RIP MODO Dailies (let's fire some 8-mans off?)

[ziggy_stardust]

I don't know if this is the right forum for this, but with MODO dailies indefinitely getting the ax, anyone wanna arrange to fire an 8-man (or two or three with the turnout dailies have been getting lately) around the usual time tomorrow? Maybe if there's enough interest, we can even organize staggered flights, but I'm probably being unreasonably optimistic. I'm good for 8:30pm EST-ish.

[Phelix]

as someone who hasnt been paying attention at all - do you have a link to these changes?

[Higgs]

http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/other/11122013/queues

I wonder what this spells out for the hype of "Vintage's future in MTGO".

[Barook]

http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/other/11122013/queues

I wonder what this spells out for the hype of "Vintage's future in MTGO".
It basically confirms the opinion of the Vintage players to not invest into MTGO because "data rows".

But how can they fuck up THAT bad? Their competition isn't sleeping and they basically killed the main reason to play competitive until further notice.

As far as 8-man Queues are concerned - I think it should be pretty easy to organize. We could set a certain time for each day to fire of our 8-man events, e.g. every day at 19:00 GMT +1 for Europeans (Americans could do the same for their time zones etc.). All we need to do is messaging people to remind them of the event, like Lejay did. The price support for 8-mans kinda sucks, but we can't have everything.

Edit: Why aren't they adding 16 man queues with similiar payout to daily events? It seems like a shaddy move to use the crash to get rid of the event that wields the highest EV.

[Dan Turner]

So where is the best place to liquidate about 250k MTGO cards I have no interest in playing now.

[Kayradis]

Right after I finished building Elves!
I just feel like screaming KHAAAAAAAAAAAAN! Kirk style.

[cdr]

WotC has never "gotten" software development for whatever reason. The MTGO v1 client/server - which was actually kinda good for the time - was done by an outside developer. DCIR (the original tournament-running software) was done by an outside developer. Despite having years and years to work on the in-house replacements, neither replacement works as well as the original nor really looks much better. Oh, and DOTP? Outside developer.

I hear WotC pays poorly even by game company standards (which are below industry standards to begin with), which no doubt has something to do with it. WotC culture is somehow just so horribly broken though that they cannot produce a reasonable software product in any amount of time.

[Tormod]

This is what you need to read:

http://bmkgaming.com/magic-online-championship-series-exist/

[Barook]

So where is the best place to liquidate about 250k MTGO cards I have no interest in playing now.
Lots of people say good things about MTGO Traders:

http://www.mtgotraders.com/buylist/

[Richard Cheese]

This is what you need to read:

http://bmkgaming.com/magic-online-championship-series-exist/

God, every time I think of getting into MODO then read something like this...
http://replygif.net/i/471.gif

[PirateKing]

Wait I thought they were just doing some online Vintage Masters thing? And now there's no place to play the stuff from it? I don't get how this online works.

[dsck]

Wait I thought they were just doing some online Vintage Masters thing? And now there's no place to play the stuff from it? I don't get how this online works.

I think that was scheduled for january, they probably get MTGO working around then as well.

[Barook]

Wait I thought they were just doing some online Vintage Masters thing? And now there's no place to play the stuff from it? I don't get how this online works.
I don't know what's worse - Wizards' marketing or their online department.


I think that was scheduled for january, they probably get MTGO working around then as well.
Vintage Masters was June or so.

The funny part is that people already start to blame Kibler for the loss of daily events. I wouldn't be suprised if Wizards used the chance to get rid of daily events to screw us even further and use him as a scapegoat.

[.dk]

God, every time I think of getting into MODO then read something like this...
http://replygif.net/i/471.gif

Seems like if you're going to buy into MODO, now would be the time. It's not like they aren't going to fix it and the suspension of Dailies, PTQs, premier events, etc. are only going to depress card prices in the short term.

[phonics]

I am honestly inclined to think that wotc has no clue what they are doing and are just incredibly lucky that they own a game that can survive through their mediocrity. Modo UI is straight out of the 1990s and still lags and crashes all the time. I actually hope that Hearthstone becomes incredibly popular so it forces wotc to actually do something about it. The beta client is a step sideways (if not backwards, if that is even possible), it boggles my mind how such an incompetent team is behind such a popular product. What events aren't terrible now? I know release queues used to be decent ev, but they changed that, so probably only momir? As long has people keep playing it, they wont do shit.

[Lord Seth]

I once saw a player give WOTC a semi-backhanded compliment in that they made a game so great (Magic) that the player was still willing to use something as awful as MTGO to play it.

[Deviruchi]

Buy when everyone else is selling. They will fix modo. They just have to find time / money to do it so don't sell everyting ;)

[Tormod]

Money isn't the issue. The online PTQ that crashed during round 9 on Sunday alone pulled in some $21,000. (700+ players x $30 without having any print, production, and distribution costs, no rental of a venue and no judges)

They are simply making money hand over fist with out having to be accountable to their consumer. Its all greed and ego running wild and free.

[Koby]

I don't know what's worse - Wizards' marketing or their online department.


Vintage Masters was June or so.

The funny part is that people already start to blame Kibler for the loss of daily events. I wouldn't be suprised if Wizards used the chance to get rid of daily events to screw us even further and use him as a scapegoat.

I don't understand how people can blame the victim in all of this. Kibler wrote about his experience, requesting the problem be addressed from a systematic level. Worth Wollpert and the MTGO team decided to effectively GUT all the tournament offerings as a response to degrading stability of their product, and now Kibler is the one to blame for all the ills and woes of the shitty software?

Some people really ought to go hide in a cave and never return.

WotC has no clue how to build software. One look at Wizard Event Report should tell you that. Any attempt to design and develop the product in-house is a dead end track.

[Aggro_zombies]

I'm not sure they really want to develop it outside, though. There's a bunch of issues that come with that which could be avoided if they had a decent in-house team.

The big problem right now is that there's no relief in sight. The beta is somehow even worse than the current product - I mean, it's one thing for a beta to be to be unpolished because it's a beta, but Jesus Fucking Christ is that beta a train wreck. And the sad thing is that this program has exist since 2002 - eleven years and they STILL can't get it to be reasonable stable. If I was Dictator of WotC I would just sac the entire dev team, raise salaries, and bring in a new team that knows what it's doing to revamp the UI and back end so that the product is stable and nice-looking.

It's sad, really. You'd think after more than a decade of having a reputation for not being able to make good software to save their lives, someone at WotC would wake up and do something about it. But I guess the idea is that software is a secondary concern to the paper game.

[Barook]

Money isn't the issue. The online PTQ that crashed during round 9 on Sunday alone pulled in some $21,000. (700+ players x $30 without having any print, production, and distribution costs, no rental of a venue and no judges)

They are simply making money hand over fist with out having to be accountable to their consumer. Its all greed and ego running wild and free.
MODO is a cash cow. They make mad profits from it with basically no upkeep cost. Is it really too much to ask to invest some of that money to make a decent product? Who knows how much potential profit they lost due to a shitty product.

How much would a team of decent programmers cost for this project?


I don't understand how people can blame the victim in all of this. Kibler wrote about his experience, requesting the problem be addressed from a systematic level. Worth Wollpert and the MTGO team decided to effectively GUT all the tournament offerings as a response to degrading stability of their product, and now Kibler is the one to blame for all the ills and woes of the shitty software?
Newsflash: People can go full retard, especially when money is on the line and on the internet with nobody there to keep their stupidity in-check.

I see that whole thing as a way for Wizards to reduce the price support, thus cutting the support of daily events. Just wait for the article where they state that "daily events aren't fixable with the current architecture".

[Dan Turner]

Screw that I want Shandalar back. Give me expansions for $19.99 each to add to it and I would buy a new one every month.


I am still pissed about Tactics I had almost $500 in that and I got shit when it shut down. Sony could have at least gave me something in my wallet to use on other games.

I thinkt hey need to scrap thier online and start over from the bottom and re-work everything even the way the product is offered. (HINT MAYBE CODES FOR DIGITAL INSIDE PACKS) I think specialty items like dual decks should get a code for the digital version. I have no issues with the buying of packs to draft etc when i can turn around and trade them for real cards but specialty product should be digital codes from the real product.

[phonics]

I'm not sure they really want to develop it outside, though. There's a bunch of issues that come with that which could be avoided if they had a decent in-house team.

The big problem right now is that there's no relief in sight. The beta is somehow even worse than the current product - I mean, it's one thing for a beta to be to be unpolished because it's a beta, but Jesus Fucking Christ is that beta a train wreck. And the sad thing is that this program has exist since 2002 - eleven years and they STILL can't get it to be reasonable stable. If I was Dictator of WotC I would just sac the entire dev team, raise salaries, and bring in a new team that knows what it's doing to revamp the UI and back end so that the product is stable and nice-looking.

It's sad, really. You'd think after more than a decade of having a reputation for not being able to make good software to save their lives, someone at WotC would wake up and do something about it. But I guess the idea is that software is a secondary concern to the paper game.

Don't they only have like a couple people on the development team for magic online? I know it is much less than what is necessary for a project as large as magic online.

[Phoenix Ignition]

Based off of their press release thingy (http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/feature/273&date=11/13/2013) it looks like a lot of people are assuming Dailies are gone forever. It looks to me like they're going to just take em down until the shitstorm blows over so they can say they've been "working on it" and when they put them back up again they'll be able to pretend like it's fixed.

People saying they're going to sell their entire collections over this are funny though...

[mishima_kazuya]

Sold my collection....

AAANNNNDDDDD, as soon as LED's go under $50 a piece I am rebuying into ANT. :tongue:

[Koby]

Based off of their press release thingy (http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/feature/273&date=11/13/2013) it looks like a lot of people are assuming Dailies are gone forever. It looks to me like they're going to just take em down until the shitstorm blows over so they can say they've been "working on it" and when they put them back up again they'll be able to pretend like it's fixed.

People saying they're going to sell their entire collections over this are funny though...

People may be overreacting, but if there's one thing that is constant, it is WotC's MTGO department cutting features and raising event costs while reducing payout.

The term squeeze doesn't do justice to the vice grip that MTGO has on its fans and consumers.

[Barook]

People may be overreacting, but if there's one thing that is constant, it is WotC's MTGO department cutting features and raising event costs while reducing payout.

The term squeeze doesn't do justice to the vice grip that MTGO has on its fans and consumers.
It's pretty much a lose-lose situation for everyone:

- significantly less people playing Constructed, thus lowering demand for singles and supply for boosters
- Draft gets more expensive due to more expensive packs, while the lower demand drives down prices for singles
- less people play, so less money from tournament entries for Wizards

If that's partly a business decision, then Blizzard is going to tear them a new one as far as online CCGs are concerned.

In the wake of yesterday, I've looked up what's the deal with Hearthstone - while it's completely void of the strategic depth Magic has to offer (kinda like Standard), it

a) is free to play (which is a huge factor)
b) is fast with lots of action
c) has a quite gimmicky presentation

The casual crowd is going to eat this shit up like it's fucking candy. Partly because Blizzard still has a decent reputation among the casual crowd due to their golden age (despite sucking nowadays). Random streamers easily reach 10k+ viewers and once the Open beta starts in December or January, all hell is going to break lose.

[phonics]

It's pretty much a lose-lose situation for everyone:

- significantly less people playing Constructed, thus lowering demand for singles and supply for boosters
- Draft gets more expensive due to more expensive packs, while the lower demand drives down prices for singles
- less people play, so less money from tournament entries for Wizards

If that's partly a business decision, then Blizzard is going to tear them a new one as far as online CCGs are concerned.

In the wake of yesterday, I've looked up what's the deal with Hearthstone - while it's completely void of the strategic depth Magic has to offer (kinda like Standard), it

a) is free to play (which is a huge factor)
b) is fast with lots of action
c) has a quite gimmicky presentation

The casual crowd is going to eat this shit up like it's fucking candy. Partly because Blizzard still has a decent reputation among the casual crowd due to their golden age (despite sucking nowadays). Random streamers easily reach 10k+ viewers and once the Open beta starts in December or January, all hell is going to break lose.
Mtg players can only dream of having a interface that is as buttery smooth as what Hearthstone has. It really shows how archaic the mtgo client is in comparison.

[burtonbaron62]

It is easy to see why a game like Hearthstone is much more polished than MTGO. It is because Blizzard is a software company. Their core competency is building software. WotC and Hasbro do not have the in-house knowledge to build insanely complicated software. And, don't fool yourself, MTGO is a very complicated piece of software.

I have seen many people say: Just write a new MTGO! In my opinion, this would be extremely expensive and risky. WotC has two real options for creating a brand new MTGO, and neither of them are very appealing from a business standpoint.

First, they could start their own in-house software dev team. They may have some of this in place already, but, obviously, they need much more. By doing this they are exposing themselves to a ton of on going cost. Programmers are not cheap, and programmers that can pull off a project the scale of MTGO are straight up expensive. They are going to have to pay all these guys for at least a couple of years before a new product is ready, and they will have to continue to pay them pretty much indefinitely to support and maintain the product.

Second, the could hire an outside company to develop the thing for them. This is also really expensive.

Bottom line for WotC is that they are going to have to spend multiple millions of dollars to truly rewrite MTGO, and this process will take at least a couple of years. And, the project, like most software projects, is likely to go way over budget and time, and could fail entirely. This is a huge risk.

The path they have chosen seems to be to fix the old system. This will not be easy either.

I think WotC is in a really tough spot with MTGO. They are entirely dependent on a legacy code-base that is likely going to very difficult to fix. But, building new a new system is going to be very time consuming and expensive. They are going to have to spend a boatload of time and money no matter what they do here.

While I agree that MTGO is basically crap by today's standards, I think a lot of people vastly underestimate the amount of time and money these kinds of software projects take.

[Barook]

It is easy to see why a game like Hearthstone is much more polished than MTGO. It is because Blizzard is a software company. Their core competency is building software. WotC and Hasbro do not have the in-house knowledge to build insanely complicated software. And, don't fool yourself, MTGO is a very complicated piece of software.

I have seen many people say: Just write a new MTGO! In my opinion, this would be extremely expensive and risky. WotC has two real options for creating a brand new MTGO, and neither of them are very appealing from a business standpoint.

First, they could start their own in-house software dev team. They may have some of this in place already, but, obviously, they need much more. By doing this they are exposing themselves to a ton of on going cost. Programmers are not cheap, and programmers that can pull off a project the scale of MTGO are straight up expensive. They are going to have to pay all these guys for at least a couple of years before a new product is ready, and they will have to continue to pay them pretty much indefinitely to support and maintain the product.

Second, the could hire an outside company to develop the thing for them. This is also really expensive.

Bottom line for WotC is that they are going to have to spend multiple millions of dollars to truly rewrite MTGO, and this process will take at least a couple of years. And, the project, like most software projects, is likely to go way over budget and time, and could fail entirely. This is a huge risk.

The path they have chosen seems to be to fix the old system. This will not be easy either.

I think WotC is in a really tough spot with MTGO. They are entirely dependent on a legacy code-base that is likely going to very difficult to fix. But, building new a new system is going to be very time consuming and expensive. They are going to have to spend a boatload of time and money no matter what they do here.

While I agree that MTGO is basically crap by today's standards, I think a lot of people vastly underestimate the amount of time and money these kinds of software projects take.
Time wouldn't have been an issue if they started to fix their shit years ago.

Money an issue? About what sums are we talking about here realistically? Back in 2007, MODO was "somewhere between 30% to 50% of the total Magic business." Sure, the game grew more popular since then, but we're probably talking about tens of millions $ pure profit here. Reinvesting some of that to get an actually stable product to lure in more people doesn't sound too bad.

[Rocco111]

Can't agree more with burtonbaron62...

Besides if we talk about Kibler's article, he went a tad too far (like, really actually). It is indeed understandable that he was pissed off when he got the crash. Anyone in his shoes would have been too. Now because he is Kibler, he raises his voice louder so he got the attention of WotC. Fine, too. But then, saying things like 'If I wasn't paid to play the game, I would have uninstalled it on the spot' or 'they should do like Riot' (typical comment from someone having no clue about software dev, ok) to later say something in the line 'And I know what am talking about 'cause am trying to sell my own digital ccg' (wtf your previous statement then?). This is just crap and pointless. It could even be seen as disrespectful towards the people giving him money for his videos or to support his game (a Kickstarter project).

Finally for those thinking that MtGO is WotC's flagship, it is not. Never was. And might just as well never be. WotC is making 'printed games' and is using digital games to support and promote its core business (printed). End of the story. For those not believing it, just look at all the games and softwares based on their licenses. Eventually they have put some extra efforts in MtGO because it was the first software able to really mirror the end-user experience provided by the MtG and to be well-received by the players. This led WotC to promote the game more than the previous ones and to even include it in its marketing plan with the addition of sanctioned tournaments (see Kibler's article).

Now is Hasbro ready to open the vaults and to pay a team of devs/developing studio to create a 'MtGO 2' along with the acquisition of servers able to compete with those of any MMORPGs? That is the real question. Personally, if I look at Hasbro's policy when it comes to video games (i.e. G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, for a good laugh), I must say I have serious doubts about this. They will patch and repatch and that's it...

[burtonbaron62]

Time wouldn't have been an issue if they started to fix their shit years ago.

Money an issue? About what sums are we talking about here realistically? Back in 2007, MODO was "somewhere between 30% to 50% of the total Magic business." Sure, the game grew more popular since then, but we're probably talking about tens of millions $ pure profit here. Reinvesting some of that to get an actually stable product to lure in more people doesn't sound too bad.

I am assuming a lot here, but... Years ago the MTGO system was able to handle the demand. The game has grown a lot, and a combination of the servers and inefficient slow code has caused stability issues while the system is under heavy load. My guess it that MTGO was never designed to handle thousands and thousands of players simultaneously. Years ago this was not an issue, and therefore WotC had nothing to fix. Now they do.

Money is always an issue. I write software professionally, and have to provide estimates, but a system of this scope is way out of my league. I hesitate to speculate on what MTGO 2.0 might cost. But I would say, conservatively, you would need at least 3 dev teams, front end, back end, and DB. Let's say you need 1 senior dev for each team. 3 guys at 100k+ (at least). Then each of those guys would supervise smaller teams. Let's say 3 more sub-teams of 10 people each with a leader. So the leader gets 70k+, and each of his guys get 50k+. 3*100k + 3*70k + 27*50k. That is $1,860,000 a year just for your dev guys.

Now since you are Hasbro, you need a bunch of bureaucrat types, so need at least 3 project managers, one for each team, and HR stuff, and secretaries for the big guys. Let's call that 500,000 a year. Then you are going need a hot shot server / networking team to build your back-end infrastructure (which is also really expensive). I have no idea what that costs. Lets call it 1mil initial cost for hardware and another 500,000 a year for the staff (at least). Plus you are going to need QA guys, but they are cheap 250,000 a year as a guess.

So they are looking at 3,000,000 dollars a year just to get going. This project is probably going to take at least 3 years to be released. So, 10,000,000 just to get a new version out 3 years from now. I would say that is a low estimate. Plus, now WotC is a major software company, and they have to learn how to do that well, which is really hard. If they farm out the work to a third party company, triple the price tag.

I could go on, but I should be coding myself! All in all, software dev is REALLY expensive and hard to do. Keep in mind that ~40% of software project fail outright and need to be scrapped or are abandoned. A lot of risk too!

[Koby]

I am assuming a lot here, but... Years ago the MTGO system was able to handle the demand. The game has grown a lot, and a combination of the servers and inefficient slow code has caused stability issues while the system is under heavy load. My guess it that MTGO was never designed to handle thousands and thousands of players simultaneously. Years ago this was not an issue, and therefore WotC had nothing to fix. Now they do.


Nope. Nope. Nope.

In 2008, the server stability was so awful crashes were an everyday occurance. That is when V3 was released to alleviate them. Demand exceeded server capacity at least once already. The current situation is no different than it was five years ago.

They have had the same issues to fix 5 years ago.
They have the same issues to fix today.

They just don't want to spend the money to fix it properly.

Suppose it does cost $1.86M annually to develop the right program.

One MTGO PTQ can draw at least 700 players, as we saw last weekend. That's 700*30 tix = $21,000 face value. For one event. That doesn't account for on-going drafts, a multitude of (now defunct Daily and Premier events), 2-man & 8-man queues, and Release events. This also doesn't account for direct sales through the MTGO Store for tix and packs.

A couple million dollars of liabilities to develop a program that could expand on revenue seems like a drop in the bucket for a company with as much sales as Wizards of the Coast.

[burtonbaron62]

Nope. Nope. Nope.

In 2008, the server stability was so awful crashes were an everyday occurance. That is when V3 was released to alleviate them. Demand exceeded server capacity at least once already. The current situation is no different than it was five years ago.

They have had the same issues to fix 5 years ago.
They have the same issues to fix today.



Yeah, I don't know too much about MTGO history, as I hardly ever play online (save Cockatrice)! Since this is a long standing issue, they should have started long ago. However, this speaks to the underlying issue that WotC is not a software company. If they want to become a software company, it basically means starting a whole new division. I suspect they really don't want to do this.



They just don't want to spend the money to fix it properly.


This is the part of the problem, but at the same time you can't just throw money / people at a software project and hope it is going to be okay. You really need to develop your culture, infrastructure, and process. That can take many years. If WotC really wants to do MTGO right they can either become a software focused company, hire a third party company, or fix what they have. All of these options are either very expensive, short or long term, or very difficult.

I am not trying to make excuses for MTGO. It is clearly bad. But, as a software guy, I feel people often trivialize the extreme difficulty of, not only creating software at the complexity level of MTGO, but also fixing a legacy code-base. All the money in the world isn't going to get you awesome software if you don't have the right people, plan, and team culture.



Suppose it does cost $1.86M annually to develop the right program.


I believe it would be a lot more than this. My lame estimate is $10M to get the software released.

[phonics]

Mtgo has been out for over a decade, and prints money better than any other game out there. While modo is complex, it is relatively simple compared to things like any modern game engine. It isn't really a software problem either, the game mechanics pretty much work fine, it is the interface that is just so bad.

[apple713]

I believe it would be a lot more than this. My lame estimate is $10M to get the software released.


I'm really curious about this I have no idea how you even get to the 10M$ number. Lets say you hire 25 software developers at $100k/year which is like 15k above the median. If it takes a solid year to develop thats only 2.5M. You could probably even hire 35 developers for the 2.5M cost.

The company that owns Wizards is Hasbro. Hasbro's market capitalization is 6.84B... A $10M project isn't very much. Especially since WOTC is one of the most profitable sectors of hasbro.

If MTGO was made properly and supported very well it could be a great compliment to paper magic. They have the ability to support legacy and vintage events something that paper magic doesn't really allow. Maybe they should actually award planes walker points for playing online. Even at Half the amount that you earn paper magic points or something. There are a lot of ways to promote it that i feel like they haven't done.

[burtonbaron62]

I'm really curious about this I have no idea how you even get to the 10M$ number. Lets say you hire 25 software developers at $100k/year which is like 15k above the median. If it takes a solid year to develop thats only 2.5M. You could probably even hire 35 developers for the 2.5M cost.


You have to consider that you need more than just the dev people, you need hardware people, networking people, PM people, QA people, the actually hardware, dev machines, software licenses, etc. MTGO 2.0 would also likely take more than a year to develop.



The company that owns Wizards is Hasbro. Hasbro's market capitalization is 6.84B... A $10M project isn't very much. Especially since WOTC is one of the most profitable sectors of hasbro.


It isn't necessarily totally a matter of money. Hasbro is a game publishing company and WotC is a game development company. I don't know what kind of software development staff they have now, but if they wanted to in-house MTGO 2.0 it would basically mean WotC would need a software division. This has a lot of long term implications and costs for the company, and I am not sure that this is what the want to be doing.

[apple713]

It isn't necessarily totally a matter of money. Hasbro is a game publishing company and WotC is a game development company. I don't know what kind of software development staff they have now, but if they wanted to in-house MTGO 2.0 it would basically mean WotC would need a software division. This has a lot of long term implications and costs for the company, and I am not sure that this is what the want to be doing.

This is probably the issue. Unless they are willing to expand into the software development sector, they are half assing the MTGO interface with the few resources they have. However if they were to invest in a software development segment they could launch a MTGO for all of their card games. While it's probably worth it just to do so for MTGO having all of their card games up and going would surly bring in enough coin. to fund the project.

[Barook]

Based off of their press release thingy (http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/feature/273&date=11/13/2013) it looks like a lot of people are assuming Dailies are gone forever. It looks to me like they're going to just take em down until the shitstorm blows over so they can say they've been "working on it" and when they put them back up again they'll be able to pretend like it's fixed.

People saying they're going to sell their entire collections over this are funny though...
Legacy staples are suprisingly stable so far, hell, some stuff is even rising since the announcement. Maybe because people love the format.

It's funny how Standard tanked like a champ, though, since nobody wants to play this PoS without price support. Take a note, Wizards.

[Koby]

Legacy staples are suprisingly stable so far, hell, some stuff is even rising since the announcement. Maybe because people love the format.

It's funny how Standard tanked like a champ, though, since nobody wants to play this PoS without price support. Take a note, Wizards.

Be careful not to associate temporal changes with long-term trends. We're less than 24 Hours going into a Legacy Grand Prix. That might have an effect on prices moreso than the lack of Daily Events.

[Phelix]

pool funds, offer to buy MTGO off wizards?


(not kidding either)

[Barook]

pool funds, offer to buy MTGO off wizards?

(not kidding either)
Aside from Magic being their IP, they certainly won't sell their cash cow which makes up a substantial part of Magic's profits.

We're talking about tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars.


Be careful not to associate temporal changes with long-term trends. We're less than 24 Hours going into a Legacy Grand Prix. That might have an effect on prices moreso than the lack of Daily Events.
Of course we're going to see a long-term decrease. But I somehow doubt that GP Washington is the main reason people didn't cash out yet, although I might be wrong.

[Higgs]

My belief is Legacy players on Mtgo, people who are already accustomed to playing Magic: The Stock Exchange, are next leveling the semi-crisis by holding on to their staples and waiting for others to cash out so they can grow their collections when the prices crash. This strategy would be based on the belief that Wizards will be able to turn Mtgo around again one way or the other. If Wizards can't come up with solid plans or encouraging announcements in a few months (or until the release of Vintage Masters) I think this belief would start to diminish and people would start cashing out their Legacy staples as well.

Even for people who can't play Legacy irl due to a lack of community/need to drive x hours/scarcity of events in their area, if 8-man queues prove to be as barren as their paper Legacy events then they might start cashing out as well. This is all speculation of course but I think these are the motivations driving most of the Legacy players online now.

[yugular]

Some standard and modern card prices have dipped a bit, but they are even showing signs of recovering a bit in the past 48hrs or so. Legacy staples didn't really drop much. Scrubland did, but it was maybe because of the influx of promos into the system?

[Koby]

Fuck this shit, I'm outta here. 8-mans are a poor substitute for long event testing. Sold my collection last nite. Good riddance MTGO.

[Phoenix Ignition]

I cannot wait to buy cheap Legacy cards online. Everyone who has them, sell now!

[Koby]

I cannot wait to buy cheap Legacy cards online. Everyone who has them, sell now!

Don't be shocked, but form the time I bought my current set (August) to today, prices on most of my Legacy singles went UP. Most notably, duals & fetches & FOW & LED.

[cuthbertthecat]

Yeah, I had to sell out too. I tried playing like 12 matches a day in 2 and 8 mans to make up for the lack of dailies, and the loss of value and general awfulness of the constructed queues make modo too unpleasant to play.

[phonics]

pool funds, offer to buy MTGO off wizards?


(not kidding either)

Part of the reason why they are in this mess is because they want to do it in house, without a proper development budget, and without a proper development team.

[entity]

Part of the reason why they are in this mess is because they want to do it in house, without a proper development budget, and without a proper development team.

Let's hope they won't get a proper profit either...

[nedleeds]

Fuck this shit, I'm outta here. 8-mans are a poor substitute for long event testing. Sold my collection last nite. Good riddance MTGO.

Yeah ! Buy more real cards !

http://www.infinitydish.com/tvblog/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/applause-sniderogue.wordpress.com_.jpg

[Aggro_zombies]

http://community.wizards.com/content/blog/3956236



Constructed Swiss Queues Closed

Due to a lack of player interest, the following Constructed Swiss queues will be closed following the Wednesday downtime: Standard Swiss, Modern Swiss, and Legacy Swiss.
So...how do you play Legacy on MTGO now? 1v1s?

[Higgs]

http://community.wizards.com/content/blog/3956236


So...how do you play Legacy on MTGO now? 1v1s?

:eek:....

:laugh:

[Julian23]

You can still play in Legacy 8mans. Couldn't care any less about horrible-EV Swiss queues :confused:

[Aggro_zombies]

Oh, I didn't realize Swiss and 8-mans were different.

I'm just waiting for the Hearthstone open beta, don't look at me like that.

[Barook]

I'm just waiting for the Hearthstone open beta, don't look at me like that.
Got my Closed beta key two days ago, after adding "interest" in my Battle.net account last weekend. I'm kinda baffled I got it so fast.

It's fast, mindless fun with a gimmicky interface - nothing more, nothing less.

And Swiss payout was retarded since it was basically 3x 2-mans slapped together. At least people still have some dignity left and don't eat up Wizards' shit left and right.

[Phoenix Ignition]

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand they're back.

Or at least, probably back in about 2 weeks. http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/feature/275b

Too bad you guys didn't crash the market, I really wanted to get into Legacy.

EDIT: Oh, also "in before" it crashes because they did absolutely nothing to address the real issues with it.

[Barook]

EDIT: Oh, also "in before" it crashes because they did absolutely nothing to address the real issues with it.
Yeah, I'm interested to see the results as well.

Maybe they didn't fix anything and only want to stop the money bleeding and people leaving, especially with Hearthstone around the corner.

[Aggro_zombies]

I think the actual best outcome from all of this is if the first MOCS/PTQ/big whatever event they run crashes in one of the late rounds.

It would be hilarious.

[Dice_Box]

Just want to make sure I have this right:
MTGO crashes in a big event
Wizards gets called out on it
Wizards throws a tantrum and says "You can't play no more" and claiming they are fixing the issue
People get jack of it and start selling out of the game.
Wizards says "Wait, stop, you can play again now" after they have say that in the naughty corner for a bit but have not really changed anything.
Everyone says this has happen time and time again.

If this is in fact true, it looks to me like an abusive relationship. Only Wizards is smart enough to try not to leave too many bruises and has its victims doped up on coke so they can't leave. Fucked up from my point of view.

[Barook]

If this is in fact true, it looks to me like an abusive relationship. Only Wizards is smart enough to try not to leave too many bruises and has its victims doped up on coke so they can't leave. Fucked up from my point of view.
Except they can't afford to fuck around like this anymore. The open beta for Hearthstone is around the corner and it's going to be huge (despite being a bland as fuck game). Hell, they give out beta keys like candy and even despite that, I just managed to Ebay a spare key for 17€.

Their online platform is worse than pure, liquid shit, but Magic is a fantastic game. That's the only reason why people are still willing to put up with it. If a good game with a nice interface comes up, Wizards might be in trouble. People realized that there's money to be made with Online CCGs, so sooner or later it's bound to happen that a decent competitor might arise.

[Koby]

I've said it before:

People will use MTGO in spite of it being an awful platform, because MTG as a game is so much fun. The WotC team can't separate that MTGO popularity has nothing to do with the platform, but rather the desire to play MTG.

[Dice_Box]

Is that the reason for the Trice CnD letter? Because that's where I play when I need to test shit.