I'm not really questioning the business ethic or anything. I know wizards have to pay for the servers, I just don't want to have to buy my cards again. Which leaves me with cards that are from later editions that I don't particularly want to play, or buy for that matter.
I dunno, I just can't justify the expense, all over again. I just wish there was a way to play with my cards over the internet in a similar fashion to The Eye of Judgment. That game was pretty cool but with the cards so easily copyable it's so hard to find a legit matchup.
any one play magic online?
Re: any one play magic online?
Marurun wrote:Don’t mind-shart your pants, guys
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Gamerforlife
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Re: any one play magic online?
Ah memories, I used to play with a group of people back in high school and occasionally while in college. We got tired of the constant rule changes so we just played by our own rules. While other guys got together for poker, we played Magic. I still have a bunch of cards. Since moving to Florida I don't really play anymore but I'll never get rid of those cards.
I had a fun white color deck that used to piss my friends off. It was built around defense,life gaining and resurrecting creature cards. I was impossible to kill
And I had a black deck built around instant killing creatures and making people discard cards. I hardly ever had to worry about actual combat.
Playing online seems wrong. It's like the whole playing video games online thing. Doesn't appeal to me. Nothing beats having a bunch of friends over and playing in your living room or kitchen with some pizza and drinks.
I had a fun white color deck that used to piss my friends off. It was built around defense,life gaining and resurrecting creature cards. I was impossible to kill
And I had a black deck built around instant killing creatures and making people discard cards. I hardly ever had to worry about actual combat.
Playing online seems wrong. It's like the whole playing video games online thing. Doesn't appeal to me. Nothing beats having a bunch of friends over and playing in your living room or kitchen with some pizza and drinks.
RyaNtheSlayA wrote:
Seriously. Screw you Shao Kahn I'm gonna play Animal Crossing.
Re: any one play magic online?
I play Magic Online quite a bit. It's great for me. The v3 client sucks, yes, but MTG the game is just that good, and MTGO is a good way to play it regardless of the many faults of the client (and I think WotC is actually picking themselves up and starting to fix it. SLOWLY).
I can probably answer any questions you guys have about it.
The social aspect of the paper game is mostly absent, as you would imagine. Some will miss it, some will enjoy it more this way.
The reasoning of "they should just charge a monthly fee and give you all cards" aspect is brought up frequently. WotC would make a lot less money that way, I think. During beta test of MTGO, that was how it was. What happens is: if limited is free, people don't play well, and often will quit when they don't like the deck they get. This sucks because you'll get byes instead of playing when you wanted to. When people pay and have prizes on the line, if you get a bye you won't mind so much - and it basically won't happen unless your opponent has net problems or something.
Similarly for casual constructed. I think the "monthly fee" model wouldn't be successful in the end - see if you like playing Apprentice against random folks and that should give you an idea.
Some notes:
Apprentice is a free and legal option, but it has several rather large drawbacks (huge advantage: it's free)
There is something very similar to Apprentice that has much better presentation (card art), but it violates copyrights etc.
Limited (drafts / sealed deck) online is nearly 100% sanctioned (pay entry fee, win prizes). It will be more or less as
expensive as "paper" drafts, considering you get prizes if you don't lose all the time. The competition will be typically much stronger online though (and you will learn a lot and improve, most likely); If you are new and/or not so good at playing I don't really recommend this until they bring leagues back (despite paying out a poor prize to entry fee ratio, leagues provide you with lots of limited play opportunities for your entry fee - great to learn).
Constructed is typically a good bit cheaper online, as singles tend to be cheaper (there are important exceptions) - there are a LOT of limited players that just want to sell their cards to play more limited.
If you are a casual player you can certainly get a strong deck for around 30 bucks that will give you lots of fun. Teh official MTG site even has a weekly column dedicated to suggesting that sort of stuff (based on MTGO prices, usually).
If you are on a budget and still want to play competitively there are some options:
1. Momir basic is an online only format where your deck is 100% basic lands, but you can pay X and discard a card (one of your lands) to get a random creature from the online cardpool with converted mana cost of X. Unfortunately you will still need to get the Momir "avatar" which should be around 10. The basic lands are free.
2. Pauper is a player created format where you can only play commons. Considering the absence of uncommons and rares, the format is suprisingly interesting (seriously, try it before you judge it as being crap - it's not as good as "real" Magic but it's very good and excellent value for money). There are some Player Run Events (PREs), about one per day, free to enter and with modest prizes (sponsored by some online card dealers or generous players).
Better yet, recently WotC announced that it is going to try out Pauper as a sanctioned event (i.e. you pay an entry fee and can win prizes).
Depending on the deck, and with the CHEAP price of commons online (some big traders even give you 30 or 60 commons per month for free for the advertising) I think you can get it for 5 bucks or so (rough estimate). You will have to pay slightly for some of the very best commons, but pauper decks run a lot of commons that will be free.
Feel free to ask me questions.
Ivo.
I can probably answer any questions you guys have about it.
The social aspect of the paper game is mostly absent, as you would imagine. Some will miss it, some will enjoy it more this way.
The reasoning of "they should just charge a monthly fee and give you all cards" aspect is brought up frequently. WotC would make a lot less money that way, I think. During beta test of MTGO, that was how it was. What happens is: if limited is free, people don't play well, and often will quit when they don't like the deck they get. This sucks because you'll get byes instead of playing when you wanted to. When people pay and have prizes on the line, if you get a bye you won't mind so much - and it basically won't happen unless your opponent has net problems or something.
Similarly for casual constructed. I think the "monthly fee" model wouldn't be successful in the end - see if you like playing Apprentice against random folks and that should give you an idea.
Some notes:
Apprentice is a free and legal option, but it has several rather large drawbacks (huge advantage: it's free)
There is something very similar to Apprentice that has much better presentation (card art), but it violates copyrights etc.
Limited (drafts / sealed deck) online is nearly 100% sanctioned (pay entry fee, win prizes). It will be more or less as
expensive as "paper" drafts, considering you get prizes if you don't lose all the time. The competition will be typically much stronger online though (and you will learn a lot and improve, most likely); If you are new and/or not so good at playing I don't really recommend this until they bring leagues back (despite paying out a poor prize to entry fee ratio, leagues provide you with lots of limited play opportunities for your entry fee - great to learn).
Constructed is typically a good bit cheaper online, as singles tend to be cheaper (there are important exceptions) - there are a LOT of limited players that just want to sell their cards to play more limited.
If you are a casual player you can certainly get a strong deck for around 30 bucks that will give you lots of fun. Teh official MTG site even has a weekly column dedicated to suggesting that sort of stuff (based on MTGO prices, usually).
If you are on a budget and still want to play competitively there are some options:
1. Momir basic is an online only format where your deck is 100% basic lands, but you can pay X and discard a card (one of your lands) to get a random creature from the online cardpool with converted mana cost of X. Unfortunately you will still need to get the Momir "avatar" which should be around 10. The basic lands are free.
2. Pauper is a player created format where you can only play commons. Considering the absence of uncommons and rares, the format is suprisingly interesting (seriously, try it before you judge it as being crap - it's not as good as "real" Magic but it's very good and excellent value for money). There are some Player Run Events (PREs), about one per day, free to enter and with modest prizes (sponsored by some online card dealers or generous players).
Better yet, recently WotC announced that it is going to try out Pauper as a sanctioned event (i.e. you pay an entry fee and can win prizes).
Depending on the deck, and with the CHEAP price of commons online (some big traders even give you 30 or 60 commons per month for free for the advertising) I think you can get it for 5 bucks or so (rough estimate). You will have to pay slightly for some of the very best commons, but pauper decks run a lot of commons that will be free.
Feel free to ask me questions.
Ivo.
Re: any one play magic online?
whats your name online so i can add you to my buddies? mine is Raztat
Re: any one play magic online?
I gotta stack of Magic cards in my closet havent played in 4 years, i remember i used to have a pretty awesome RED/BLACK deck. Never played in any tournys though.
Re: any one play magic online?
The lingo in MTGO is to refer to MTG as"paper". Just to put it into context.
I don't like advertising for MTGO right now because the client is so subpar currently (long story, you probably don't want to know even half of it)... I wish the client was just better so I could recommend it without hesitation.
In any case, we seem to be retro gamers here. That usually (not always) means we are somewhat over 20 or so, and the trend is to have little time, little availability.
I see some posts already with a not infrequent statement "I have [paper] cards but don't play anymore". If you would LIKE to play MTG and you know you like the paper game, but just can't, then you really, really should try MTGO. It is still MTG, even if the client is subpar at the moment.
Reasons for not being able to play paper are diverse - because no one in your area plays, because you can't afford the time to drive to a paper store or a paper event.
There is stuff going on 24/7 in MTGO (well, except when there is planned downtime - the v3 client sucks, but it does seem they managed to fix the huge issue of v2's instability and frequent crashes + unplanned downtime; that certainly sucked). It really is great for a certain demographic of lapsed paper players.
There is often a fear of paying real cash for "fake" or virtual cards. If you played paper, you were paying real cash for cardboard. I don't see the big difference! These virtual cards have market value just like the cardboard pieces (in some few cases, higher values for the same card, usually less). MTGO has been around for years now, and some of those times have been very, very rocky. It survived through that so I don't think it is going anywhere unless the paper game dies (in fact, I can more easily see a situation where the paper game dies and MTGO lives on than the opposite).
There is the point of "I already have paper cards, I don't want to spend money to get them again". If you are an active paper player, and enjoy it, good for you. MTGO is probably not for you (although some people support both paper and online MTG. This is, IMO, not such a good idea in most cases, but there are certainly exceptions where it actually makes a lot of sense). However, if you have those stacks of cardboard and you are not using them... They are worthless to you as far as I'm concerned. Sell them off, and use the money to buy some online cards. Despite cards being cheaper online, it is rather likely that your online collection won't be as large as the paper collection you sold off (unless you get hooked and spend more money)... But it will be worth much, much more than the zero entertainment value you had from your cardboard stacks (if you actually will be playing with your new, online cards).
Not sure if MTGO is for you? Unfortunately there isn't a free trial server anymore - you used to be able to try for free without even having an account, you were limited to playing one of 5 core set theme decks. You can still play those for free (without having the cards) in the "New players room", but that still requires you to create an account. Technically that costs 9.99, but they give you a coupon worth that much. For those 10 bucks, I'm pretty sure you can get your money worth either by getting a Momir avatar and playing Momir basic, or getting a bunch (and I mean a bunch) of commons (remember, some traders are giving 30 or 60 per month free, just to have that as advertising)... Even the vast majority of strong commons are 2 cents or so (there are some few, noteworthy exceptions, again).
If you decide you'd like to try, shoot me some questions, as there are ways of spending your coupon that are vastly superior to others (e.g. you could almost buy 10 event tickets with the coupon - at 1 USD each. Event tickets, known as "tix", are effectively MTGO's currency and thus what you will be using to buy cards from traders and so on. Instead of buying your currency from WotC, you can often get other product (packs) that sell for more than 1 tix per 1 USD spent at the store - for example, the newly released Alara tournament pack costs 12.29 at the store, and you can sell it easily for 15 tix, or even 16 tix - with patience and luck - in the secondary market).
Ivo.
I don't like advertising for MTGO right now because the client is so subpar currently (long story, you probably don't want to know even half of it)... I wish the client was just better so I could recommend it without hesitation.
In any case, we seem to be retro gamers here. That usually (not always) means we are somewhat over 20 or so, and the trend is to have little time, little availability.
I see some posts already with a not infrequent statement "I have [paper] cards but don't play anymore". If you would LIKE to play MTG and you know you like the paper game, but just can't, then you really, really should try MTGO. It is still MTG, even if the client is subpar at the moment.
Reasons for not being able to play paper are diverse - because no one in your area plays, because you can't afford the time to drive to a paper store or a paper event.
There is stuff going on 24/7 in MTGO (well, except when there is planned downtime - the v3 client sucks, but it does seem they managed to fix the huge issue of v2's instability and frequent crashes + unplanned downtime; that certainly sucked). It really is great for a certain demographic of lapsed paper players.
There is often a fear of paying real cash for "fake" or virtual cards. If you played paper, you were paying real cash for cardboard. I don't see the big difference! These virtual cards have market value just like the cardboard pieces (in some few cases, higher values for the same card, usually less). MTGO has been around for years now, and some of those times have been very, very rocky. It survived through that so I don't think it is going anywhere unless the paper game dies (in fact, I can more easily see a situation where the paper game dies and MTGO lives on than the opposite).
There is the point of "I already have paper cards, I don't want to spend money to get them again". If you are an active paper player, and enjoy it, good for you. MTGO is probably not for you (although some people support both paper and online MTG. This is, IMO, not such a good idea in most cases, but there are certainly exceptions where it actually makes a lot of sense). However, if you have those stacks of cardboard and you are not using them... They are worthless to you as far as I'm concerned. Sell them off, and use the money to buy some online cards. Despite cards being cheaper online, it is rather likely that your online collection won't be as large as the paper collection you sold off (unless you get hooked and spend more money)... But it will be worth much, much more than the zero entertainment value you had from your cardboard stacks (if you actually will be playing with your new, online cards).
Not sure if MTGO is for you? Unfortunately there isn't a free trial server anymore - you used to be able to try for free without even having an account, you were limited to playing one of 5 core set theme decks. You can still play those for free (without having the cards) in the "New players room", but that still requires you to create an account. Technically that costs 9.99, but they give you a coupon worth that much. For those 10 bucks, I'm pretty sure you can get your money worth either by getting a Momir avatar and playing Momir basic, or getting a bunch (and I mean a bunch) of commons (remember, some traders are giving 30 or 60 per month free, just to have that as advertising)... Even the vast majority of strong commons are 2 cents or so (there are some few, noteworthy exceptions, again).
If you decide you'd like to try, shoot me some questions, as there are ways of spending your coupon that are vastly superior to others (e.g. you could almost buy 10 event tickets with the coupon - at 1 USD each. Event tickets, known as "tix", are effectively MTGO's currency and thus what you will be using to buy cards from traders and so on. Instead of buying your currency from WotC, you can often get other product (packs) that sell for more than 1 tix per 1 USD spent at the store - for example, the newly released Alara tournament pack costs 12.29 at the store, and you can sell it easily for 15 tix, or even 16 tix - with patience and luck - in the secondary market).
Ivo.
Re: any one play magic online?
The one thing I hate is that its hard to find some one to trade with that isnt a bot. I also hate that when im looking for a common or uncommon and the only thing that has it is a bot I have to spend a ticket at the bot to get the cards.
Re: any one play magic online?
Are you guys talking about the Xbox Live Arcade Magic game coming out? I think I might actually buy that.
The Bender Podcast - Now on iTunesRe: any one play magic online?
Magic is coming to XBLA? Is it the card game?PacoDG wrote:Are you guys talking about the Xbox Live Arcade Magic game coming out? I think I might actually buy that.
Re: any one play magic online?
Yes and Yes!raztat wrote:Magic is coming to XBLA? Is it the card game?PacoDG wrote:Are you guys talking about the Xbox Live Arcade Magic game coming out? I think I might actually buy that.
The Bender Podcast - Now on iTunes