Editorial Section:
Alrighty! By now it's no shock that Legacy has done some crazy things to the world of the MTGO economy, namely, that many old cards have sky rocketed in price lately. But what exactly has happened to the prices of those Legacy cards? Well, let's take a look at the sum of 1x of all the Legacy cards one month ago. As of February 25th 2010 the Classic Sets (ONS block and backwards) Were worth 2117.69, and if you remove the Legacy banned cards you'd be sitting at 1972 tickets for 1x of each card in ONS+ minus the banned list. As of right now, 1x Classic is worth 2218.57 tickets and Legacy is up to 2094.22 tickets which would be a 100.88 and 122.22 ticket increase, respectively. And a lot of that value is in Force of Will, the dual lands and some various other non-banned cards like Lion's Eye Diamond.
While probably not directly tied to Legacy coming online, the last 30 days of usage stats have been off the charts. No really, it's over the top of the infobot charts! Granted, the charts top out at 2500 players, but still, that's amazing to see continuous usage details of that nature without events running the entire time. What we're seeing is more and more players than ever before on MTGO. That should eventually translate into more and more players into the other formats like Legacy, Extended and Classic.
Some things to do to help Classic:
I've said a bit about the problems that Classic is going to have. Namely that there will be an Official Eternal format in Legacy ant that Classic has been relegated to a weekend format now. But what can the people who enjoy Classic do to keep the format alive and well? Essentially all formats need to acquire players and retain players that have joined.
Let's look at the first part of the above, recruiting new players. There are a couple of ways of doing oddly enough, Legacy helps with this a lot. If Legacy draws new players on to MTGO and straight into Legacy, they're already a long way towards playing Classic. As I mentioned above, the price difference is only about 125 dollars between the two for 1x of each missing card. That means that a player with a Legacy deck can likely take the next step and join Classic if they want to without a lot more out of pocket expense. Because let's face it, the jump from Extended to Classic is way, way bigger; somewhere along the lines of 500 more tickets for 1x of each missing card. Even if they don't want a complete set of the missing cards, there is just way more to get caught up on between Extended and Classic.
Second for new player acquisition is community. But not just any community; a worthwhile community. This starts at the casual level and extends into the tournament scene as well. Being as I assume many of the Classic players will be able to play Legacy, and there will undoubtedly be more Legacy events to choose from, it stands to reason that Classic players who wish to recruit willing and eager new players will do well to be ambassadors of the Classic format in each and every Legacy game they play. For an example, use dangerlinto and his quest for player acquisition. He pulls no punches with his decks, but he is always a great person to play against and never berates or belittles an opponent due to sub par cards or bad plays. If anyone wants to help Classic, the best way to do that is to actively recruit for it. The best place I can think of recruiting new Classic players is from the Legacy queues. If you see a new face with a Legacy deck, plant the seed of Classic with them, let them see the power of Classic versus they're Legacy deck and see if it appeals to them.
And of course, there are some things that would help Classic, but are out of player control would be higher power-levels and higher prizes. Sadly, adding the Power 9, or even some of them into the format is something that we, the players, have little control over. In the same vein, we can't generally get WotC to subsidize one format over another. The Pauper players and Extended players ran into a brick wall with this very issue before with pack price disparity of the queues. The best thing for Classic payouts is if WotC chooses an at least somewhat valuable pack that is always in demand, short of that, we're at the whim and will of the WotC's. If WotC decides to put the Power 9, or even *some* of them in MED4, all bets of Classic's future are off; as that will vastly change the draw to the format.
Classic is going to have a lot of fights in the coming months. They don't have to be fatal. There is a lot that the current community CAN do to draw people into the format but most of them revolve around the current player base showing potential players how awesome the format is and what else can be done in Classic compared to Legacy. I know that there are a lot of passionate players in the format. In fact I think that Classic has the most ardent supporters of any format, except perhaps Pauper (it may be a toss-up, actually). That passion is great and can be a benefit to the format.... assuming that passion is used to recruit new players.
Discussion items:
M10, Zen, and WWK Redemption back in stock:
Good news for the folks holding onto Zendikar and M10 sets! They are now back in stock and should have quite a few hanging around for redemptions as needed!
A thread about why MTGO is better than Paper Magic:
This one hits really close to home now that I am deeply involved with both Paper and Digital Magic on a near daily basis.
If MTGO was a store....:
I'm not sure what's worse... that MTGO keeps having big issues with events or how much I love these threads when they pop up afterwards. These threads are always a good read, if for nothing besides entertainment. Sadly, the entertainment comes at the expense of the fun of the players who get impacted by the events. :/
Card price discussion:
If we take out the "Legacy" cards we have:
Tarmogoyf, Jace, Elspeth, Lodestone, Talus, Night of Souls' Betrayal, Comet Storm and Jwari Shapeshifter that rose this week. Most of those aren't really tied together but there are a couple Extended staples in there; namely Tarmogoyf and Night. Goyf for the obvious big beater for two mana and Night as a good sideboard card against one half of the Thopter Foundry combo decks in Extended.
There was a pretty good run on some Standard cards like Elspeth and Talus Paladin for white decks and some new Ally love with the Shapeshifter. The shifter has seen more and more play in U/x Ally Mill decks along with Rite of Replication.
As for dropping prices, not much went down in a large fashion at all. The biggest one was Oath of Druids, other than that it was a pretty slow week for declining card prices all around. Some Standard, some Extended, some Classic... etc.
Card price tables:
Card price charts:
tarmogoyf chart
lion's eye diamond chart
entomb chart
natural order chart
wasteland chart
"jace, the mind sculptor" chart
underground sea chart
"elspeth, knight_errant" chart
manabond chart
force of will chart
lodestone golem chart
talus paladin chart
night of souls' betrayal chart
gemstone mine chart
karakas chart
wasteland chart
comet storm chart
entomb chart
jwari shapeshifter chart
mirri's guile chart
oath of druids chart
vampire nocturnus chart
yavimaya elder chart
knight of the reliquary chart
nissa revane chart
eye of ugin chart
ranger of eos chart
"rith, the awakener" chart
extirpate chart
scalding tarn chart
death's shadow chart
scute mob chart
rite of replication chart
emeria angel chart
drowned catacomb chart
vampire nocturnus chart
yavimaya elder chart
malakir bloodwitch chart
"rith, the awakener" chart
pithing needle chart
Conclusion:
As a wrap up I'd like to give out two apologies. The first to dangerlinto, whom I inadvertently upset with a very tactless statement. The second is to the entire world outside of the USA. Essentially I completely overlooked the impacts of VAT and extra taxes that are a huge part of the reason tickets have been going higher and higher on secondary sources. Such an oversight is horrible, and I hope to never make the same mistake again. Thanks for reading get ready for Urza's Saga! Pre-release events start TODAY! And the release events start March 31st!!
22 Comments
I don't want to keep going on about the will Classic die thing, but just noticing in casual room theres very few legacy games.. I think, for awhile any ways, people will keep playing classic in casual just out of the habbit of startin a game and changing format to classic.. the tourny scene maybe much different, but I guess we'll just have to wait and see
Most of the cas cas room along with the multi room, as MELKOR would say, are failed magic players..
They arent stuck in habit, but do not even know what legacy is...... more than half the players in casual are playing LEGACY decks in CLASSIC..
you're saying everyone playing in the casual room or the multi room are failed magic players?
Roflmao
It's going to be rough going for classic for a while - but that's ok. Esecially for the first little while before the excitement of finally haveing Legacy online wears off (that's not sayingLegacy will have any problems, just the OMG! LEGACY! feeling won't stick around forever)
There is one other thing going for classic...The Classic Challenge PE format, at 24 man with a 6 tix entry has incredible value. It's almost exactly the same payout as before, execpt with a lower threshold and a lower cost, and the payout is down to the 16th man
ok, so i got my summary in email today and my lifetime points were shaved in half! did anyone else see something like this? obv an error, and i have contact wotc, but geeezzz, how about that for a wake up!
Same here, all the lifetime points on my accounts are halved.
got an email back from wotc CS, they said it was an error (obv) and that new emails will show the fix., still i pooped myself..hope to see it right soon...
Here's the non-cutoff version of the infobot chart: http://www.mtgo.biz/usage.php5?&bot=infotbot&y=8&x=month
I find the yearly chart even more interesting: http://www.mtgo.biz/usage.php5?&bot=infotbot&y=8&x=year
The yearly chart clearly shows an overall pattern of play spiking at new set releases then slowly decaying until the next release. Then there is a clearly weekly pattern on top of that. Classic set releases seem to have little impact. We now look to have as many players at the bottom of the curve (just before a new set) as we had during the release less than a year ago.
provided little value, and the community jumped up and said they liked them. So I admit that I may be the minority here.
I love reading this every week. Better than anything on the mothership. Tracking prices is helpful on many levels.
This is the article I look forward to the most on puremtgo. I love the price tracking, the graphs and the explanations for why things are moving.
Last article I was disappointed, this time I am smiling. It takes a real man to apologize for something intentionally or unintentionally. Kudos to you for doing the right thing and not coming back with some type of screw you article.
The community as always thanks you for your contributions to this site and the game.
Hi Hamtastic
I realise you're busy, but one thing I really used to value in your articles was the comparison of the value of draft sets (eg EV of M10M10M10 compared to ALA/CON/ARB etc etc).
Is this really difficult to produce, as I always used to use this to decide which draft to jump into. I only play Drafts and Momir, so the expected resale value of rares I draft are the main thing I look at when deciding which format to draft! :-)
Other than that, thanks for another good article.
That would be great!
Thanks for your hard work. :-)
Is there a site that has the price charts for specific cards? Or are the price charts put together by your weekly query to infobot?
I remember picking up Knight of the Reliquary for .5 each based upon an article on here called Bazaar of Heath. I wish that guy would write a new version. I was hunting around for Entomb about two weeks ago, offering to buy for more than market, and could barely find anything. Finally managed to snag two at 14 tix each. Too bad I couldn't find more.
I'm surprised Karakas is still so low. It's just as rare as Tabernacle, equally played in the 'land' deck, but also played in additional decks because it bounces Iona and Gaddock Teeg. I mean if Tabernacle is pushing near 8ish, why isn't Karakas also? Could it be people are hoarding one and not the other?
Just a thought but if the paper Legacy card players are coming on board they may be buying the cards that are expensive in the paper world first. This could mean that Karakas will catch up in time.
I think Classic will become just another word for "casual". In paper people tend to follow the Vintage restricted list and call it casual. And when people build their paper casual decks, yeah you put your well-worn Sol Ring in there, but you don't usually do the "right thing" and add your 3x Bayou + Demonic Tutor. So "Casual" means "Legacy plus whatever Vintage cards you might coincidentally own." My casual zoo decks tend to run my FtV: Exiled copy of Balance, for example. So it would be better if the casual room sticks to Classic. Or put another way, since no one is going to bring 4x Oath of Druids to the casual room, the difference between the two is minor with a slight advantage for Classic. And we *will* get Sol Ring regardless of the P9 issue. Once we do then Classic's place as the casual format of choice will be solidified.
As always, <3 the price graphs and trend analysis. In my opinion, we're seeing a flood of new players who think that they want to play Legacy. I don't believe that the sudden price spikes are due to speculation. However, the prices will drop if/when this booming generation of new Legacy players decides that they want to quit. But don't bet on that happening, because it never happened to paper. Legacy players play forever.