morgan_coke
03-10-2010, 12:33 PM
Dear Wizards,
First of all, I'd like to say thank you. Thank you so much for turning on Legacy online on March 31st. This is something I, and many other players have been waiting for since Mirage was first released online. Given the lack of a paper Legacy community in many parts of the country, this a huge boon to many format enthusiasts who were previously either locked out of the format entirely, or restricted to subpar platforms like MagicWorkstation.
That said, this announcement does highlight, and will exacerbate one big problem that has been building for awhile now: Online Card Availability. Unlike paper, where there are thousands of copies of even the rarest P9 cards, the online supply of many Legacy staples is severely restricted. The last time this situation was a significant problem was pre-rotation Extended, where cards from Invasion, Planeshift, and Apocalypse were very expensive when they could be found at all. While your company does not directly participate in the secondary market, WOTC does have a strong and long term interest in tournament play. The effect of these prices and card rarities on tournament play was profound, and the metagame was severely affected. Two prime examples of this were Rock and Scepter Chant decks. While both were very common and popular in paper Extended tournaments during this time period, they were nearly invisible online due to the high cost and rarity of Orim's Chant and Pernicious Deed. Many, many other decks that would have liked to use these cards were also restricted or forced to play sub-standard alternatives, such as... well, none really because both of those cards were, and are such unique spells. This in turn disproportionately benefited decks which had bad matchups vs. Rock and Chant, further warping the online metagame.
The same problem has the potential to affect the new online legacy metagame, except in this case, the primary limiting card will be Force of Will, followed by the majority of rares from Mirage through Urza's Saga. The problem with IPA rares will also likely resurface. All of these shortages will constrict the inflow of new players to what should be a vibrant and growing format. Once there, many players will discover that the rarity of Force of Will creates a format whose metagame is biased towards a lack of interactivity, a type of gameplay majority of players have repeatedly described as their least favorite.
If players try out a new format with high barriers to entry, large scale card scarcity, and then find a format full of non-interactive decks, while, its likely that many of them will not come back. Without large, or at least medium scale player involvement, it is unlikely that a viable tournament scene can be maintained.
Fortunately, there is an easy solution to all of these problems in the digital world of MTGO that is unavailable to the paper game. Simply put every expansion set from Mirage through the last set to rotate out of extended (currently Onslaught, soon to be Mirrodin) up for sale as booster packs in the store and run drafts for each set on a weekly, rotating basis. This will achieve a number of functions. 1) This gives players new to MTGO a chance to have access to cards that were only available online prior to their introduction to the digital game. 2) This lets players who took a break from Magic for several years a chance to play draft formats they missed while out of the game. 3) It increases the supply of cards for all players, which encourages more people to play. 4) It will become impossible for the player base demand to outstrip supply, meaning that the eternal format can grow well, eternally. 5) It will help online dealers because it is much more profitable to sell 10 FoW's at 20 tix in a week than one FoW at 200 tix. 6) By putting sets out of circulation for seven years during their Extended legal run, the collectibility of the game will be preserved, as the STD/EXT player base will always outnumber the Legacy base. 7) Continuous printing will prevent hoarding and market manipulation, which is possible given the extremely small numbers of certain cards online and has happened before in the past. 8) This will increase the profit margin for MTGO. The marginal cost of selling an additional pack of cards that have already been coded into the system is essentially zero. By making Legacy legal packs online available for sale, you will be able to rack up extra profits at no additional cost.
In closing, I'd just like to repeat my earlier thanks for making Legacy an MTGO supported format, and hope that you take the steps necessary to support the format and make it widely accessible to all players, whether they bought into early sets when there was no guarantee of an eventual Legacy format or not, and accessible regardless of when they joined Magic Online. It is my sincere hope that you continue to display the kind of forethought and care that has kept MTG going strong for over 15 years and make the profitable, growth friendly choice in this matter.
Sincerely,
Sean D. DeCoursey
morgan_coke on MTGO
First of all, I'd like to say thank you. Thank you so much for turning on Legacy online on March 31st. This is something I, and many other players have been waiting for since Mirage was first released online. Given the lack of a paper Legacy community in many parts of the country, this a huge boon to many format enthusiasts who were previously either locked out of the format entirely, or restricted to subpar platforms like MagicWorkstation.
That said, this announcement does highlight, and will exacerbate one big problem that has been building for awhile now: Online Card Availability. Unlike paper, where there are thousands of copies of even the rarest P9 cards, the online supply of many Legacy staples is severely restricted. The last time this situation was a significant problem was pre-rotation Extended, where cards from Invasion, Planeshift, and Apocalypse were very expensive when they could be found at all. While your company does not directly participate in the secondary market, WOTC does have a strong and long term interest in tournament play. The effect of these prices and card rarities on tournament play was profound, and the metagame was severely affected. Two prime examples of this were Rock and Scepter Chant decks. While both were very common and popular in paper Extended tournaments during this time period, they were nearly invisible online due to the high cost and rarity of Orim's Chant and Pernicious Deed. Many, many other decks that would have liked to use these cards were also restricted or forced to play sub-standard alternatives, such as... well, none really because both of those cards were, and are such unique spells. This in turn disproportionately benefited decks which had bad matchups vs. Rock and Chant, further warping the online metagame.
The same problem has the potential to affect the new online legacy metagame, except in this case, the primary limiting card will be Force of Will, followed by the majority of rares from Mirage through Urza's Saga. The problem with IPA rares will also likely resurface. All of these shortages will constrict the inflow of new players to what should be a vibrant and growing format. Once there, many players will discover that the rarity of Force of Will creates a format whose metagame is biased towards a lack of interactivity, a type of gameplay majority of players have repeatedly described as their least favorite.
If players try out a new format with high barriers to entry, large scale card scarcity, and then find a format full of non-interactive decks, while, its likely that many of them will not come back. Without large, or at least medium scale player involvement, it is unlikely that a viable tournament scene can be maintained.
Fortunately, there is an easy solution to all of these problems in the digital world of MTGO that is unavailable to the paper game. Simply put every expansion set from Mirage through the last set to rotate out of extended (currently Onslaught, soon to be Mirrodin) up for sale as booster packs in the store and run drafts for each set on a weekly, rotating basis. This will achieve a number of functions. 1) This gives players new to MTGO a chance to have access to cards that were only available online prior to their introduction to the digital game. 2) This lets players who took a break from Magic for several years a chance to play draft formats they missed while out of the game. 3) It increases the supply of cards for all players, which encourages more people to play. 4) It will become impossible for the player base demand to outstrip supply, meaning that the eternal format can grow well, eternally. 5) It will help online dealers because it is much more profitable to sell 10 FoW's at 20 tix in a week than one FoW at 200 tix. 6) By putting sets out of circulation for seven years during their Extended legal run, the collectibility of the game will be preserved, as the STD/EXT player base will always outnumber the Legacy base. 7) Continuous printing will prevent hoarding and market manipulation, which is possible given the extremely small numbers of certain cards online and has happened before in the past. 8) This will increase the profit margin for MTGO. The marginal cost of selling an additional pack of cards that have already been coded into the system is essentially zero. By making Legacy legal packs online available for sale, you will be able to rack up extra profits at no additional cost.
In closing, I'd just like to repeat my earlier thanks for making Legacy an MTGO supported format, and hope that you take the steps necessary to support the format and make it widely accessible to all players, whether they bought into early sets when there was no guarantee of an eventual Legacy format or not, and accessible regardless of when they joined Magic Online. It is my sincere hope that you continue to display the kind of forethought and care that has kept MTG going strong for over 15 years and make the profitable, growth friendly choice in this matter.
Sincerely,
Sean D. DeCoursey
morgan_coke on MTGO