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By: Ith, Jordan Kronick
Aug 17 2010 1:04am
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Welcome to the Roundup.  Since this is the first of these, I thought I'd take a moment to explain exactly what's happening here.  The purpose of the article you're reading is to clue everyone in to the issues of the day (or week, or whatever) that are making a big buzz over at Wizards' official Magic Online forum.  For many years, Magic Online General has seen the entire life cycle of thousands of community arguments on every conceivable subject related to Magic Online - and many that aren't.  In the interest of spurring more discussion on the issues raised, I wanted to make sure everyone got a good look at what's hot in the mind of the community.

Of course, this exercise is not going to be limited to reporting other people's opinions.  Have no illusions, dear reader, there will be much editorializing happening on the Roundup.  If there's an issue that affects the Magic Online community, you can bet that I've got a strong opinion about it.  I'm not going to hold back my thoughts on any of the issues presented here, and I hope you'll comment on the article and let loose similarly.  Without further ado, here's what's making headlines:

Bribery Prize Sharing on Magic Online
First we've got an official word from Wotc_K, which directs users to this blog post, detailing the "new" policy regarding prize splitting in tournaments.  In a nutshell, the policy is this:

• Users may only discuss splits in the finals of any tournament
• Users may not offer or request concessions in exchange for anything
• Users may only negotiate splits involving prizes (including QPs) from the tournament - no "sweetening the pot" with outside product/whatever.
• Prize sharing is still not recommended by Wizards, and if someone doesn't hand over the packs they were supposed to, you're on your own.

The blog post also had a couple of bits of advice that weren't so much policy notes.  Firstly, that people should only negotiate prize sharing if they "know and trust" the opponent.  That seems rather silly since we're operating in a (mostly) anonymous online environment, and the chances of bumping into an old friend in the finals of a tournament are usually pretty unlikely.  Secondly, Wizards wants everyone to know that they're prepared to drop a banhammer on a case-by-case basis, and that they will investigate wherever they think they need to.  Here they're just covering themselves.  I doubt this actually implies any increase in their monitoring of prize splitting activities.

So what has the community had to say on the subject?  Well, first there was a lot of confusion over just what - if anything - had actually changed here.  Calavera777 commented that "in 4-3-2-2 queues you can no longer say 'Winner gives the loser 2 tickets so we both get our next draft free'", which Wotc_K clarified by saying that this particular wording has never been acceptable since the 2 tickets in question are product outside the prizes.  He went on to restate that Wizards doesn't support or endorse prize splitting and that "At no point will we provide specific information about how to do something we don't recommend doing."  That may be the most important gem of the thread. It's one that a lot of people seem to want to ignore however, as the rest of the thread is crammed full of people requesting specific "safe" examples from Wizards.

The crux of the argument in the thread is that because qualifier points are acceptable spoils for the purposes of prize splitting, and because they are always going to go to the person who the system recognizes as winning the finals, that asking for QPs as part of a prize split may be akin to asking for a concession - which is specifically against the rules.  However what we really have here is an issue where semantics matter.  What readers should take away from this discussion is that there are very specific things you can't say and do without incurring the wrath of god.  Basically, if you offer anything in exchange for a concession or offer to concede in exchange for anything, you are in violation.  As long as everyone keeps their negotiations about actual prizes - and not about who wins the match, there won't be any problems. 

This is a case where the community as a whole would very much like Wizards to be clearer but legal is undoubtedly standing in the way.  Much like trading conducted outside the sanctioned Magic Online trade system, Wizards cannot be seen to support or endorse the activities with one hand while punishing those who break the rules with the other hand.  It's just one of those situations we have to learn to live with until a mechanical solution is implemented in game.  It's something that I have every confidence the dev team is looking at implementing in some version down the line, as it's been a bundle of trouble since the day Magic Online first launched.

Stolen Grain Influx of Stolen Tickets?
wilmheath started this thread, quickly commenting on a rise in the number of stolen product sales he's encountered recently, and requested an "account created" date to be put on player information so that dealers could make more informed decisions about whether or not they want to buy from someone.

It seems like a sane and logical request, but it's received some heated discussion.  Account creation dates remind many players of ratings which were done away with on Magic Online (or at least made invisible so as to be virtually pointless).  Ratings were nixed due to a handful of people complaining about harassment stemming from their low ratings.  Some have now argued that account creation dates could be a similar target for harassment, and that refusing to buy or sell with new accounts could constitute discrimination.

A lot of people started reacting badly to the suggestion right out the gate.  Both M0N079 and Xerexs implied that honest business practices would solve the problem on wilmheath's end.  That lit the match of the rest of the community's fight on the subject.  The back and forth of the argument is that one side feels that more information is required by dealers (and individual players for that matter) to make good decisions about whom to buy from.  The other side feels that any further information they're forced to give would lead to discrimination and harassment.  This strikes me as a microcosm of the much larger Battle.net Real ID fiasco that had the online gaming community in such an uproar last month.

To me the issue is the difference between being discriminatory and being discriminating.  The two words have taking on distinctly different meaning, and I think this shows the split quite vividly.  On the one hand, the act of choosing not to sell or buy with someone based on any personal information (be it join date, rating, number of vowels in screen name, proper grammar, etc) could certainly be considered an act of discrimination.  But is it the "bad" kind of discrimination or is it the good kind, like when someone is discriminating in their choice of which champagne to serve at a dinner party?  I view it as the latter.  The choice not to deal with certain people here is solely to protect the dealer, not to harm the customer. 

If you walk into a restaurant without a shirt or shoes, you might have the best of intentions but they're still going to refuse to serve you.  Magic Online dealers (and individuals!) need to be given the ability to see whether or not someone's wearing shoes - the sign is already posted.

Night Dealings Thursday Night Magic Online
Lastly we have what's clearly the biggest story on the minds of the community this week.  PhoenixLAU got things kicked off simply with a link to Wizards' official announcement about ThNMO.  If you've been living under a rock, ThNMO is a weekly series of three tournaments with a rotating format from week to week. The start times are (in Pacific time) 10am, 3pm and 8pm.  Of course, that's not where they started.  Amid the generally pleasant reaction to the announcement were a number of East coasters and Europeans complaining that the original times didn't quite work for them.  A mere four days after the initial announcement, WotC_K posted in the thread pointing out that they'd increased the size of the tournaments to 256 max for each and also that they'd shifted the times of the final two tournaments of each day one hour (having originally been at 4pm and 9pm) in an attempt to accommodate East Coasters (if not Europeans). 

I entered the discussion (you didn't think the Roundup would be without my foray into the discussions, did you) when the point of sharks was brought up by IkromaAze.  The phenomenon of "sharking" has always been very interesting to me, and complaining about sharks is a sure fire way to get me deeply invested in a thread, so off I went.  To me, sharking doesn't exist.  Sharking as most people define it is the act of a very skilled player entering an environment meant for less skilled players in order to win more.  The first rise of this phenomenon on Magic Online concerned the 4-3-2-2 booster draft queues.  Because the prizes were less (and more forgiving of loss) than the standard 8-4 queues, some people assumed that it meant they were designated for "more casual" or "less skilled" players, and that therefore the more skilled, highly ranked players should stay away.  Mind you, this was back in the days when player limited ratings were visible to all.  In fact, it originally started when you could actually see who was queuing for a draft with you (and therefore see the ratings of the people you were soon to be drafting against - before the draft had even begun). 

The problem with the example of sharking above to me is that no environment is meant specifically for less skilled or more casual players.  4-3-2-2 drafting is no more casual than 8-4, it's merely a different prize set up.  Similarly, Thursday Night Magic Online is no more a tournament series for casual players than are any others.  Every tournament is open to every player (with the exception of things you have to qualify for of course), and nobody should be shamed for joining any particular queue. 

The sharking argument died down pretty quickly after it descended into the perennial "what is casual?" argument.  I think once it became that, everyone involved recognized that there would be no end in sight and moved onto something more productive.  For the purposes of this thread, that became a discussion over the marketing behind Thursday Night Magic Online - specifically behind the choice of three tournaments at the specific times chosen.

The argument about scheduling quickly became the question on the minds of many posters (including this post from KikiiJiki which explains that side of the argument quite well) of why they couldn't just run more tournaments.  After all, if the posted times don't work for Europe or Australia or Asia, why not just run tournaments every three hours as Kikii suggests?  I decided to explain.  The crib notes here is that by increasing the number of tournaments, the number of interested players is diluted amongst all of them.  Although more players are brought in from markets outside North America, most players already had a time that worked for them whether they lived on the continent or not. 

The point I raised was that the success of the tournament series - and therefore its future both in terms of WotC's support and player's support - would be determined by how successful each individual tournament was.  To make each tournament more successful, there needs to be few of them.  This makes each individual tournament more full and therefore the program appears more successful (which attracts more player attention).  fatguy_poolshark agreed with me on this, as did others.  Thanks for the compliment, fatguy.

theylostmynameagain responded to my explanation post essentially arguing that the true measure of success was not in how full any given individual event was, but rather in the total number of players participating in any event over the course of a given Thursday.  The argument continued back and forth for quite a while.  I must admit that whenever an email popped up saying I had a new response in the thread from theylostmynameagain, I jumped quick like a rabbit to respond to him in turn.  Our argument was partially interrupted by discussion of the actual numbers from the first week's attendance of ThNMO (which were not great).  

By the end of the argument, I was arguing that Wizards had given serious marketing thought to the issue of ThNMO's times and number of events.  theylostmynameagain was arguing that it was pure guesswork.  I maintain that Wizards puts a lot more thought into these issues than most people give them credit for.  It's a common fault that people sometimes forget that Wizards is a business first and foremost.  Every person they employ is, in some way, working to make more money for the company.  While this might be a little flimsy when it comes to explaining their janitorial staff, when it comes to people creating new events for Magic Online, the intent is clear.  These events are created for the fun of players but most of all they're trying to get your money.  Don't hold that against them though, that's just the relationship between vendor and consumer. 

Anyone who is in a position to invent a new Magic Online event has at least some marketing training.  You can bank on that.  Even if the training consists merely of advice from coworkers and their boss, the training is still there.  I'm not suggesting that everyone should just take it on faith that Wizards always knows best with new marketing ideas (CVP and the Gleemax Initiative would argue otherwise).  However, I would argue that most people need to be prepared to give Wizards the benefit of the doubt - or at least agree that they gave each idea some thought.  Wizards has produced a revolutionary card game which has only increased in popularity over its 17 years of existence.  Clearly they've got some people there who understand marketing.  Not every new idea is going to work out, but when it comes to Magic we should all know better than to expect failure.

Wrap in Vigor Wrapping up the Roundup
That's it for this edition.  I hope I was able to provide a little insight into a few of the issues that have been consuming the attention of Magic Online General this week.  If you'd like to see more of these, please leave many comments and tell me so.  Give me your feedback!  If you have other sources you think I should be plumbing for interesting topics, let me have them!  If you've got a specific community issue you want to hear my take on, let me have that, too.  

Until next time, keep your blood boiling.

17 Comments

Oh dear... by bubba0077 at Tue, 08/17/2010 - 01:44
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5

Oh dear...

Excellent recaps and While I by Paul Leicht at Tue, 08/17/2010 - 03:39
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Excellent recaps and While I don't necessarily agree with your views I respect your courage in putting them out there. Hopefully this won't be too bloody. :)

Re: Ducks by tempesteye at Tue, 08/17/2010 - 09:28
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As if I didn't get enough of MTG:O Gen on the Wiz site ....

Here I Go! by Westane at Tue, 08/17/2010 - 12:17
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5

I like this article! So, as an American, I feel the need to throw around my 2-ton opinion, and eat Wendy's burger, and @#$% up my taxes... Anyway, I do have some opinions on the matters, and just so as to confuse the majority of the MTGO community, I'll probably end up using a good bit of MMO jargon. In the TP room I type "LF3m Standard Daily - Plz Have Deck and link Achiev." Not a single chuckle, /sigh

Prize Splitting "Clarification"
I don't really like this, but to be honest, I'm not a fan of MTGO costumer support either. I wanted a name change, and I tried everything, talked to everyone I could, even offered to pay them the $10 new account fee. They wouldn't go for it. So I asked, if I open a new account, could they delete the Planeswalkers Gold Bordered cards forced onto the account? They said no, of course. "Why can't you delete an entry off my account? I'm consenting to it, in writing!" "We just can't"... Fine. I opened my account in 2004 when you got a $10 gift card and nothing else. I'm a little CDO (It's like OCD, only alphabetical, THE WAY IT SHOULD BE!) so having those damn, non-tradeable, non-usable crap cards on my account would drive me nuts!

How does this relate? I think the whole dancing around the logistics deal is stupid, and it's almost like they're trying to trap people into losing their support. In WoW players can a GDKP raid. This is completely of the players' design and not endorsed or supported by Blizzard in any way. It does, however, involve the trade of large amounts of in-game currency. How can you feel safe doing this? Because Blizzard's support is good enough that they state "So long as the intent of the activity is clearly stated IN TEXT before the event, we can and will moderate it.". Perhaps I'm just missing the reason as to why WotC can't support consensual concession.

Stolen Ticket:
See above. Of course, here I may be missing the point a little. If WotC isn't "fixing" the rip-offs that's one thing, if this is just a way to prevent them that's another. I've always thought ratings should just be optionally shown, if only to allow people to stroke their e-peens. As for account creation dates, I can't agree with that if only for how many special circumstances there'd be.

TNMO == FMNO:
I agree 110% with the author here. How many times do you go to an FNM where there's not a handful of people playing tier 1 decks? Some people just have more fun playing those decks and they have no obligation to sacrifice said fun to "promote" a casual environment. At the first TNMO I played your standard UW Control, JMS and all, while my buddy brought his Mono Green kinda-elf budget deck. I went 2-1 while he went 3-0. I think that alone shows the event was a success.

I think I've rambled enough for today, hope you enjoyed my second article for the week lol.

Consensual Concession is at by Paul Leicht at Tue, 08/17/2010 - 17:41
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Consensual Concession is at the very heart of what WOTC doesn't like about prize splits.

They are fine with how you split your prizes as long as the winner is not determined by fraud. Which in this case means in any method other than completing the game or with a concession that has not been agreed upon before hand. To do otherwise is to invite disaster legally and financially. Keep in mind, magic online is NOT a gambling game.

Btw I probably would have giggled a little if I knew what that ad meant and was around when you posted it. Bring deck? lol.

In WoW you would see someone by Westane at Tue, 08/17/2010 - 17:56
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In WoW you would see someone spamming the Trade channels (Never used for actual trading mind you) with something like:

"LF4m - ICC25, Need Tank and DPS - Please have 5600gs and Link Achiev."

Which translates to...

"Looking for four more people for Icecrown Citadel 25. Needs a tank are three damage dealers. Please have a gearscore of atleast 5600 and link me the achievement to prove you know what you're doing."

Which translates to...

"Need more people willing to waste the next 5-6 hours of their life failing easy content. Your epeen must be thiiiiiiiiiiis big to join us."

Thanks, I appreciate the by speks at Tue, 08/17/2010 - 12:47
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Thanks, I appreciate the recap very much!!

I am in an office working all day where the official wizards site is blocked but puremtgo is not, so i can catchup on my magic related readings during the day and just go home and game in the evenings. I prefer the recaps much more than goto this link and read this, since the links are usually blocked for me.

I don't think I'm in the minority here so keep writing these, you definitely have a reader base out there!

Thanks for the kind words! I by Ith at Mon, 08/30/2010 - 01:46
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Thanks for the kind words! I only wish I'd thought of it sooner.

One-sided without relevant information by Jyalt at Tue, 08/17/2010 - 13:12
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Did you even talk about the solution proposed for the influx of stolen tickets issue? NO! You covered the issue badly, since you failed to mention making 'join date public as opt-in.' That would certainly stop scammers from opening new accounts and dumping tons of tix, since other players could ask to see their join date. People arguing about this made up about 1/3 of that entire thread. You manage to mention join date, but talk about arguments rather than framing the issue itself.

"By the end of the argument, I was arguing that Wizards had given serious marketing thought to the issue of ThNMO's times and number of events."

Wizards is following a copypasta weekly dealie like when Scott Larabie was in charge of the event schedule. Wizards doesn't need 'serious marketing thought' with regards to magic online. The game sells itself. Look at the state of the program. Look at the frequency of major updates. Lost's point was that they could slap any old event schedule up and still events would fire, so therefore, why not schedule more events which are classic/legacy, which wizards isn't supporting well?

I didn't like this article because you are putting up your opinions as factual statements. While you love doing this in the forums, an article is a more legit place of sharing information, so I'll call you on some obvious BS.

Do you know everyone in MTGO has marketing training? NO! You don't work for wizards. Also, they have a tendency of promoting customer support staff into bigger roles after 6 months or so, and those people have never impressed me with their competence. If marketing training was required, I think they could post a release event schedule that didn't need a public edit. They have not managed this for over a year.

Do you know fewer tournaments bring more success? NO! You don't have wizard's profit numbers. (I'd argue their servers can't handle more events then they current run, which is the real bottleneck. Otherwise maybe we'd have more 64 man premier drafts during releases.)

Do you know the dev team is looking to implement splitting again? NO! We had it, but they took it away. They can't even give the community a good standardized procedure to split at our own risk, without risking a 30 day ban for collusion.

If you are going to write a useful round-up article, cover all the information, don't sculpt your own strong opinions and selective facts into an editorial and present it as an unbiased summary.

Jyalt, read the first two by FierceTable at Tue, 08/17/2010 - 15:31
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Jyalt, read the first two paragraghs of his article. Google the definition of an editorial. Now increase the rating you gave the article because the author accomplished his goal of writing an editorial as can be seen from your vehement response.

Like everyone else, I didn't agree with everything you've pointed out, but I like the article and hope you continue to make more of these. Very well done for a first attempt.

I will NOT change my rating by Jyalt at Wed, 08/18/2010 - 11:01
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The author wrote an extremely biased editorial, yes.

I disagreed. I found no merit in the article, and praising Ith for 'completing an editorial article' is not relevant to my rating. To me, it was a bad editorial and therefore a bad article.

He is entitled to post his inaccurate generalizations based on supposition, and I am entitled to have my own opinions based on a broader understanding of the issues given.

Having an opinion does not make that opinion correct. You may read my earlier post explaining why I disliked the article to better understand mine, if desired. You won't even have to Google it.

Jyalt, I'm very glad for your by Ith at Mon, 08/30/2010 - 01:51
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Jyalt, I'm very glad for your comments. In fact, I'm making myself a note right now to quote you in the next one. Having an opinion absolutely doesn't make my opinion correct. And if you dislike my opinions, I think that's all the cause you need to give me a bad review.

This article, and those yet to come, are most definitely editorials. I'm not going into this thinking that I should be heralded just for stating my opinions. This is the internet and opinions aren't just a dime a dozen - more like you have to pay a dime to avoid a dozen of them.

Once upon a time, my opinion carried a bit of weight in the Magic community. Not a lot, but some. That's not really the case anymore, but I hope I can eventually know that feeling again.

So, please continue to read what I have to say and please continue to rate me poorly if you disagree. I mean this from the heart.

I have mixed emotions about by Raddman at Tue, 08/17/2010 - 13:24
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I have mixed emotions about this article. First, I liked it because I don't have access to wizards boards at work due to firewall (for some reason pure isn't a problem). On the other hand I come here to learn information about the game relating to gameplay. When I used to have access to the boards it seemed full of whiney people just looking to put their name in a blog for the sake of getting lots of posts.

So while I am torn, it was something different to read. I doubt I'd read it all the time if this became an ongoing series.

Ok with me by Lythand at Tue, 08/17/2010 - 17:30
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I don't mind the article myself, and as others have stated, I can't get the info normaly because I am behind a firewall at work. I don't agree with everything either, but I don't know if there are any articles I agree with everything. You can read an article about deck building and not agree with all the card choices. It's something different and I don't mind it at all.

Hehe, no firewall with the by Westane at Tue, 08/17/2010 - 17:57
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Hehe, no firewall with the County. Hell I write and research my articles here at work XD. Go go IT position!

Give me more! by Sumidian at Tue, 08/17/2010 - 21:25
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Don't usually post but wanted to say that I really appreciate this type of article. Keep on writing them! :D

seahorse314159's picture

I'm all for an article that covers the MTGO forums. And while I don't agree with everything that JK said (does anyone every really agree to all ideas online or anywhere), I find it very useful and refreshing to see that there is coverage of the "official" boards and perhaps such articles may lead to some less moderated by WOTC type discussion.