playing soldiers i thought i had a favorable match against James' rats cuz I could get going so fast, but after winning game 1 I was hit with turn 2 + 3 hymn in game 2 and an early hymn in game 3 that discarded the only two lands I had in hand, that was disappointing
i do want to apologize again for the issues, you can ask james i was havin game issues in our matches and then the client crashed before rd 3 and i couldnt get back on.. i hate bein the one to cause issues esp when i feel i had a chance to hit 2-1 :P
Just to say I disagree with any change that may impact their bottom line in a negative way, as I believe proxies would. I know if I could play with proxies, I'd never buy an actual card again.
Anything that takes money/resources away from all the fixes we want to see them make is a bad thing imho.
PRE's/free tournies on the other hand are (I believe) something that would lead to more tourney participation and more income for WotC in the longrun. I know I've sunk about 200 tix into Momir Basic 2 mans, after getting a taste of the format with the free tournament, which I would never have even considered if it hadn't been for the free tourney.
get your summoning traps now! of course Lotus Cobra and fetches also help, but couple that guy with Iona and you've got a pretty ruthless block deck IMO
I am of course in the big apple, but on the LES with no real urge to hit the upper west side...But if you are going to be heading downtown let me know via email.
What do you mean by Goblin Shell and White Weenie Shell? Is it a nickname for a card like "Bob"?
In any case, nice article, I thought blue would be way more expensive.
There is no alarm clock. And U must patiently wait in the client until everybody ends their matches. Other way U can miss the start and get loss by timer.
Yeah they have already proven they can do this by creating the planeswalker set. Which is not for sanctioned use, can't be traded and is not resellable in any way shape or form. It would be nice if they expanded on this for the masses. The BIGGEST problem as I see it is they would be shelling out dough to pay for the extra bandwidth, programming, storage etc and would be getting only customer satisfaction back. Now I believe customer satisfaction is worth it's weight in gold but clearly WotC doesn't. Not to cast a dim light on them but the proof is in the putting. Nice idea. Easy to implement. Will never happen. :-(
How about proxies? Granted I don't have a clue how to make it work as I can barely not mulligan a hand on MTGO without it being a pain in the neck. Proxies would let people test decks/cards they wouldn't normally be able to test online due to budget constraints or other issues (me personally, I cannot get both "real" cards and online cards, I HAVE to choose between one or the other and I generally choose the "real" cards as I like going to real PTQs and not online ones). Obviously, WotC would have to set something up to make sure proxies didn't get used in sanctioned play/tournaments but I can't imagine thats insanely difficult.
I can say with absolute conviction that I have not spent more than $50 in the MTGO store since when the leagues went offline. I used to participate in anywhere from 1 to 5 leagues at a time, and thoroughly enjoyed the experiences that they provided. I linger within the community because I'm a fan of the game, but I can't stress enough how disappointed I am in their decision to abandon the league faithful.
Thank you Amar for your reply to my comments. They have definitely brightened my mood. I have been very pessimistic about improvements to Magic Online lately.
"Does WotC really need to listen to the complaints of us die-hard fans? Anybody who reads or writes a decent amount of Magic Online articles is probably not going to quit because of lousy service in several areas of Magic Online."
The poor state of MTGO actually got me to quit. I stuck around through V 2.0 and played all through the rocky start of 3.0. I wrote numerous posts on various message boards and took part in BETA testing set releases. Then one day I realized I was overpaying and they were underdelivering. There was not a critical event - it was a "It's been how long and this thing is still a POS - this will never change". This is my first visit back to a Magic website since I quit.
I have spent $0.00 on magic since the end of Alara Block - according to my february statement I had 3251 lifetime MOPR (so relative lightweight I guess).
In short MTGO converted me from paper to digital then dropped me at the curb. Was a fun ride but the smell of the mules pulling the cart (at the cost of renting a Ferrari) eventually drove me away.
I wish all of you the best with your hobby dollars. There are definitly companies that are more responsive and better prepared to maximize your dollars - but magic is fun....
Good job on this. Enjoyed reading it and agreed a lot with the points in the article and the discussion.
While some may see it as whining, I think a list of improvements is definitely a good thing and should only be taken as constructive criticism. Let's hope WotC folks read it and bear it in mind, even if these fixes don't make it to their current to do list.
"If PREs become more popular, wouldn't they start to pull people away from sanctioned tournaments?" - ArchGenius
My (I suppose anecdotal) evidence from playing in and hosting PREs for a while now would actually suggest the opposite. Players who want more than a random casual game but are nervous about putting money on the line will venture into a PRE. Playing that a while gives them a sense of how good they are, lets them learn about adjusting to a metagame, enables risk-free practice of different ideas, and generally makes them more comfortable with the idea of competing.
The next move from there is to go enter sanctioned tournaments. I know numerous people who used to PRE regularly and now are occasional at best because they're busy with queues and dailies and such. The opposite, tournament junkies who decide to settle for the small-prize environment of PREs, is virtually unheard of.
Which is why I would go further than this and say Wizards should regularly host free tournaments. Remember the "apology" tournaments about a year ago? The Sealed was a disaster, which anyone who knows math was predicting, as anyone went up 6 packs by joining and dropping. But the day before, for a fraction of that cost, were 4 excellent Standard tournaments. The environment was friendly, many of the people were first-time tournament participants, and the prizes were nice enough to be appreciated but not sufficiently appealing to attract sharks. That experience was the best "encourage people to play tournaments" introduction that I could imagine.
Despite waiting some 9 months before anything even remotely similar (Momir) there was a similar appeal to that event. I think this is pretty strong evidence that they could have a Constructed tournament once a month which is free to enter and offers prizes that would be a rounding error on their promotional budget. And it would appeal to that low level of the Tournament Pyramid where players are curious about more but not ready to drop $30 on an 0-2 drop experience.
Surely Wizards should support PREs more. But this is within their power to do right now, would remain 100% under their control, and would be a powerful way to reach a segment of the audience that couldn't care less about PTQs.
Agreed, though if they do this i hope they put a few stops to make sure it doesnt happen accidently.
For the last 6 months or so, I have been marking my excess commons for trade and giving them away to new players (pretty easy to tell when someone is new). I have given away well over 1000 commons, made some new buddys this way too.
Does wotc need to cater to us die hard fans?
YES
We are the ones who bring new people in, we are the ones who write about mtgo all over the internet, we are the core of mtgo.
playing soldiers i thought i had a favorable match against James' rats cuz I could get going so fast, but after winning game 1 I was hit with turn 2 + 3 hymn in game 2 and an early hymn in game 3 that discarded the only two lands I had in hand, that was disappointing
i do want to apologize again for the issues, you can ask james i was havin game issues in our matches and then the client crashed before rd 3 and i couldnt get back on.. i hate bein the one to cause issues esp when i feel i had a chance to hit 2-1 :P
thanks flipper!
Just to say I disagree with any change that may impact their bottom line in a negative way, as I believe proxies would. I know if I could play with proxies, I'd never buy an actual card again.
Anything that takes money/resources away from all the fixes we want to see them make is a bad thing imho.
PRE's/free tournies on the other hand are (I believe) something that would lead to more tourney participation and more income for WotC in the longrun. I know I've sunk about 200 tix into Momir Basic 2 mans, after getting a taste of the format with the free tournament, which I would never have even considered if it hadn't been for the free tourney.
I'm also a shameless freeloader who'd love snow-covered lands for my Pauper decks!
My user name is above in case you feel like spending your time dishing out free cards to people! :-P
get your summoning traps now! of course Lotus Cobra and fetches also help, but couple that guy with Iona and you've got a pretty ruthless block deck IMO
Extinction is banned from the 13/03/10 when the new B/R list is implemented.
Shard I dont mind doing the hosting if you need a hand
What ban list does your Tribal PRE use? Cause I thought Extinction was just banned.
On a somewhat related note, I found that the B/R lists on the website have not been updated for the new Tribal changes.
I am of course in the big apple, but on the LES with no real urge to hit the upper west side...But if you are going to be heading downtown let me know via email.
What do you mean by Goblin Shell and White Weenie Shell? Is it a nickname for a card like "Bob"?
In any case, nice article, I thought blue would be way more expensive.
what game is that? i wanna play :D
plz email me to know nico.carvallo@hotmail.com
I'd like to see online ratings actually matter and/or do something for ya.
There is no alarm clock. And U must patiently wait in the client until everybody ends their matches. Other way U can miss the start and get loss by timer.
Yeah they have already proven they can do this by creating the planeswalker set. Which is not for sanctioned use, can't be traded and is not resellable in any way shape or form. It would be nice if they expanded on this for the masses. The BIGGEST problem as I see it is they would be shelling out dough to pay for the extra bandwidth, programming, storage etc and would be getting only customer satisfaction back. Now I believe customer satisfaction is worth it's weight in gold but clearly WotC doesn't. Not to cast a dim light on them but the proof is in the putting. Nice idea. Easy to implement. Will never happen. :-(
How about proxies? Granted I don't have a clue how to make it work as I can barely not mulligan a hand on MTGO without it being a pain in the neck. Proxies would let people test decks/cards they wouldn't normally be able to test online due to budget constraints or other issues (me personally, I cannot get both "real" cards and online cards, I HAVE to choose between one or the other and I generally choose the "real" cards as I like going to real PTQs and not online ones). Obviously, WotC would have to set something up to make sure proxies didn't get used in sanctioned play/tournaments but I can't imagine thats insanely difficult.
I can say with absolute conviction that I have not spent more than $50 in the MTGO store since when the leagues went offline. I used to participate in anywhere from 1 to 5 leagues at a time, and thoroughly enjoyed the experiences that they provided. I linger within the community because I'm a fan of the game, but I can't stress enough how disappointed I am in their decision to abandon the league faithful.
Thank you Amar for your reply to my comments. They have definitely brightened my mood. I have been very pessimistic about improvements to Magic Online lately.
if you just want to get rid of snow lands i would love some
"Does WotC really need to listen to the complaints of us die-hard fans? Anybody who reads or writes a decent amount of Magic Online articles is probably not going to quit because of lousy service in several areas of Magic Online."
The poor state of MTGO actually got me to quit. I stuck around through V 2.0 and played all through the rocky start of 3.0. I wrote numerous posts on various message boards and took part in BETA testing set releases. Then one day I realized I was overpaying and they were underdelivering. There was not a critical event - it was a "It's been how long and this thing is still a POS - this will never change". This is my first visit back to a Magic website since I quit.
I have spent $0.00 on magic since the end of Alara Block - according to my february statement I had 3251 lifetime MOPR (so relative lightweight I guess).
In short MTGO converted me from paper to digital then dropped me at the curb. Was a fun ride but the smell of the mules pulling the cart (at the cost of renting a Ferrari) eventually drove me away.
I wish all of you the best with your hobby dollars. There are definitly companies that are more responsive and better prepared to maximize your dollars - but magic is fun....
Hi there
Good job on this. Enjoyed reading it and agreed a lot with the points in the article and the discussion.
While some may see it as whining, I think a list of improvements is definitely a good thing and should only be taken as constructive criticism. Let's hope WotC folks read it and bear it in mind, even if these fixes don't make it to their current to do list.
"If PREs become more popular, wouldn't they start to pull people away from sanctioned tournaments?" - ArchGenius
My (I suppose anecdotal) evidence from playing in and hosting PREs for a while now would actually suggest the opposite. Players who want more than a random casual game but are nervous about putting money on the line will venture into a PRE. Playing that a while gives them a sense of how good they are, lets them learn about adjusting to a metagame, enables risk-free practice of different ideas, and generally makes them more comfortable with the idea of competing.
The next move from there is to go enter sanctioned tournaments. I know numerous people who used to PRE regularly and now are occasional at best because they're busy with queues and dailies and such. The opposite, tournament junkies who decide to settle for the small-prize environment of PREs, is virtually unheard of.
Which is why I would go further than this and say Wizards should regularly host free tournaments. Remember the "apology" tournaments about a year ago? The Sealed was a disaster, which anyone who knows math was predicting, as anyone went up 6 packs by joining and dropping. But the day before, for a fraction of that cost, were 4 excellent Standard tournaments. The environment was friendly, many of the people were first-time tournament participants, and the prizes were nice enough to be appreciated but not sufficiently appealing to attract sharks. That experience was the best "encourage people to play tournaments" introduction that I could imagine.
Despite waiting some 9 months before anything even remotely similar (Momir) there was a similar appeal to that event. I think this is pretty strong evidence that they could have a Constructed tournament once a month which is free to enter and offers prizes that would be a rounding error on their promotional budget. And it would appeal to that low level of the Tournament Pyramid where players are curious about more but not ready to drop $30 on an 0-2 drop experience.
Surely Wizards should support PREs more. But this is within their power to do right now, would remain 100% under their control, and would be a powerful way to reach a segment of the audience that couldn't care less about PTQs.
Oh, and with a CMC of 1 on Joraga the Ranger of Eos becomes an option. Too bad RoE isn't an elf...
I'll take 20 of them from you, see me in game if you are serious (ImpinAintEasy is my sn)
Agreed, though if they do this i hope they put a few stops to make sure it doesnt happen accidently.
For the last 6 months or so, I have been marking my excess commons for trade and giving them away to new players (pretty easy to tell when someone is new). I have given away well over 1000 commons, made some new buddys this way too.
Does wotc need to cater to us die hard fans?
YES
We are the ones who bring new people in, we are the ones who write about mtgo all over the internet, we are the core of mtgo.