Magic Digital Next is coming next year, presumably to replace both MTGO & DotP. Question is whether or not people with a MTGO collection get compensated. Given how they fucked over the Platinum players yesterday, them screwing over the entire MTGO userbase is totally something I could see happening. I guess not investing too much into MTGO and selling off earned excess Tix is the safest way to cut potential losses.Originally Posted by LegacyIsAnEternalFormat
Magic Digital Next won't be released for a "few years".
I agree that mtgo collections could drop a lot if they did something stupid. There is also potential for collections to increase due to popularity. I doubt they will screw the MTGO userbase, that will make many venders unhappy.
I don't think WotC will do anything like that, except perhaps if paper Magic has gone into decline. This is because a low entry barrier to online Magic would give players a very strong incentive to quit paper Magic and play online exclusively. Especially those with no valuable paper collections, and Standard players whose collections lose value with time, would gravitate to online Magic. It's easy to imagine some brick and mortar stores dropping Magic - or even going out of business - as a consequence. The loss of paper card sales could be irreversible. Even if it would be partially offset by increased income from online Magic, I'm sure Hasbro is too conservative to want to take the risk.
So, all their technical ineptitude aside, WotC have to balance the cost of playing paper and online Magic. It seems unlikely they would want to reduce barrier to playing paper magic, at least in the foreseeable future, so Magic online has to remain expensive. Like the Reserved List, the high cost of playing MTGO is a corner WotC have backed themselves into long ago.
All information we have regarding it point at a release in 2017, most likely in the middle of it (and we all know Hasbro pushes shit for release regardless of quality, see V4). Otherwise, Hasbro wouldn't announce in their earnings report that they expect alot of revenue from their new digital platform in 2017.
Whether or not they'll screw over the MTGO players is up to debate, but it certainly is in the realm of possibility and people should be aware of it.
I have a feeling this new MtGO project they are working on will be an attempt to compete with Hearthstone. They're probably going to redo the client design so its more easy to navigate and appealing to the eye. They may put a free trial in there and lower costs to catch people's attention. If they were scared of trashing paper magic they probably wouldn't announce a new online product that they believe will give them a big sales boost. I'm looking forward to it.
Edit: Hopefully it's not a watered down version of Magic made exclusively for digital play(I think I just described Hearthstone there).
Edit 2: Here is the quote from Hasbro: In the past few years, we have doubled the number of play events and stores running these events. By the end of 2015, over 800,000 official events will have run in over 6,000 store locations around the world, this year alone. And we expect this trend to continue and the brand to continue growing. Perhaps our biggest opportunity to keep expanding Magic is to improve the digital Magic ecosystem. We know Magic players want to play in person at events and also play similar level competitions online. Right now we have digital offerings at both ends of the knowledge and engagement spectrum. Magic Online is for the highest level players and we have Duels as an entry experience. The greatest opportunity for Magic is to create a new digital experience leveraging contemporary technology to create a seamless digital experience that meets all the players needs from new players to pro players. This is what we are investing in and we have a team in place to deliver the first new Magic Digital Next product in the next few years. In the meantime, we will optimize the Duels and Magic: The Gathering Online experiences to continue driving the overall Magic business.
source:http://www.purplepawn.com/2015/11/ma...ent-by-hasbro/
I will get my crystal ball and CEO hat and predict the following:
They will do a new and improved DotP platform, with simplified game mechanics but entirely tailored for online competition, to compete directly with Heartstone and the likes, including pricing model. Their long term plan for MTGO is that MTGO will become slowly obsolete and empty, forcing people into the new platform for the 'big competitions' and much increased number of players, thus rending moot any need to compensate MTGO players. They will leave it by their own will. The only thing they need to do is to make sure that prizing in the new platform is much more attractive than in MTGO (not that hard) and a huge chunk of the player base will change platforms.
That sounds depressingly realistic.
If I were CEO of Wizards, that's certainly what I'd do.
I think developing a better-DoTP 'simplified magic' that can exist alongside real magic seems like a pretty reasonable idea. Realistically no Hearthstone competitor will ever have something like Flusterstorm in it. I think DoTP goes too far and is pretty boring to play, but there are a lot of rules that could be cut out of magic without destroying the game - you could combine the untap/upkeep/draw steps, simplify combat etc.
If you could grind drafts cheaply on an ipad and play the games with a slightly more dynamic version of DoTP, I'd probably rather play that than MTGO. (Most of the time.)
One point I would ad to my reasoning above, there is nothing committing Hasbro to keep MTGO up to date. Once they have a new platform, there is zero forcing them to commit an iota of resources, other than some server space to keep it running. Once it is not developed any more, with all new sets in the new platform, etc. Good luck with finding games in MTGO. It can die swiftly, without Hasbro having lost any sleep over 'compensation' for collections.
But that still doesn't solve the issue of fucking over a good chunk of the userbase, not just vendors. I would never support the new platform if they did that out of spite alone.
Its a trade off between what you lose and what you gain. Online platforms are born and die, its the nature of it. I would not hesitate to do it if I was sure that my new platform could give me 50% more users than the previous one.
Principled people are a dying breed anyway so no point in holding off because some people would grudgingly never touch the new platform. Nature of times.
Wizards' responsibility is to make money not to not-screw-over people, they screw over all of us by making us pay tons of money for pieces of cardboard. (And 1s and 0s that pretend to be pieces of cardboard...) I expect a somewhat functional MTGO to always exist as long as it makes the company money.
If a new platform introduces millions of people to the game and keeps Magic alive in an age w/ real competition, it's not really screwing over current players.
I doubt that a watered down, Hearthstone wannabe version of Magic would be very successful. Hearthstone has been out for a few years and is already extremely popular. They'd have to add something revolutionary to be able to get the average Hearthstone players to switch. Magic's complexity should remain even if it tries to compete with Hearthstone because it is what sets Magic apart in a good way. The reason many Hearthstone players that have heard of Magic choose Hearthstone over Magic is not because they dislike the complexity in Magic, it is because Magic is because it is too expensive and has a bad online game(bugs, lag, bad visuals, bad UI, high waiting times e.t.c). Magic doesn't have to change in gameplay to appeal to compete, it has to advertise and optimize the entry level game DotP to get people in, and it has to improve Magic Online.
Is it possible to get reimbursement if I had to play two different players twice in the same league run? Kind of ridiculous.
Nope, not really, working as "intended".
Sorry to say but, based on my experience as a game designer, the days of highly complex games being able to drawn in millions (as in number of players) are largely gone. Even games like FM, which still sell very well, have been dumbing down with every successive iteration. These days its all about speed, speed of loading, gameplay, learning, etc. You need to grab it and be playing at a decent level 5mins afterwards, otherwise it will be dropped. The concept of spending 1000's at the point of entry to build up a deck is completly dead. Steep learning curves are dead. (in an online world)
https://twitter.com/mtgworth/status/725375755379609600
That's a pretty interesting development. Modern prices have started to sink by a good chunk. I doubt that Modern not being a PT format anymore is the main cause. I suspect that the loss in trust due to PlatinumGate has opened the eyes of many players that in the light of the Magic Digital Next release, they could very well be screwed over and that MTGO isn't a safe investment anymore.
Worth not guaranteeing the safety of MTGO investments is yet another red flag that fits into past patterns. If they try to avoid and postpone answering critical issues, expect the outcome to be bad.
You may still get your Port...
Buy Mortimer, buy!....
Edit: I find particularly comical his comment about twitter being an horrendous method for these discussions. Well, guess which company closed their community forums?...
If Port gets reprinted in EMA, the price will fall regardless since they supply problem is going to be solved. Just way too late since I've stopped caring about D&T ever since my latest GW Eldrazi Stompy build became my new pet deck.You may still get your Port...
Buy Mortimer, buy!....
Edit: I find particularly comical his comment about twitter being an horrendous method for these discussions. Well, guess which company closed their community forums?...
As for the Twitter comment: Good catch.
Lots of legacy next month(s)
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