won't get to hear
Never trust an atom. They make up everything.
Amen to that. That was also one of the reasons i stopped playing regularly, the fact that a new set would debut every 3 months, and every one of these kids with rich parents would have a BOX of the new set, and be playing with the very latest pre-fab decks with spoon fed combos straight of the good ol' interweb.
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
quote:
"Magic Online, socially, is not Magic: The Gathering. When you play Magic at your local card store, you're playing against people you know and respect. More than that, you're playing in person, against a living, breathing human being that you can interact with via flesh and sound. You can feel the warmth of that handshake."
the problems with online gaming are rampant, and include, but aren't limited to: playing with 12 year olds, playing with 90 year olds, playing with people your age who act like they're 12 year olds, playing with your mom, and finding out your mom's a l33t hax0r che4t3r.
see, that's the charm of playing games that with people sitting in front of you: there's nothing like Magic: The Gathering: FULL CONTACT. sure, you can feel the warmth of that handshake, but you can also choke the guy out, or maybe, JUST MAYBE, squeeze a bewbie.
you can't do either, online.
especially the bewbie part.
...
and if you could, what if it were your mom's?
Is it just me, or does it seem to anyone else that the essential quality of `being news' is missing from this article?
/. is solving its `erronious article content' problem by posting articles without any content whatsoever?
Could it be that
Not trolling, just musing about having nothing to muse over.
- SMJ - (It's not just a name: it's a bad aftertaste.)
Thanks to the wonderful people at the RIAA and MPAA, the once-beloved-by-hackers WOTC will be able to shut down anyone playing with cards they don't own!
Seriously though, I used to play some online MTG games, and even I did it. I'd build a dream deck for the game, when in reality I didn't own most of those cards. When I played it against my friends from "Stragtegic Gameing Club" (calling it Magic Club wouldn't look as good on college apps, so we played 'risk' once a month), I'd usig desks like the ones i actualy had. But there was a whole lot of nothing stoping me from picking on kids by using a pure type-1 tourniment winner or something.
I guess the news must be a bit slow today.
moments later...
Hey! stop punching me in the skull!
Magic: The Gathering was already online several years ago, and you didn't have to pay all the royalties and other bs to get a decent deck. I would still be playing it if it worked on anything but win95.
More money.
Scott
I mean, you make it look like the size of your (or in most case, your father's) wallet isn't a important factor MTG. It certainly is. And Wizards is saying you will be able to trade your virtual deck for a real deck, so the price may well be right.
As for the tournaments, they can improve, can't they? No one of the problems you describe can't be solved by email notification or longer tournaments (1 hour a day for 8 days).
Sounds like a whiney baby to me. lets all go play! and kick his ass if we see him.
Modesty is one of life's greatest attributes
Does this mean that someday, other card games will be online? Like soliatare and poker?
MO will suck simply because it misses a level of interaction.
I was a serious addict, back in the Alpha Deck days... in otherwords, when it first came out. I spent alot of money on packs and getting hard to get cards. So did quite a few of my fraternity brothers. We played constantly, grumbled about cards getting worn, fought over the rules and the holes in them when it first came out, built custom decks by spending hundreds on cards (to the point that we even didn't buy our normal beer rations all the time or worked extra hours!). Totally great game, totally addictive.
Part of the fun is sitting around in a room full of card players, facing off against a person (or persons if you played in teams or multi player!) with everyone watching and adjusting their decks to face the winner. We drank, we bragged, we bluffed, we bs'ed. It was great.
You don't get that online. Schmucks will build infinitely unbeatable decks with hard cash, ruining it for those who trade or don't have alot of money. Chat is not looking in the other player's eyes. It's just not there.
The author left out the one good point to onlin MtG: you can't smell the freaks you're playing against.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
Also, no teenager stench, which is always a bonus...
http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2002-1
c-hack.com |
Magic: The Gathering is a brilliant game. I have played it since 1993. I have watched the development of the game from day one. Richard Garfield is a genius, and all people in the CCG industry need to tip their cap to him whenever they design any game. That said, it uses a horrible business model, one that was never intended to work on a real player level. This shows up on the tournament level and will show up in MTGO.
When the game was designed, the most powerful cards were the rarest. Black Lotus, a card that lets you get 3 mana for free (where you normally only get to produce one on the first turn and two on the second and so on), is one of the rarest of all tournament-legal Magic cards. This was done because Wizards naively believed that hardcore players couldn't collect all of the cards, so the harder it was to get something the more powerful it should be.
Unfortunately, the tournament players learned that to compete you HAD to have one copy of each of the "Power Nine," the most-abusable cards in the game. Cards quickly spiraled into the $20, $30 and even (gasp) $50 range! If those cards weren't restricted to one-per-deck (where most cards are four-per-deck), their prices would have been even higher on the secondary market.
Well, Wizards learned that those cards were too powerful and stopped printing them. Again, naively assuming that if you limit the supply that eventually things will become more fair. That wasn't what happened -- the cards became more and more expensive. Today, to get the "Power Nine," you're talking about $800 or more.
Wizards learned that having a group of "haves" and "have nots" was not good for the long-term success of the game. So they created a new tournament format that didn't use any really old cards. This was called Type II, and eventually called Standard. What the Standard tournament format did was to "ban" hundreds of cards without specifically choosing to do so. Invalidating the early players' purchases.
If Magic was an online game from day one, they could have tweaked the costs and gameplay effects of their most-broken (and most-useless) cards. But in Magic, you are stuck. Since MTG-Online must mirror MTG-card board, you get all of the drawbacks of being online but none of the benefits.
Further, when you are dealing with an online game the FIRST priority must be "how will the abusers play this game?", because if it isn't you are screwed. With MTG-card board you have tons of social gaming groups that don't have to deal with the tournament gaming scene. This is extremely unlikely to happen in MTG-Online. Again, since it is linked to a nine-year-old game with sloppy, very complex rules, problems arise.
And my biggest point: Magic is just too expensive. To play in a constructed Standard tournament with just one deck, you usually need to spend $100. Many of the most popular decks run north of $200. And these use cards that are IN PRINT! Then, when Standard has a set rotation (banning another 700 cards to make room for the new sets that have just been released) you need to buy more and more.
You can avoid this by entering Sealed Deck tournaments, but then you are paying around $20 to make a deck with a limited set of cards. I like them, but how many $20 tournaments can you enter a month? Even one every other week makes MTGO a $500/year online game.
For the record, to play any of the online CCGs that I have developed, players need to spend $10 to jump in, $35 to have a serious tournament deck and about $100 to have a full "play set" of any given expansion.
When Wizards gives up on MTG-Online, much like it has the Magic Interactive Encyclopedia and the original Magic PC game, the people who have spent their money will be left with exactly nothing. Our games allow peer-to-peer play (albiet awkwardly) such that if something ever happens to us, you can keep on playing.
Disclaimer time: I speak for Blue Sky Red Design and myself only, not for my employer, our parent company or World Wrestling Entertainment in any way.
Online wrestling as a trading card game? WWF With Authority.
You don't have to be a rules lawyer - You can just play the game and the software keeps track of the rules for you. That is one of the things that bothered me about MTG in real life -- if you didn't know rules very well, it became difficult to play. And the rules were difficult to keep up with...
are the province of queer pimply 15 year old boys anyway.
What in the hell is keeping you guys paying for crap like this?
I'm going to go down to the gym right now and do some boxing (no kidding). Play an online game? Might as well put on a dress and play "barbies".
Sheesh. Did you guys dicks and balls fall off or something?
AHAHAHAHAHHHAAHHAAHA
Oh man, that had to be really cool for about a day after the movie came out, and then completely sucked. Good thing you have such a low user #.
*sigh* Man... that really is funny.
They are only "typing angrily" at you. They may be falsly(sp?) accusing you, but is it really harming you??
I quit playing about 1.5-2 years ago, and hadn't really heard much about M:TG online. However, before I quit, many people played online with a program known as Apprentice. It was free, and had all the cards in the game in the database, so that you could build decks and then test them against other people online. It wasn't a high quality program, the cards had no pictures, the program had bugs, etc, but it was still a great way to play at your house and to test decks. Does anyone know if WotC has done anything to them?
Didn't you know everybody is a 6'5" muscle-bound black belt online? And if you troll me, I will so rip open your torso, eat your spinal column for lunch and save the the interstines for my dog, you bitch. Or maybe I'll just type rude obscenities in your general direction; Whichever is the most convenient. But if you were here, boy-oh-boy...
You need a FREE iPod Nano
If you're going to be into fantasy, do it right. I was once into this enough to own a one-ton Percheron warhorse. (Plus the truck, trailer, gear, etc.)
My knowledge on this is a bit thin, so bear with me. When you register a Windows product, doesn't it record your CPU's serial number? I was just thinking this would be a useful way to track abuse and permanently ban some of the @sses that play. Sure, you can register under a different name, but unless you swap out that core... Of course, then you'd be turning away business, even if they are idiots...
You need a FREE iPod Nano
But can you cast Jebediah's 5th level Mystical Scortcher without untapping? I think not!!
You need a FREE iPod Nano
Nigger? Common man, when was the lst time you saw Will Smith nig? I mean, i haven't nigged in ages...
Dumbass.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
If this online Magic game were to sponcer a "get-together" like dating clubs, how many people would actually show up after the amount of smack delt online?
"Oh, so you're The Verminator... I'M GONNA RIP YOU STINKIN' HEAD OFF!!! NOBODY TALKS ABOUT MY MOTHER LIKE THAT!!!"
Hell, I'd pay just to watch....
You need a FREE iPod Nano
the whole point of putting rare cards in any collectible card game is so that people will buy crates of cards to get them...
Actually the creator thought that a most people would have two starter decks and 4 booster packs. The reason for rare cards was to help balance the powerful cards. No one at wizards thought that magic would be as popular as it became and there was no way to predict it. Richard Garfield thought you'd never actually see all the cards, and rare cards would make the game more interesting.
The dollar signs came later.
But this article is no more than a warning to any online game developer to remember what you are creating when you create a community where people interact and where digital property can be turned into very real currency.
I do security
The expense is the reason I gave up on MtG. After dropping about $200 on cards, I realized that it was going to cost way too much to ever keep up. Mind you, I spent some of it about 1 tournament before some of my cards became unusable.
The tournament system was ridiculous in our area. It was the same people over and over, with no qualified judge, because WotC wanted way too much time and money to certify someone. Our nearest official judge in Lubbock, TX - which meant a three hour drive for him just to sit around and arbitrate. I don't think he ever really enjoyed it and in the end, I believe he quit working as a judge.
In the end, I watched the Magic community in our town switch over to other games. It stopped being fun and the requirements of running a real tournament were too high. I think the main discouragement for me was realizing that the point system in place meant that no one from our group was ever going to get outside the county (anyone from our group would have been OK).
I don't get it - competition can be fun without being as anally organized as WotC made it. They managed to take a game that looked great and played pretty well and turn it into some sort worldwide bizarre Darwinistic system. For what? Grins? I doubt it.
I think that maybe DnD and most paper-and-pencil RPG's are more fun because you can't make a tournament system work in that way. In the end, I went back to my book games and that's where I am now.
Never again.
To celebrate the occasion of my 1000th post, I will post no more forever on Slashdot. Goodbye.
That really got me laughing out loud.
-Arnulf
I had a friend... Let's call him Mike. Mike became bored with magic when he realized that he was spending hundreds of dollars per deck to change his proxy cards (fake cards for testing purposes) into real cards. A well-designed proxy deck will basically win every time, btw. He was sick of it.
He sold off all of his cards, and gave me his land / commons (somewhere I have a grocery bag full of living lands, wyrms, forests, etc) and bought two special starter packs that contained a starter and two boosters each. He proceeded to trade with people... collecting unwanted cards and trading bits here and there for things that other people wanted. He would hook people up for cards that they were looking for in exchange for a small cut, and he was a good dealmaker. Within a week, his deck was competitive again (he knew the power of common green), and within six months he was trading legends / antiquities and his collection rivaled that of his old deck... And within the year he was bored again and gave me all of his cards.
The moral of the story... Lots of people are going to be spending lots of money on this online game. If you can spend 10 hours playing a game every day, can you really resist buying a booster every morning? I used to be one of those people. We didn't put any value into common or uncommon cards, or even crappy rares. It sounds like there will be a lot of room for friendly tag-a-longs who are willing to ingraciate themselves by not taking the game seriously... and who don't have to pay any money to play.
Sounds fun. Where can I sign up?
This Sig is a mnemonic device designed to allow you to recognize this author in the future.
For as long as the people creating them keep trying to make single player games where players can play next to each other.
I admit to playing only casually, and never in a tournament. I admit to not being a card game designer. But I respectfully disagree with everything you just said about price.
I stopped playing some years ago, so I don't know the new card sets and rules. Maybe things are different now. But when I was playing, I built my best decks by going to the card store and looking through the 5 and 10 cent card bins. These were the cards that 'serious players' were throwing away. They just weren't powerful enough to really cut it. No self respecting player at a tournament would play with them.
I remember one deck in particular. It was built for ~$2 plus a few common cards from my collection. There were no uncommon, rare, ultra-rare cards. And it won. My friends who were big on the tournament scene talked about 'lightweight' decks vs 'heavyweight' decks. By any standard, this should have been a lightweight deck. It creamed everything.
Was I that good? No, I was a fairly average player. Was my deck that good? Not by anyone else's standards. MtG has one of the most incredible buisiness I have ever seen. People think they can win by buying more cards - the Mr. Suitcase approach. But true to the original advertising and the original idea of what the game should be, you can win with a *cheap* deck.
I would be most interested to see a tourny in which players could buy their cards for the decks before the tourny from discount 5 and 10 cent bins. Put a price cap on it - no more than $10 for the whole deck. Maybe allow a few uncommons. No rares.
This sort of format would take some of the randomness out of sealed deck tourneys - it is entirely possible to get an unusuable deck in those sorts of situations. It would force an emphasis on deck building, creativity, and player skill rather than bank accounts. If you still want some randomness, everybody digs through the same bins. If it has to be 'fair,' give everybody a bin with the same cards in it.
And because you are deailing with mostly common cards, there does not need to be a cap on which sets are used. Opening the field up to all cards forces players to look for interesting combos that no one could ever use in the current style of tournament.
I bet the decks that came out of a tourney format like that would be some of the most fun to play. And I bet there would be be one or two every tourney that could whoop my 'unbeatable' deck.
Let's see an emphasis on creativity - as the game was intended to be played. You stop the Mr. Suitcase syndrome at the tourney level, and return to a game of strategy and a little luck. Who knows, maybe your favorite card will be lurking at the bottom of the bucket...
Isn't playing for items of monetary value, where randomness/luck is involved, considered gambling? Online MtG isn't any different than playing blackjack on some server in Antiqua. This is simply a underhanded way to allow people to gamble legitimately on the Internet. Not only is this illegal, but it also indoctrinates children with the dangerous world of online gambling.
This is written about a game, but everything it says reflects the current state of Internet eCommerce, except that the cards used (credit cards) have liability limits imposed by legislation, and these card games are (effectively) privately minted money.
Exploiting bugs to achieve virtual rewards. No wonder some posts are marked +5 funny.
in person. It is NOT a game it is a marketing scheme like few other. If it was a game then I would be able to play with mockups of legal cards vs spending all that CASH to buy my way into a game. This is RPG'n for the mentally deficient, or cards for the man that won't grow up.
if you've ever played tribes 2 you can vote to kick certain players out of the game. if someone's cheating it's usually obvious and they get booted pretty quick. if someone's just causing trouble by trying to boot honest players, people vote no about kicking the honest player and the troublemaker ends up getting booted next.
i'm not sure how this would work in a one on one card game, maybe some sort of point system where kick requests are reviewed by moderators but the solution is democratic self regulation by the players themselves.
it works because 90% of gamers are pretty honest people and just want to have a good time...
I played MTGO quite extensively during the free beta period. Stopped when they went live and started charging far too much.
1) Cards you buy for MTGO are not stored locally, but in a large database WOTC has back at their co-lo. It is conceivable that duping/illegal card hacks are possible, but the Leaping Lizard folks have been going out of their way to make sure that doesn't happen. Of course, that setup hasn't stopped all the duping hacks in Diablo II...
2) As was mentioned in another post, WOTC is charging real-life prices for MTGO cards. Same price per pack as if you went to your local store and got a physical set. This wouldn't be terrible if it didn't lead into...
3) You don't own your MTGO cards, nor is WOTC liable to replace them beyond $15. This language was inserted into the TOS about 2/3 of the way through the beta period and caused a huge shitstorm amongst the beta testers. So let's say you've spent $1000 on MTGO cards, and there's some sort of database corruption and your account is hosed. You're now out $985 with nothing to show for it.
See, the thing is that WOTC adamantly does NOT want MGTO to compete with standard MTG. They believe that if they charge less for MTGO (say, something like $0.50 US/booster) that all the MTG players will defect to MTGO. (Never mind the fact that physical MTG is on its last legs anyways.) They're right to a degree...I do think there would be some defecting, but not nearly as much as WOTC is panicking about. As it is, a significant portion of the beta testers pledged to quit as soon as the game went live, and from what I've seen most of them stuck to their guns.
While I can understand the commentator's point about people online being complete choads, and could even be generalized, in specific instances, it's completely backwards. One case in point is Sanctum, an online collectable card game, probably the best one I've found looking around. The people are great to play with. The game is balanced. The replay options are enormous. Did I mention the people are great to play with? Instead of the 90% of people are choads (a la Penny Arcade) I'd have to say 99.98% of the Sanctum community is truly interested in helping new people play, giving pointers on how to play certain strategies, willing to trade and help new players get going with common cards and such.
I highly recommend it. I can't imagine playing M:TG Online.
Sanctum can be found here.
Regards,
Mark Norton
The Solution: http://www.dragonstudios.com/ or http://www.e-league.com/walkthru/walkthrough_for_n ew_players.htm
Big apple, new Yorik, undig it, something's unrotting in Edenmark.
I have yet to see a decent computer game version of Magic. I got the older DOS-based one where you walk around picking up cards and stuff...its lame and buggy.
Besides, everybody is gonna be playing that new Star Wars online game.
...All I can say is that my life is pretty strange...
Funny how everyone online says taht 90% of the online gaming community is made up of shitheads, but that nobody believes they personally are part of that 90%. What a load of horse crap. This article is pointless and without any redeeming qualities. Read if you want to get your jollies off of feeling good by making fun of "h4xors", "kiddies", powerplayers, and any other group you want to lump everyone but your own friends into.
It was a pretty cool game, the advance variation of the French defense. I got to make the classical bxh7+ sacrifice, he brought out his king to g6 (no choice), and I was pushing that poor fool right into a mating net. When BAM, there's a big flash on my screen and his king is back on its home square!
"What the fuck was that?"
"Ha, ha! I got the recall king upgrade! My king can teleport home to its recall square three times per game!"
All right, two can play at this game. I went over to the secure server, gave them my credit card, and bought a couple of upgrades of my own. Then I went looking for the punk.
This time I played the king's gambit, 1. e4 e5 2. f4 exf4 3. nf3 g5. I let him have it with 4. bxf4xg5.
"How'd you take both of those pawns?"
"Ha, ha, punk! I've got double dragon bishops!"
The punk's eyes widened as he realized there was no way to save the queen in his position.
Now that we're both wised up, the games are more even, so it's not as much fun any more. There's too much trivial complexity and it takes hours to play a serious game.
But we still like to beat up newbies. My favorite target is this one guy, GMKasparov. He would be an okay player except that he never spends any money for hypercastling or semi-transparent pawns or range-attack rooks. But he got me good last night with this weird "en passant" powerup. I think he must have a cheat client, because I couldn't even find "en passant" in the powerup catalog!
Any and everyone who played the beta in its last days realized how cool and fun this concept is. IF the game was more of a monthly-fee type then it would be great, but like the author of this article realized... paying for 'virtual objects' screws you over once the dupe hacks come out... and there WILL be dupe hacks. See Diablo II. The economy on the main realms got anally raped when the first dupes came out.
When I heard of the online version I was breifly hopeful. I thought maybe since it doesn't involve the sale of cards it might actually be a fair game and be worth getting in to it. But then I see that, nope, its the same thing, only now you pay money to get the privlege to pretend you have a rare card (think about it - increased price through scarcity will fail utterly in an electronic forum where scarcity is completely artificial.)
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Did anyone else notice also that this article was posted on the site of a store that sells the physical M:TG cards? This would seem pretty obviously to be a conflict of interest since having WOTC sell the cards direct (the online versions and then the subsequent trade-ins for physical cards) knocks out some of their StarCity's business...
[I've been playing Magic since 1994.] The only people that I could see willing to pay full retail PLUS entry fee of $3 to play in a single elimination booster draft would have to be living somewhere where you couldn't get 8 players together on your own. Of course, if you live somewhere like that, you've probably never heard of Magic anyway. Most people who have internet access never pay more than $80/box of cards, ~$2.25/pack. This is a whole dollar less than what WotC is charging for VIRTUAL packs. Add on entry fee, for a total of $15, and someone trying out MTGonline for the first time could spend nearly $50 in a single night getting swept over and over. "But what about card redemption?", you may ask. Card redemption is a joke. They want people to think that there is actually some sort of parity between real and online cards. There is NOT. You have to collect a *complete*set* just to redeem them for a real complete set. I guarantee you will have tons of leftover virtual rares, uncommons and commons that you can't redeem. Even if you manage to trade all of your rares 1 for 1 to build a set of Odyssey (the last standalone expansion), you would have paid over $360 for the set. SUCKER! You could have bought the same thing on Ebay for $110-$140. My scores for MtGOnline: Game mechanics implementation: A+ Graphics: B (it's a card game) GUI: F (horribly inconvienent to navigate) Price: F- (even the malls don't charge retail price for REAL cards) Playtesting: D (you can't playtest your real decks unless you have virtual copies of the cards too! holy crap!) OVERALL: C- It does make a pretty good database to search for cards.
I played Sanctum 3-4 years ago, and it was absolutely fantastic. Cheating was never a problem, unless the occasional lossed connections in losing situations counts.
I have no idea how magic online works, but these games can be designed reliably.
Richard Garfield never envisioned people buying crates of the cards to get four of the rare ones in their deck.
You're kidding, right?
Please tell me you're kidding.
I played Sanctum, and almost got into Chron X. I've never played MtG.
In addition to your points, I'd add that Sanctum was designed as computer only from day 1, so it had the ability to use much more sophisticated rules. It makes for a better game.
I agree that tweaking cards in order to balance the game, although can have some effect on the value of those cards, is far preferrable to banning them altogether (making them almost worthless), or leaving the game unbalanced.
I stopped playing sanctum only because the designers didn't understand how their game was played, and left it unbalanced.
Despite a lot of the stories and speculation on here I've met mostly nice people in game. Yes, there are kiddies who in it for the excitement of trading and the quest for the deck that will destroy all opponent (like this deck ).
But there are a lot more people who are civilized and friendly. If you don't want to spend gobs of money just join (or create) a guild where money isn't the guiding force. You can create "buddy lists" (although I really hate that name) of people who are fun to play against, and block any kiddies you come across.
I've been playing for a couple of weeks (I got in on the tail end of the beta), and I have only met one jerk. I said hi, he said, "you already sound like a fag", so I blocked him and resigned the game. If everyone does this these people will find it hard to find an oponnent.
is not to play
I came to the datacenter drunk with a fake ID, don't you want to be just like me?
An interesting point has been made, would you seriously pay money to get virtual cards that can be redeemed for real cards, and potential play experience rivalling a high school fight?
I think only hardcore magic fans would want to play this, seriously. Anyone who doesn't play the game in real life has no incentive to play it online, since the hardcore players will be spending so much time trying to screw over the system and other players to get those uber-rare cards and redeem them so fast that nobody else has a chance at them.
Multiplayer Online games have fatal flaws
1. Any form of RL value ("ebay")
- Fine rare item, sell it on ebay, play for 6 months sell your character on ebay, etc.
2. Any form of in-game currency or inventory/items that doesn't work on market-based principals. (IE, no license to duplicate items, each item in the world is unique and can only have one owner.)
- No generation or re-spawn should be required to keep sufficient inventory in the game. All existing games as far as I know need to "replenish" stores, or the stores are unlimited, which let's people hoard certain items.
3. Inventory period.
- Can a real person hold 300 dead rabbits? Didn't think so. The reason people can hoard anything in these games is because their inventory is so deep that it allows them to. One certain game I was playing during betatest would have 60 players surround this one shop keepers respawn point, then when the server rebooted they would quickly login and buy everything the shopkeeper had and turn around and sell the items for 100000X the price. If there was a realistic limit(like in weight/room-in-backpack) on inventory, one person should not be able to buy out 20,000 units of any item and be able to fit all that in their inventory.
4. Any form of client-side storage
Diablo I/II has this problem, as the game stores data on the client side, it's easy to make whatever item you want, even make your character have any stats you want. This is also the same problem in peer-to-peer server-less games, where the client data can be "bot"-ed. The client should only recieve game state and send actions, not do any calcuation and not send what isn't requested. "Attack player X" and server does the calculation. FPS games present a further problem since to shoot, a aiming point has to be sent, and since the client also receives the location of everyone, it makes it easy to just auto-track.
In short, why would you pay money to be part of a fictional world where you get screwed over, and over and over? This is why many RPG games don't attract the right kind of people (usually the hack and slash FPS/Diablo crowd) since the people who are used to kill everything that moves ruin the game for everyone else. (Some games have a notoriety feature that makes it so pk'ers are highlighted when they are in the area.)
No one at wizards thought that magic would be as popular
.123 hitters and pitchers who were 5-25 to get one Babe Ruth.
Yes, that would certainly explain the name of the game, wouldn't it?
If you believe the whole "rare card" scam wasn't planned out from day one, you're a sucker.
This has been standard trading card marketing practice since the days when you had to buy 50 packs of bubblegum full of
People being asses in online games usually really care about their online characters. Killing their character in a game would be taken painfully by them. Don't try to beat them up in RL, go after them in a game. Take something they value from them.
I used to be a MUD admin long time ago. We had death penalty. For some bullies dying meant months or even years of RL lost and their chars got smaller. Worked like a charm.
Yes, they can hire more coders, but even the best coders in the world sometimes make mistakes, especially on extremely complicated products like Online Magic. If this weren't the case, we wouldn't have the endless stream of /. articles decrying Outlook and IE.
Besides the above, the paragraphs on the social issues make sense. I've seen friends of mine in Diablo II and others act totally idiotic in a manner they never would in real life. Once you put a friendly game online, all the stigma that comes with being a jackass in real life disappears. MTG:OL is going to suck, and you'd have to be stupid, insane, rediculously optimistic, foolishly trusting, or free with your money to try it.
That tourney idea you've got - it's a good one. I'd play, and I left a post earlier about never wanting to ever go back to the days of Black Tar *ahem* Lotus.
If I had any mod points, I'd give a little up just because of this idea.
You are all fartheads.
I play a fair bit of Diablo II online and I've developed a technique for dealing with cheats: I don't care. If someone were to steal a valuable item from me somehow, through my naivity or otherwise, I just wouldn't care. I've built up my character, and I can do it again. I'm playing the game to enjoy myself, not so I can be 133+.
I don't know much about MtGOL, but from what I've read here virtual cards will be redeemed for real ones (or at least their value). Because of this, people with good collections of genuine Magic cards can only lose. Their collections will be as valuable as the dupers' fake collection.
This is the equivalent of a government allowing virtual money in an insecure environment. If it is possible for someone to cheat the system and print their own money (or dupe their cards) with no legal recourse, it will happen, and the value of every holder of that currency will lose out.
To end this semi drunken rant, I will summarise by saying that anything's value is in the eye of the receiver. Be it cash, a Grandfather sword, or a Black Lotus card. If you can't trust the printer of the currency, don't invest in it.
Cheers,
Noims.
PS. please excuse my spelling, grammar, and keyboard (my E doesn't work right)
This is not the greatest sig in the world. This is just a tribute.
wanna hear sad? We were moving once in the mid 60's. I'm a young teen then. My dad didn't want to pay 'freight" on the big moving van for my comic book and mad magazine colection going back to the 50's. several large boxes worth, but some were primo first editions, whole series, etc, Dc and Marvels. Nuthin big, just FIRST EDITIONS , entry of new characters like spiderman and silver surfer, all kinza stuff. oh ya, buncha crappy old BASEBALL cards, too. Not to mention the sci fi paperbacks. So, asked a friend if he wanted them, he said yes, and I GAVE AWAY what would now be worth (very rough extimate last I went into a comic shop) between a quarter million and a half million bucks worth of comics.
I still razz him about that.
Why didn't they just re-release the old PC version with a *complete* and *updatable* card catalog this time instead of jacking around and removing some of the best cards in the game (moat comes to mind), with a dedicated server version for running internet & LAN games? Shit, I *hate* windows but I'd let go of a partition for that in a second. This Online thing is too damned expensive to even consider - the cash alone is why I'm not a player of the RL game anymore.
You are all fartheads.
Then... it ceased being fun. The exact moment was when I realized that I was playing a guy who, just from what he walked in with, must have spent a minimum of $5000.00 on cards and who had asked around about what sort of deck I was playing. Can you say death?
It broke down to this: A decent deck builder, with access to every card in the game, would (over many games) kick the ever' lovin' crap out of the guy who didn't own it all. Instantly, I was done.
This online version is different how? Oh, you can cheat now. No thanks, I'll pass.
"Avast! Prepare for the rodgering!" THWACK! "Arrr.. me nards.."
You really should. You have a lot of card games, some are quite good and well designed. They're fun to play and they even go online. Here in Brazil, we have Magic and Pokemon. A new card game will come out: "Big Brother Card Game". Yes, a card game based on those horrendous reality shows... And yes, it is true...
"Whatever made you decide that hanging around a bunch of sweaty, oiled-up, scantily clad guys was a "manly" thing to do?"
It may or may not be. But i'd rather run the risk of erring on the "boxing" side of queer than the "D&D online" side of the equation.
Honest to god, its a really pussy thing to do.
I'm making fun of you because I've seen these games and they're for pimply 15 year old boys with no redeeming social graces.
You're all a bunch of losers.
I am not. I may, in fact, be your father. Which proves the triumph of environment over genetics.
I've seen those "Magic, the Gathering" books in bookstores for years, but I never before knew how the thing worked. You buy more cards to get more power in the game. That is so tacky.
..it's been taken over by some of the long-time players when the company couldn't support itself. Some of the changes they've made include re-releasing the OOP cards, and doing some tweaks to reign the balance back in.
In addition, rumors are that the new expansion will be entering a full beta a little later this year.
That Jesus Christ guy is getting some terrible lag... it took him 3 days to respawn! -NJ CoolBreeze
Has anyone who's posted played a password protected version of Never Winter Nights? ...as in, you provide the server for your friends and only your friends, then proceed to play a mutually respectful game with honest rewards and accountability.
Online Magic should provide the same capability. If it doesn't i suggest that you adamantly request such before paying money... online != anonymous.
That's it. The perfect solution for clubs, groups, and privateers.
'nuff said.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
I was a god at magic, friends I crushed in my play group routinely went to win 25,000$ at pro tours.
I didn't do well in tournaments since I wanted to punch kids who took forever on their turn because my deck played slow and cheaters. Judges also didn't know the fucking rules. No cheating or rules lawyering online. Too bad I don't play that game anymore, the people who made the cards abused drugs and it showed in the quality of the game play later.
God spoke to me
What, you didn't list Star Trek: Conquest Online (www.conquestonline.com) as part of your products? Oh, that's right, I forgot that you abandoned the product and left the remaining players hanging, with bugs in code still remaining. In any case, I do recommend that people check out Sanctum (www.digitaladdiction.com) as well. It, too, was let go by its creators, but the rights to the code were sold to some dedicated fans of the game (www.NIOGA.net) who have picked up the pieces, kept the game running, and are finishing up the touches on the new expansion. In addition, they tweaked and re-released the old OOP cards so that everyone has a shot at the old cards of value. If you go, and like Sanctum and see me there, tell me you saw this article, and I can set you up with hundred or so commons and uncommons (assuming you get ranked so you can trade) so you will have something to work with for variety.
I had a free account during the beta period - there were always hundreds, sometimes thousands of players on the server at any time. It never took more than 10 seconds for someone to join a game and get started. So what's it like now, that the non-free version has started - are there many players available? I figured that it would probably be very quiet. Are the games fun at the moment - or is the whole thing ruined by players with every card? (During the beta, everyone had every card and everyone played one of 4 or 5 standard decks that would almost always win over a "novel" deck.)
Maintaining loads of legal tournament cards was not good for the success of WotC sales. While it is true that they stopped printing the power nine after Unlimited it is also true that tournament decks could be built without including the entire power nine, or not including them at all. I started playing in 1994 and some of the cards were definitely broken. Chaos Orb in particular comes to mind. But, the bottom line is, you can get more people, especially kids, to buy cards if they and/or their parents don't have to shell out $100 for a single card to some card shop where Wizards isn't making a profit anymore. It's much easier to convince folks to shell out $50-$100 for a box which will shortly become obsolete. It's what generates repeat business, so that WotC has enough cash to buy TSR and ruin AD in the 3rd edition, while getting gamers who have to have the latest stuff to shell out cash for all the new books. Quality no longer matters to WotC, they've made their money. Now they just care about increasing profits.
Yes, I'm bitter. I see through the scam.
Real software engineers regret the existence of COBOL, FORTRAN and BASIC.