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PC Games (Games) Entertainment Games

Magic Online - Gathering Fans? 50

Posted by simoniker from the i-wanna-trump-a-lot dept.
Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing to the Wired News article discussing the relative success of Magic: The Gathering Online. According to the article: "They said that it couldn't and shouldn't be done.. but a year after the online game's launch - and a decade after the original Magic craze began - more than 100,000 players have registered for the Internet edition.. and almost 40 million digital cards have been traded." The piece also discusses the pro players available to duel with online "..it's like having Allen Iverson or Latrell Sprewell hanging out at your neighborhood playground, always ready for a quick game of one-on-one."
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Magic Online - Gathering Fans? More

Magic Online - Gathering Fans?

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  • No coke-laced ink? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by SnowDog_2112 ( 23900 ) on Tuesday July 01, 2003 @07:03AM (#6338105) Homepage
    My buddies and I always theorized that the addicting nature of M:TG was caused by chemicals in the ink. I mean, you opened a new package of cards, and there was something about that smell. You had to have more of it.

    Years later, it seems they've finally figured out how to hook people without the addicting chemicals (or, just maybe, we were pathetic geeks who spent way too much money playing a game ... nah!).

    (Seriously, I've stayed far away from this game ... I spent enough money on it the first time around. I don't need to start spending money without even having the benefit of having 8 binders full of cards in my closet when I quit the hobby a second time!)
    • Ah, but that's the kicker. If you collect a full set of any release, you can trade it in for the actual cards. There's the candy coating on top of the milk chocolate.
    • 8 binders? I laugh at your pathetic collecting attempts!!?!?! I have (no shit) a four-drawer clothes chest packed SOLID, along with at least eight Ingram book shipping boxes packed, along with about six binders full.

      I actually bought about 1/10 of those cards the 'first time around', prior to the release of the 4th edition cards (right after Ice Age I quit, IIRC). The rest were bought as collections or accumulations off Ebay last year. I finally had to disengage again, even though I actually only put a
  • he has a Magic The Gathering card trading site

    cutting-edge-cards.com [cutting-edge-cards.com]

    One of my favourite items there are original framed artworks of the Magic cards, I have a couple myself much to the envy of some of my kids friends 8)

  • My problem with this game... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by JHMirage ( 570086 ) * on Tuesday July 01, 2003 @07:15AM (#6338155)
    "..it's like having Allen Iverson or Latrell Sprewell hanging out at your neighborhood playground, always ready for a quick game of one-on-one."

    Yeah, and for every Allen Iverson there are 25-30 foul-mouthed little punks who will scream obscenities at you for every lay-up and then disappear into a puff of smoke seconds before your final shot, which would win you the game.

    Or worse (just to belabor the analogy even more) they'll take the ball and sit on it when you're one shot from victory and refuse to budge until you need to go home, at which point they'll cry, "Quitter! I didn't lose! You quit! Ha ha ha!"

    Who needs that?

  • Nope. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by LordYUK ( 552359 ) <jeffwright821@NOSPAm.gmail.com> on Tuesday July 01, 2003 @07:22AM (#6338195)
    I refuse to pay for something I cant keep. I'm sorry, if the packs were like, 50 cents or something, and you could get 30 a month for 15 bucks (i.e., the price of a MMORPG), then that would be a new influx of cards every month, which is kinda like "leveling up"... it always bothered me that I could spend 5 bucks or 5000 bucks and not have anything to show for it if they just up and closed shop one day. At least with a MMORPG you're only paying X amount a year, MAX, and its more of a "service" as opposed to a "product".
    • The will let you exchange them one for one. The online version got me playing again. I have boxes full of cards, but organizing them into decks and then finding geeky people to play with is just something that, as an adult, I don't have much time for. Online, there is always a player and you can play sealed deck which elimitanes the "richest players win." The game kicks ass and I will continue to play it for a long time. It is no longer my primary game addiction, but I can always fire it up and play a good
  • "There's only one level-five judge in the world right now, that's how complicated the game is," said Wizards of the Coast's Hauck. "But there's a level-five judge online all the time, so there's no arguing between friends about the rules."

    There is such a thing as loving your job a bit too much....

  • Sure, for some people that live in somewhat remote areas MTG:O is attractive. However, many, many card sales come from the wannabe professional magic player.

    At any time you can find 8 man tournaments where the top two players, and in some cases top 4, gets a few packs of cards for their victory. A really good player can, and does, play almost for free. The catch: to join the tournament, you have to pay for 3 packs of cards and about 2 extra dollars, for a total of $12. Many player belive that they'll get

  • Why play MtG:O? (Score:3, Informative)

    by GospelHead821 ( 466923 ) on Tuesday July 01, 2003 @09:06AM (#6338828)
    Just get yourself Apprentice (kept up-to-date at e-league.com) and play for free. Granted, you have to find an iRC room or an online friend to play with, yourself, but that's no big hassle. You play for free and you can construct any deck you want. (Yes, this can lead to powergaming, but there are folks out there who aren't twits). It has functions that generate random cards, if you want to play drafts...all in all, a good program.
  • There was a time when M:TG was a very enjoyable game, a lot of fun to play, and the game shops where it was played were full of fun people to be around.

    That was the past. I played for years, starting when The Dark was out, and played through the introduction of Urza's Saga (with a break inbetween). I enjoyed the game, spent a lot of money and time on it, and enjoyed the shops I'd go to, where the other people were fun to be around, interesting to talk to, and the game had an interesting environment.

    Howev

    • The Urza block was the last hurrah for modern Magic. Great sets. Things were becoming more broken, but the game was still playable. It was all downhill after Urza's Destiny. Drafts are still a load of fun if you can find enough people to play with. They cost about $15 a pop online, which really sucks, but it's a good way to spend an hour or so once in a while. And if you win, the next draft is basically free.

      • Bah! Modern magic started with Mercadian Masques. The game is ten times more interactive now. When Type 2 consisted of Tempest block and Urza block, games lasted 3 or 4 turns, unless one of the players was running a straight-up control deck. Now, no less than 6 archetypes are viable in Type 2, with tons of less consistent decks making the environment varied and interesting.

        Urza block was the last hurrah for a phase of Magic: the "old" game. Black Lotuses, Moxen, and Ancestral Recalls turned into Grim Mono

        • Yes, those of us who loved the game will always point to the existance of the Urza's block as probably the biggest mistake they've made.

          Before that set (and Exodus), things were pretty damn well balanced - my favorite block (Mirage/Tempest (w/o Exodus)/5E) had a lot of different archetypes, both ends of the speed spectrum, and there was a lot happening before Exodus came and gave a taste of the combo-based brokenness that would be Urza's Saga.

          Though to be fair, there's always going to be a weak spot in my
          • Yeah, Tempest block was really my coming of age as far as Magic was concerned, so I still deep down love stuff like Jackal Pups the really fast weenie decks of that era. It really pains me to see so many 2/2's for 3 mana these days, and to see effects that we used to be able to get for cheaper costing 1 or 2 extra mana. But as long as the various formats keep being balanced, then I'll be a happyily addicted Magic player :)

            Have you heard that they're not reprinting counterspell in 8th? What's your reaction

            • That was where I really dedicated myself to the game for a short while also. It was nice to see red playing more on the weenie side and less on the burn then - though there was some nice cheap burn, and Fireblast was an amazing finisher.

              It sounds like they're seriously hamstringing blue then. Blue lives and dies by countermagic, as there's really no other strong ability that the color has - everything else comes and goes, and usually is done better somewhere else. There have been good blue creatures her

            • Wizards has been making blue weaker in the last year or so for one simple reason: In the last 10 years, regardless of which set you're using, it has alwasy been, power wise, one of the two best colors. High quality countermagic and card draw just makes high casting cost cards worthless. If the only way to have a competitive deck is to include blue or have an average casting cost of 2 or less in your deck, the game is not very balanced. Making counterspells more expensive and most blue card draw sorcery spee

          • My favorite recent 'broken' setup was the Sliver decks that were tourney legal up to (I guess) about a year ago. I put together a deck with three Sliver Queens (to play against friends, not in tourney), a mix of slivers, the 'Coat of Arms', and (I think) Tormod's Altar. I'll never forget the look on their faces when I'd attack with a dozen 20/20+ creatures and do 200 points of damage in one shot...aaah.
      • The thing I would love to see with MTGO, that which would probably actually get me to subscribe and play, would be the addition of the older cards, and having tournaments for ALL of the formats of the past. I'm not really interested in playing the current Type II of the moment, but it would be incredibly fun to be able to go back and play Type II for my favorite block (Mirage/Tempest/5E), along with perhaps some of the older Type I environments (Everything up to FE only), and so on.

        That's the thing that M
        • This is a great idea.

          I stopped playing around Ice Age... I'd love to be able to play a beta/revised game.
          • It just clicked with me why they don't - and likely won't - do this.

            To justify people paying full card price for online "card" objects, they give people the option to be able to "redeem" any of their online cards, the actual cards in print. If you get tired of playing online, you can turn your virtual collection into a collection of real cards.

            If they were to offer older cards, they'd have to print more of them up to allow people to redeem them, and that will violate their policy that once a set goes out
            • No, they actually say if you collect a FULL set of the cards, you can trade them in for a full set. I believe you also have to do it in a certain amount of time (while that set is active/in print).
  • Is there way to play MtG single player? I know about the MicroProse edition of MtG, but it's out of print, and the Starter software plays only a very limited game. I'm looking for something like Apprentice that can expand with the game, but is smart enough to play on it's own. I'd like to play, but I know I'd get owned playing someone else, and that's no fun.
    • As far as I know, the Microprose Version was one of the best versions that allowed single player duels to take place. Unfortuneatly, after the Spells of the Ancients Add-on (Which gave Arabian Nights, Antiquties and *some* Legend and Dark expansion cards), Microprose had difficulty continuing the game and gave up. People have made patches for the game to run in Windows XP, but no one, as of yet, knows how to add more cards (and probably won't).

      Alternatives I've seen so far include the Magma Magic Machine a
  • My technique for MTGO: Ebay. Hop on there, buy event tickets for a few percent less than retail, buy 4x common sets, etc. The event tickets can be traded for rares/uncommons, and for like $6 you can get full 4x play sets of all the commons for a given set. No fuss, no muss.

    If you draft a lot, the common sets aren't really necessary, but getting the small discount on ebay is very useful.

  • As one of the MTGO addicts since Oct last year, I originally had all teh same complaints voiced above. In looking at the product, however, I soon found the following: 1) Once you have collected a complete set of online cards, you can REDEEM them for the physical set of online cards. Check ebay, you can normally find a complete set in the $70-100 range, comparable to what the physical cards cost you. Buy the online set, play til you're sick of them, then redeem or sell the cards online and recoup your in
  • Would it be legal to build an open source magic "clone" that closely mirrors the MTG rules, but without using any of Wizards copyright material (rulebook, cardnames etc.). Communities could run leagues and tornaments, issuing credits to each player to buy cards. The system would use cryptographic signatures to verify that player don't cheat, much like the WotC version does (I imagine, I've not played a game of magic in years).
    • Quoth jarran:
      Would it be legal to build an open source magic "clone" that closely mirrors the MTG rules....
      I don't beleive so....
      IIRC Wizards was granted an exclusive patent on the play mechanic of trading card games....
      • Just on "Tapping" the card (i.e. turning the card sideways). I think other methods of using the cards (counters, coins, etc) are still correct.
        • Interesting. So do other card games which involve tapping cards (um.. I've been out of the trading card scene now for ages, but say, the Lord of the Rings game) pay royalties to WotC?!
          • Wizards of the Coast was granted patent number 5,662,332 [uspto.gov] on September 2nd, 1997.

            Here is the abstract from the Patent Office:
            Provided herein is a novel method of game play and game components that in one embodiment are in the form of trading cards (10, 12, 40, 42, 44, 48, 54, 60, 64). However, the game components may take other forms, such as a board game, or the game may be played in different media, such as electronic games, video games, computer games, and interactive network. In
  • The only thing holding me back from playing mtg:online is all of these real mtg cards I have. If they would make it so real cards came with a cd that gave you online cards or something I might be interested, but I'm not going to rebuy all of my cards just to play online. Thats like buying mp3's to replace your cd's.
  • I want to play a card.

    OK? Cancel

    You get a chance to counter it.

    That triggers an effect.

    That triggers another effect.

    OK? Cancel

    You let something resolve. Now you must go through the OK? step again and again and again.

    Magic Online is sucessful in spite of itself.

    If you wanted to play a CCG without spending $500 to compete and without clicking OK all day, and with no broken cards and dowzens of strategies, you could always play my online CCG, Chron X [chronx.com]. The game has been online since 1997. You'd th

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