Editorial Section:
Ten Reasons why using MTGO for a Pro Tour is a great idea.  But first, it seems that a lot of people have their own ideas for what I mean when I say an "MTGO Based Pro Tour", so I'll be explicit in my definitions.  MTGO cannot be used in a tournament has an unknown maximum size.  Something like a Grand Prix for instance, would not work at all.  Namely because you don't know how many people will be there and therefore, cannot prepare the event properly.  A turnout like the one in Grand Prix: Paris would be a major problem.  However, for items like Worlds or a Pro Tour, where the number of contestants is fully known and below five hundred, I believe it's perfectly legitimate.  Also, the event wouldn't be like playing MTGO at home, it would be the same 'WotC flies you out to the location' type of thing that exists now.  Lastly, and most importantly, there is no way that this could work within the current (V3) system.  It's just not ready for it.  So as I enumerate these items I will also make sure to point out where things need to be better or fixed to make them happen.  Essentially what I'm going to cover below are a list of things that MTGO has the opportunity to add to a high level event.  I thought briefly about a rebuttal article where I dissect the criticisms and attempt to discredit them but that is really just not my style.  I'm far more of a bright-sider than a nit-picker... or at least that's what I tell myself anyway.

Number Ten: Technology based solution
The current client is far short of where it needs to be for this to work.  However, the possibility exists that piping the feeds right out to the internet could be done for way, way more of the matches as not each match would need to be video taped to be viewable.  Surely the top matches would get the same type of pomp and circumstance they currently do; deck-tech's, interviews, etc.  However, the amount of more matches that would be viewable in this manner would allow for a much more complete view of the events and the decks.  Plus you could follow your friends progress throughout the day, comment on misplays, etc... all from the comfort of your own home.

What MTGO's Missing - An easy way to export the screens, the ability to see the players hands in replays, and easily transmittable replays.

Number Nine: Communication
Language barriers are certainly all over the place a large event like Worlds, or even at the Pro Tour.  Essentially the communication isn't any different between MTGO and two mute players.  Both are pretty quiet.  However, on MTGO the game state isn't required to be said verbally, and all questions are right there on the screen: Hand size? Life total? Cards in graveyard? 

What MTGO's Missing - The V3 UI is clearly lacking in this regard, and we're far behind the times when it comes to voice/video chat availability as well.  It is completely missing localization wherein one player sees all the cards in Korean and the other sees them all in Italian.  MTGO *could* do this, someday.

Number Eight: Pro Tour Drafts
Having heard the instructions given during a Pro Tour draft ("No looking around.", "Keep your eyes on your cards AT ALL TIMES", etc) I feel comfortable saying that this process could be improved upon by using MTGO to handle the drafts.  Also, the way draft packs work at a big event is very different than the way we would probably expect.  Namely they're all opened, stamped, and repacked with paper bands to protect the players from cheaters and verify that each deck could in fact have been made from the contents of said player's draft pool.  That sounds like a lot of work, to be honest.  Worth that doesn't

What MTGO's Missing - The capability to handle gigantic sealed events.  I'm not dense enough to believe that it would even be a remotely good idea to try this with our current client/server setup.  It's just not where it needs to be to reliably handle something like this.

Number Seven: Card Liquidity
What it offers - In paper Magic right now there is a concern about having enough Baneslayer Angels in each market to meet demand.  There just aren't enough of them to go around, and in order to get them from online you have to eBay them or buy them from a store, and of course, you have to wait wait wait to get them.  Pete had a concern about not being able to have players access the card.  Which is preposterous as ever card in the MTGO world is accessible at all times.  For a price, of course.  As demand for cards zooms so too does the EV of each sealed event that produces them.  As those cards get cracked they can and likely would be dumped right into the worldwide marketplace.

What MTGO's Missing - A trade system that can handle this stress, as well as an automated trade feature/better trading access.  This has been requested since the dawn of MTGO and will continue to be requested until it's finally done.  Despite the horrible shortcomings in trading on MTGO, it's still slightly faster for me to get cards from a player in Kuala Lumpur on MTGO than it is in paper. 

Number Six: MTGO is a more 'pure' Magic play experience
Note well! I didn't say a more 'fun' Magic experience.  I also didn't say a 'better' Magic experience.  I said 'pure' and I meant it.  If you doubt this, honestly watch your games in paper (if you play) and watch how much time is spent shuffling, counting, tracking, maintaining, etc and how much time is actually *playing* the game itself.  The results might just shock you, especially in any format where fetchlands see play.  Crack a fetchland, search, play, shuffle, cut... oh, this gets +5/+5 and you put the top six cards of your library in your graveyard.  It also removes that smack-talking, mouthy guy that tries to get an edge by acting like a toddler that got into daddy's RedBull.

What MTGO's Missing - A better UI.  Although the folks at WotC have done a decent job of polishing the steaming present they had to launch, it still leaves a LOT to be desired.  After seeing the improvements in the 3.5 UI it struck me just how much more intuitive the client can truly be. 

Number Five: "Dude, where's my deck?"
Reading the coverage of Rome via Twitter and blogs left me with a very sick feeling about humanity.  The amount of people who had items stolen was disheartening.  I dream of a world where people don't screw each other over.  I believe in a world where people can, do and will screw each other if it suits them.  This was one of the catalysts for my small blurb last week about why MTGO would be better.  Imagine a tournament where you just walk in, with no cards, no bag of binders, no dice, no laptop.  Just you, you clothes, and your pockets of tech items.  How relaxing to not have to constantly watch your stuff, or to need to wrap a bag around your legs while you sit.

What MTGO's Missing - Biometrics.  But the cost->benefit for them is absurd right now, and I don't think they'd add a lot more to the security at these specific events.

Number Four: "Cheating" disappears
There are things that are 'like' cheating, like abusing the interface or abusing a card bug, but those aren't actually cheating.  Cheating is misrepresenting a game state.  Cheating is palming cards.  Cheating is lying to your opponent.  Cheating is leaving a Cadaverous Bloom in your lap to 'pick up' later.  Not a single one of these things can be done on MTGO.  You don't have to constantly be on the look out for what shifty thing your opponent MIGHT try to get away with.  Or why he is constantly having you count your cards in hand.  Or if it was an actual accident when he looked at the top card of his library before drawing it.

What MTGO's Missing - Instant infractions.  This would need to have a coordinated judge group on the floor as well as WotC CS ready to enforce stupidity

Number Three:  All Oracle, All the Time
How many game states are convoluted because a player is playing a Korean version of one card, a Japanese version of another, and an Italian version of another?  Oh, and throw in a few pre-sixth versions of a couple other cards for good measure.  In the best case scenario judges are called, oracle wordings are looked up things are explained, and each player has to hold those rules in their heads for the rest of the game.  That's the best case.  Worst case, a player loses without asking for a judge and feels cheated.

What MTGO's Missing - In this instance, nothing.  Oracle updates are handled completely by the client already, and correctly at that.

Number Two: No deck checks
"We got deck checked and I had for forgotten to de-sideboard and started the match with a game loss".  Yeah, that sucks.  It's also irrelevant with MTGO as your deck goes back to the submitted deck between each round.  No more de-sideboarding mistakes, or incorrectly registered lists, or accidentally having five Lotus Cobras in your deck.  They're just done, out of sight and locked away.  Also, it makes it so no one knows what the other is sideboarding.

What MTGO's Missing - Nothing, assuming you don't get a 140 random sealed deck at the start of each match...

Number One: Rules Enforcement
And here is the number one reason that started this whole enchilada.  Multiple players were disqualified from Worlds, which in turn disqualified their entire team.  I don't know Charles Gindy, I've never met him.  But I have met two of his team mates; Brad Nelson and Todd Anderson.  Both Brad and Todd are fine upstanding players and great guys.  It powerful sucks that they were disqualified from the team portion along with Gindy.  I have the same empathy for the teammates of the other two teams that got dropped from the team portion because of players cheating.  However, in the Gindy case the disqualification happened because of believed intentions of cheating.  I don't know what exactly happened but every story I've heard of the incident would be rendered moot if MTGO was used instead of humans.  Likewise, every story of Kibler's opponent's missed Angel of Despair trigger would also vanish.  Complain about losing to a misclick I suppose.  I'd take a personal fault of misplay over letting own three of my peers any day of the week.

What MTGO's Missing - Bug free cards.  Things really have gotten much better, even though there are still often small issues here and there.  For the most part, things are very good with new card sets as they're deployed. 

Do I think we will see MTGO Pro Tours someday?  I honestly don't know, probably not.  But then again, I didn't think we'd ever get Pro Tour Qualifiers under MTGO V3, so anything is possible.  I can see the reasons for them, of course, I can see the reasons against them too.  Also there's no way that an MTGO event would make judges obsolete at the event.  They would still need to be available to explain cards and effects and why something happened.  In fact, I think they'd have higher powers for the events to be able to enforce rules and quickly fix anything that breaks.

Discussion Items:
The Marketplace Sucks - Not really news by this point, but it keeps being mentioned in new and unique ways that the Marketplace is become more and more unusable each week as people find and exploit the client.

MTGO Pack Payout Issues - A completely unbelievable thread, in my humble opinion.  I'm not sure what I need to do to help call attention to this but this is surely a big deal.  While I'm sure CS is adept at fixing this by now, that's beyond the point.  It shouldn't take CS to fix this.  Either something is wrong with the set up or something is wrong with the grant.  It really doesn't matter which, but it really needs to be fixed.

Price Discussions:
We have a nice mix of changes this week in card prices.  Good ol' Maelstrom Pulse leads the pack.  It's a good card with lots of applications and always useful.  Earthquake was also a strong mover this week as it is showing its power in the world of Standard.  The interesting cards to me were the ones in the #2, 4, 5, and 6 slots.  All Extended based cards, and not a couple of them aren't really super powerful.  I'm not exactly sure why they, among all the cards online, decided to surge forward but they did.  If you are aware of the reason please share it in the comments!

As for the droppers, Cobra, Nissa, Eldrazi are there in full effect which is understandable as they left the sanctuary of their format strongholds and promptly got hit by an SUV driven by Bloodbraid Elf while she was talking on her cell phone.  Like, for sure.  Oddly enough Emeria Angel cooled off a bit this week, despite still being a very strong creature in the format she hasn't been able to really hold her value very well after Worlds.  Phyrexian Dreadnought Slides down a bit from 'really expensive' to 'pretty expensive'.

Price Tables:

Price Graphs:

maelstrom pulse chart
the rack chart
earthquake chart
stuffy doll chart
engineered explosives chart
sliver legion chart
damnation chart
jace beleren chart
yavimaya elder chart
thrumming stone chart
stuffy doll chart
malakir bloodwitch chart
undead warchief chart
seaside citadel chart
wall of denial chart
extraplanar lens chart
blastoderm chart
battlegrace angel chart
the rack chart
earthquake chart
lotus cobra chart
nissa revane chart
eldrazi monument chart
haunting echoes chart
phyrexian dreadnought chart
vampire nocturnus chart
emeria angel chart
badlands chart
abeyance chart
savannah chart
emeria angel chart
ethersworn canonist chart
haunting echoes chart
eldrazi monument chart
scute mob chart
nissa revane chart
cephalid coliseum chart
crypt of agadeem chart
master of etherium chart
protean hydra chart

Tournament Data:
Exodus Prerelease TODAY!

Exodus Release NEXT WEEK!

Dailies:

Premier Events:

Weekend Events:

Conclusion:
If you're still reading this (there was a lot of text this week), I'd like to say that I'm quite amazed that my small section last week has blown up so much in the past seven days.  It truly feels like a polarizing issue for the community at this point as it seems that most people talking about it either see it as a possible outcome or as an impossible outcome.  Personally, it's not so black or white to me.  I think it *could* happen IF some required things happen.  I can't say for sure if it would work or if it wouldn't or if it would work that they would even want to try it.  The mere possibility has created more discussion about MTGO than I've seen in a good long while, which is a good sign of people still caring about the medium; and that's always a good thing.