MTGO Legacy questions

[Barook]

So, V3 is coming to an end in July and they're going to force everybody V4 aka the current beta client.

I wasn't around when they changed from V2 to V3, but from what I hear, it was a catastrophe back then.

[mishima_kazuya]

Brace yourself, MTGO Legacy is about to become a lot cheaper with dual lands being reprinted in Vintage Masters in June.

Although if V3 gets gutted in July, then it may be irrelevant.

[Barook]

Brace yourself, MTGO Legacy is about to become a lot cheaper with dual lands being reprinted in Vintage Masters in June.

Although if V3 gets gutted in July, then it may be irrelevant.

I don't think that duals are the main problem of MTGO prices, but rather the Wastelands, Forces, Ports and Goyfs, among other things.

And I do expect a panic sell when V3 gets turned off. V4 sucks, but you can get used to it.

Vintage Masters sounds interesting, though. I might be tempted to draft it.

[mishima_kazuya]

I don't think that duals are the main problem of MTGO prices, but rather the Wastelands, Forces, Ports and Goyfs, among other things.

And I do expect a panic sell when V3 gets turned off. V4 sucks, but you can get used to it.

Vintage Masters sounds interesting, though. I might be tempted to draft it.

I agree about those other staples. Atm I am stuck with miracles and AnT because paying over $350 for a set of wasteland or rishaden port seems unreasonable. It is especially true when that much money got me more than half of AnT or miracles after the free LEDS and FoWs

[Myelectronicdays]

yeah duals are the cheap part of building legacy decks online.

[Barook]

Realistically, they can bring back Wasteland, Port, FoW, City of Traitors, etc. since they're all cards before the 8th Edition and thus not Modern-legal.

[mishima_kazuya]

Realistically, they can bring back Wasteland, Port, FoW, City of Traitors, etc. since they're all cards before the 8th Edition and thus not Modern-legal.

I would not be surprised since Wizards probably does not care too much about the secondary market on MTGO. On Twitter, a few MODO grinders/streamers thought that Force of Will would never get another promo run and/or thought Duals would not be in Vintage Masters. With the way Wizards is pumping up the circulation of Legacy staples, Vintage Masters could very realistically contain all the high end staples.

This might also lend credence to the theory that Wizards is phasing out paper Legacy and moving it to MTGO where the Reserved List won't hinder it.

[Phoenix Ignition]

This might also lend credence to the theory that Wizards is phasing out paper Legacy and moving it to MTGO where the Reserved List won't hinder it.

With GPs regularly breaking attendance records and the game continually becoming more and more popular, I really don't see this happening. Also, I'm not sure if you play online, but the interface is freaking awful. If they really wanted to phase out paper magic they'd pour more money into making something as pretty as Hearthstone, not just the minimum amount to allow people to scrape by a game of magic.

[Barook]

With GPs regularly breaking attendance records and the game continually becoming more and more popular, I really don't see this happening. Also, I'm not sure if you play online, but the interface is freaking awful. If they really wanted to phase out paper magic they'd pour more money into making something as pretty as Hearthstone, not just the minimum amount to allow people to scrape by a game of magic.

MTGO is somewhere between 30-50% of their revenue, despite being shitty as it is.

Let that sink into your head for a moment.

[Phoenix Ignition]

MTGO is somewhere between 30-50% of their revenue, despite being shitty as it is.

Let that sink into your head for a moment.

Well yeah, they're basically printing free money, only instead of having to deal with the costs of paper, ink, and shipping, they just have to upload a jpeg and maybe once in a while update rules interactions. I'm just saying if they really wanted to phase out paper magic they'd try to make an interface halfway decent. Probably 25% of the games I lose online I can attribute to some form of interface error that I caused (accidentally hitting F2, double clicking attackers which tells them to not attack and usually happens from horrible lag issues).

Look at Hearthstone that game is a terribly dumbed down version of magic and people go to it in droves. I even play it because sometimes it's fun to click on shit and hear sounds happen. If Blizzard created a magic the gathering interface the world economy wouldn't know what hit it.

[Richard Cheese]

Well yeah, they're basically printing free money, only instead of having to deal with the costs of paper, ink, and shipping, they just have to upload a jpeg and maybe once in a while update rules interactions. I'm just saying if they really wanted to phase out paper magic they'd try to make an interface halfway decent. Probably 25% of the games I lose online I can attribute to some form of interface error that I caused (accidentally hitting F2, double clicking attackers which tells them to not attack and usually happens from horrible lag issues).

Look at Hearthstone that game is a terribly dumbed down version of magic and people go to it in droves. I even play it because sometimes it's fun to click on shit and hear sounds happen. If Blizzard created a magic the gathering interface the world economy wouldn't know what hit it.

Well, except for the massive costs associated with running an online service. Hardware, bandwidth, cooling, power, maintenance, monitoring...it's all getting cheaper, but none of it is cheap. Even if they're paying someone else to host and maintain everything, they're still paying for all that stuff. It does seem like they're saving a shitload of money on development though. I'm pretty sure the old MicroProse game had a better interface and was more stable. That reminds me, I miss Shandalar. I'd play the shit out of a mobile version of that with updated cards.

[Koby]

At this point in time, I would no longer recommend MTGO as a gaming platform, especially for Legacy. I do not trust nor have faith in WotC at being able to produce a useful online environment to play/test competitively for any format outside of Drafting.

However, I understand some people may have no option for paper play, and want to maintain their keep in the game. Here's some financial tips about the upcoming implosion:

The cut-over from V3 to V4 will result in some lost players. They will be liquidating their collections. Interest in play online will wane temporarily (est 3-6 months). During this time, the price of all cards will dip. Legacy will likely dip as well. This is a good time to pick up staples when the dip happens. Added to the cut-over, Vintage Masters will be in circulation. This is another good time to pick up and sit on the mana bases. Expect to pay about $15-20 per dual, if not less. I would guess that a $1000 could go pretty far w/r/t Legacy mana base. Wastelands and Forces may be a little tricky to find good deals on, as the former only dips when Tempest drafts return, and the latter is released as promos too infrequently to affect prices greatly. FoW can usually be found between 80-120, depending on the popularity of Legacy online.

It's a catch 22 really, the more popular Legacy is online, the worst it is to get in. The less popular it is, the cheaper you can buy in, but won't be able to play.

For those reasons stated above, I cashed out and am staying out of the MTGO platform.

[Barook]

Hardware, bandwidth, cooling, power, maintenance, monitoring...it's all getting cheaper, but none of it is cheap. Even if they're paying someone else to host and maintain everything, they're still paying for all that stuff. It does seem like they're saving a shitload of money on development though.

Considering the general slowness of their servers, they probably run on a toaster. It shouldn't take two goddamn minutes to log in on a high-end PC with a good internet connection.

And MTGO development is a joke. From what I've gathered, the programmers are paid horribly, way below the industry standard. Now add to that their total incompetence and you get what the current MTGO experience is.

@Koby: Due the reprint announcement, probably combined with players cashing out, the dual prices are already beginning to drop. That doesn't make the fetches any cheaper, though. Depending on the number of staples reprinted for Vintage Masters, it might be a great time to buy in if you're interested in Legacy and able to stomach the subpar interface.

How much of the playerbase was lost when the switch from V2 to V3 happened?

[Phoenix Ignition]

This end of the world stuff has been happening for like, what, 6 months now? I mean, I don't pretend to say MTGO is a good platform, but magic's popularity seems to buoy the online scene regardless of how buggy it is. People were all talking about cashing out 6 months ago when they took away the dailies, and yet the online prices never really dropped. Vintage Masters might bring prices down, but WotC did a very good job of not flooding the market with Modern Masters, and despite the shittyness of the online platform the price of online goyfs only went up. People want to play Legacy, they just don't want to buy into the format. Giving them sealed product that allows them to get into the online scene will boost popularity and possibly even increase the prices.

How many times before have non-Standard format magic cards (digital or paper) really decreased in price? Sure, history doesn't always continue on the same vein, but we have almost no data points (digital or paper) that suggest the market tanking.

[mishima_kazuya]

From hearsay, when the plug was pulled from v2 for v3, prices actually crashed when many events were pulled to fix server issues. As a result of a mix of low prices and the lack of events, shm and eve packs were under drafted. A few years later SHM and EVE singles became very expensive due to a lack of supply

[Barook]

From hearsay, when the plug was pulled from v2 for v3, prices actually crashed when many events were pulled to fix server issues. As a result of a mix of low prices and the lack of events, shm and eve packs were under drafted. A few years later SHM and EVE singles became very expensive due to a lack of supply

That might only be true for JOU since it's the only set that contains cards that aren't crap. Theros and BNG are overdrafted as hell, hence the currently low prices.

Maybe they can get prevent such an event this time, but I wouldn't bet on it.

Sure, MTGO makes them loads of cash, but I wonder how much they could make if they actually put effort into it to make a good product. Like it or not, tablets are defintely a growing market and they're basically ignoring it. While I'm prefering using a PC, a well-made version of MTGO for tablets with touchscreens might be very nice.

[Lemnear]

That might only be true for JOU since it's the only set that contains cards that aren't crap. Theros and BNG are overdrafted as hell, hence the currently low prices.

Maybe they can get prevent such an event this time, but I wouldn't bet on it.

Sure, MTGO makes them loads of cash, but I wonder how much they could make if they actually put effort into it to make a good product. Like it or not, tablets are defintely a growing market and they're basically ignoring it. While I'm prefering using a PC, a well-made version of MTGO for tablets with touchscreens might be very nice.

If WotC would put real effort into the game overall it would wipe the floor with Hearthstone, but they prefer to run MTGO and the papergame with minimal efforts instead which is more than obvious considering how bad MTGO looks like/works and how uninspired their card design is in recent years.

P.S. I'm all for smaller sets without the dozens of fillers and requirement to deliver "new" mechanics for every expansion

[mishima_kazuya]

The price of Force of Will is about to drop vertically.

https://twitter.com/MagicOnline/stat...971072/photo/1

[Koby]

That will hell alleviate some of the "ticket to enter" but other cards will soon replace the mighty FoW as barrier to entry.

Namely Wasteland and Fetchlands; Show & Tell; Misdirection, etc. The usual Blue cards.

[thecrav]

That will hell alleviate some of the "ticket to enter" but other cards will soon replace the mighty FoW as barrier to entry.

Namely Wasteland and Fetchlands; Show & Tell; Misdirection, etc. The usual Blue cards.

I don't mind as much paying for fetchlands; at least they're useful in other formats.