*The following article is supposed to be humorous and please take it as that. PureMTGO and Evan Erwin both highly enjoy MTGO. Please do not take the video seriously. The following is intended for light humor only so make sure your wearing your foil hat.
The Show:
Transcript:
Hello everybody and welcome to another Special Edition of the Magic Show. This week we’re going to meet two very different players on Magic Online: Optomistic Oliver, and Griefer D. Bag. Together they will share their experiences of Magic Online with us, and through them we can shape how our own lens views the game, and how other people’s experience differs from our own.
So with no further adieu, here’s Oli:
Oh, hi! I’m Oliver and isn’t it a great day today! There a few things more wonderful than hours of Magic Online. No, not hours, days! Weeks! But more than anything, I do love the long startup times. You know the ones, after a Wednesday, when some random bugs were fixed and others were created, but we’d never know because they never show us the bugfix logs? Isn’t that super? We don’t need to see that stuff, you know, because it’s secret. It’s double-secret probationary super-duper secret and if we do see it, we’ll get in trouble.
But that’s not the fun part. No, the funnest part of Magic Online is always release weekends! Oh the fun we have. There’s nothing quite like watching your draft queue start while you still see the lobby, and missing Picks 1 and sometimes even 2 if you’re lucky. I mean, this is the craziest draft around! So crazy they don’t even trust you with your first two picks! And they don’t even advertise this feature, it just shows up on release event days! That’s awesome! I never knew how random and scattershot this draft thing really was! Release Days teach you respect for the random algorithms that make the machine of Magic Online chug.
And that’s another thing, what about those spreadsheet interfaces! Boy, they’re my favorite. When you enter a big room and you see a bunch of avatars go at it, you’re like, what in the hell is going on? But that’s part of the fun! You see, when you’re completely clueless as to what to do, such as having to hit that tiny spreadsheet icon in the top right of the screen, you get the thrill of discovery! Nothing says adventure like find-the-icon-that-lets-me-play-Magic!
Meanwhile, you’ll find only the nicest of nice people online. I mean, there practically isn’t a bad one in the bunch! But I will tell you, they sometimes have poor internet connections. I know some people’s net access has been getting hit due to the throttling of Bittorrent downloads, but this is ridiculous! Some days I’ll get a whole five, six games in before I get a visit to frown town and the disconnect corral. Those long twenty minutes waiting on my opponent to officially lose are some of the most fulfilling in my life. I think and I worry about what is going through their mind. How they could be suffering, wondering what their opponent is thinking, lost and adrift, not having anyone to play Magic with.
Next I can’t talk about Magic Online without talking about that sweet interface! Oh baby, check out those non-anti-aliased fonts! I was just telling my girlfriend the other day—well, okay, maybe not my girlfriend, but certainly a female…okay, I was talking on IRC the other day about how I wished I could see all of the pixels in the letters of the applications I use. And then I downloaded Magic Online and there they were! Score! Some days it’s good to be a gangster, and other days it’s just so awesome to have righteously fugly text. I feel like a member of a private club. The Club For People Who Like Non-Aliased Fonts. Or CFPWLNAF for short. It’s catching on, and membership is free!
But wait—we haven’t even said a word about trading! Trading in Magic Online is like visiting an auction house in the wild west—you never know when you’re going to get bamboozled or run over with riches! You too can stumble into foil Meddling Mages for random Lorwyn commons, you too can accidentally trade great rares for crap because “you heard that card was dope.” Dope is right! Magic Online is the perfect tool for those in need of a wake-up call, whether that call is financial or of the common sense variety. Oh, the lessons you’ll learn!
Finally I’d like to say that I’m most proud of the Deckbuilder. When I want to look up a card I just type it in the box. If I want to switch from the spreadsheet view to the look at all cards view, I get a good two or three minutes to think about the real origins of the universe while the game loads up those images for me. Smooth scrolling? Hah! Don’t make me laugh. Remember, Magic Online is a teacher! And it teaches you that smooth scrolling and easy deckbuilding is for wussies. Who else would force you to have only level of text filtering, and an interface so enslaved to its theme that you can’t find the forest for the ridiculous medieval-esque button-fest? I tell you, it’s something I’ll never forget!
So I just wanted to say thanks Magic Online. Thanks for everything. The crashing servers, the disconnected games, the bot-infested marketplace, the deckbuilder from hell, the interface designed by the mentally challenged, those oh-so-fugly fonts…what would I do without Magic Online in my life? I truly don’t know. It’s been such a joy, such a teacher, such an instrumental part of my existence, I think it’s time to go play some more.
Oli out.
Up next we have Griefer D. Bag. He’s a very “special” brand of player, particularly of the online variety, as they fear no retribution for their actions. Let’s hear it from Griefer himself.
So. It’s come to this, huh. You, here, me, on Magic Online. You ready for this? I don’t think you’re prepared. But let’s talk Magic.
The first thing I need to highlight is my series of bots here. Not just one, but many, many bots. I’m running through seven proxies for seven IPs so I don’t get banned from the Magic Online servers. Not that I care that running seven bots at once may hamper the performance of the system. That’s not my problem.
Anyway, as Magic Online has quickly cut the wheat from the chaff in terms of bulk rares. I can now give fractions of a cent for a bad rare, and then sell them to customers at three for a ticket. This is what you call smart economics. I love inflation.
Players. Hrmph. Players kill me. For example, if a player lucksacks me out. And I mean righteously lucksacks me out, like topdecking that burn spell to win? Or having that combat trick they just-so-happened to draw thanks to an extra hit from Looter il-Kor? Oh hell no. They don’t deserve that win. They deserve the big D. You know what the big D is, don’t you? It’s disconnect. And they deserve every minute of their loss. Drafts, Premier Events, and especially during Release Events, that’s when big D gets the most play. Mmm. I’m getting excited about the Shadowmoor Release already.
And then, when I reconnect and find that same player in the room? I’ll give him a good cussing. But I’ll have to mask it so I get past the sensors of course, and then the Big Bad Adepts try to stick their nose in. What the hell is this, Nazi Germany? This is America and I can do what I want. There’s freedom of speech everywhere in this great nation, and Magic Online is no different.
Then those stupid casual players get all up in my face about me playing Ruel’s build of Faeries or G/R Big Mana with all the foil trimmings. “Those decks aren’t casual” they’ll cry. So I’ll switch it up and try again, right? I mean, the deck is totally different! I removed a foil Mutavault, the only one I own! What do you people want from me? It’s like I’m playing a Kamigawa precon already, and not the one with the Jitte in it!
Sometimes though, sometimes I’ll build the all land deck. Just to mess with them. I love watching the casual players—and particularly the tournament practice guys—fly off the handle about how I’m “wasting my time” or “not giving them any respect.” This isn’t about respect, it’s about fun. So I’ll mulligan down to four, play nothing but lands, and sometimes they never even catch on. It’s a sad sight.
Lastly though, the stuff that really gets under my skin is the combo quitters. You know the kind. You’re playing your all-foil Mind’s Desire deck or Heartbeat of Spring combo and they quit just as you play Early Harvest or, God forbid, Mind’s Desire. Bah. What worthless sacks. They can’t even let me win legitimately! This is totally unlike conceding when they swing for lethal, and I wish they could just see that!
All in all, I hate myself—er, I mean, Magic Online. And I can’t wait to cause others the pain that I feel. Er. I mean…Code of Conduct my ass.
Okay. Thank you Griefer. That was great.
So, I hope everyone learned a little something about Magic Online today. This game is all-encompassing, and it takes all kinds to make it work.
Until your next run in with Oli or mister D. Bag, this is Evan Erwin, tapping the cards so you don’t have to.
Evan “misterorange” Erwin
dubya dubya dubya dot misterorange dot com
eerwin +at+ gmail +dot+ com
Written while hoping you got the joke(s).
22 Comments
They just need to get rid of the bots and build an Trade system into the game thats more advanced than the medival barter system it currently imploys. Yes bots are nice because you can get cards when ever, but you should have to pay 30% out on every card to some fat nerd that paided 100$ to buy a bot because the game your playing is to lazy to take the fat stacks of cash they swim in every day to work upstairs to pay some one with a CS major to program what could possibly be the simplest online, MMO or any other, game to program a auction house into in the world....
Lol.. Evan is not here to bash mtgo.. You have to admit that every point the characters make are valid. People think like that. While people hate and like mtgo, you can really see how some changes have to be made in the future. It's more of a collective voice of the people.
Everyone disagree about how good or bad something is. For example, I prefer having bots around since I can get any card I might ever want, including commons and uncommons. The rares are usually cheaper too. I don't really care if they take server space. Anything takes server space. Instead of killing bots, we should "wish" to get super solid servers.
Carry on the good work Evan! Hope you continue tapping my cards so I can start to untap them when shadowmoor comes around.. =)
As long as we are dropping percentages that was about 1% related to the topic :P
Grats on dropping those bad habits tho
Wow, the internet is serious business. Super serious.
It's a joke people. It's funny. It's a satirical look at MTGO
Dear Magic Community,
Once upon a time, I was a Hardcore Magic Junkie. I had gotten extremely lucky, and at the tender age of sixteen, i squeaked a PTQ win by playing suicide black w/ HATRED.
That weekend i won, i had decided not to drink myself retarded and attend the PTQ. After I won, I tried to balance my partying with playing, but the hot chix @ the parties just didnt understand how good of a card dark ritual was.
Soon, i quit magic, both competetively and casually, although i frequently used Rhox, and pithing NEEDLE.
Now, i have FINALLY cast needle drop, burned all my rhox, and feel much healthier.
I started playing MTGO, after years of absence. I must say, the only bad things are, the LAG and sometimes the bots.
With the lag, it always suck no arguing over that, but with the bots, it is nice to be able to buy any card u want any time of day.
The downside to the bots, they suck up krapp loadz of space on the server, and they completely edge out anyone looking to trade person2person.
One must always remember however, there are those who complain about bots because they want to trade with some NOOB who will give up a mutavault for a Shivan Dragon.
What is more fair, riping off newbies, or bots that force out almost all trading.
Makes u think,
RHOX + Needleshot killz
I moan and whinge through most games, and most aspects of MTGO, I have both been and come face to face with the two examples in this vid. The only reason to moan about MTGO at the moment imo is the lag... it's a joke that it can't be solved easily. Were playing a card game for crying out loud, it's hardly Counterstrike or Unreal Tournament, I can play both those games lag free so why MTGO is a mess............. who knows.
But anyway, besides that, this vid and article is just plain bad. It's not funny, it's just a massive whine. I don't mind whining, but don't bill it as funny when it really is not.
I think people are mad because it hits a little too close to home especially with something they obviously spend lots of time doing.
MTGO blows for these various reasons. It has such great potential and can be full of awesome but is implemented in the worst way possible. WoTC can't even promote the game because of the server issues. If they could sustain even a 10,000 player server population, they could literally print money. If they had multiple servers with this kind of capactiy, release weekends could actually *happen*.
Just because I push an article through doesn't mean I agree with it. I'm all about free speech and I enjoy Evan's articles and I think he was more poking fun at the different types of players than actually poking fun at WOTC.
I though Griever looks like Finkel from years back...
Note I don't think Finkel is Griever. Finkel = The Man and Griever = a looser, just the picture looked like when Finkel had hair that (around 2000 , 2001? not sure)
http://www.wizards.com/sideboard/PTLA99/images/Finkel.JPG
This is something like his two-headed giant show, which was just as awkward and had many annoying voices. I enjoyed your previous articles here Erwin, butplease next time make it about Puremtgo, or Mtgotraders. If you had say, more than 1 article per YEAR than you could make a diversion like this every once in a while, so the average reader could appreeciate the joke. fromjust an observationist point of view howeverit is a very insulting transcript/video.
Hopefully we can expect more article from you evan in the near future
I must say I agree with okcoyote, I went to MTGOTraders to look at buying some cards and thought I'd read the new topics as usual, as I usually find them interesting from a casual point of view. But this I did not find very funny in fact I thought it was insulting we know there are problems with the game and if you look on Gleemax most of the posts are like this. It’s the last thing I was expecting on PureMTGO.Well Traders lost a sale from me today, I can’t believe they could let this be visible from their main site putting down the game they make a living from.
Well that’s my rant over, to the rest of the PureMTGO writers keep up the good work
I only read the transcript
Can someone please tell me what the big deal is? I am reading this and watching the video, and it's pretty easy to see that it is nothing more than a creative joke. Some people may be taking themselves too seriously. If you can not laugh at this, It's pretty safe to say you have no humor at all.
I enjoy most episodes of The Magic Show, even when I don't always agree with them. This particular special episode is no different, well it's "different" but that's cool. I think that most of us who watch Evan's stuff normally could tell pretty easily that he was just poking fun, and it was meant to be humourous and not a true MTGO bash-fest. Hopefully we'll see more of Mister Orange again soon here.
PUREMTGO is not his main vehicle for writing articles so you have to be at least understanding that he is only writing for this site once in a while
You guys are being way to harsh.
These topics about how crappy MTGO can be, whether through a comedic vehicle or not and whether or not we have heard it over and over, need to be at the forefront. It needs to be loud enough and repeated enough that the higher ups that actually make decisions listen.
That being said, I thought the piece could have been approached a little differently. Both characters were villified in a sense and were completely wrong. In truth, both personalities have valid points that they take the to the extreme. I think the piece would have meshed a bit better if the arguments that both sides raised were valid points.
For example, the optimist could keep coming back to version 3 is being worked on, various things that have worked etc. As opposed to things which are obviously terrible like saying some crappy scrolling and pixelated text is a good feature. I get the joke, but I just think it would have been funnier to actually characteriture positions that real wotc fanbois take.
The same being true of the other side. There are valid arguments for bots and for the super pessimistic wotc haters.
Correction (This is poor sense on the guy Heath is talking too)
Not Heath lol
This is honestly in poor sense on your part.
PureMTGO is a community site so its articles by the people. ANYONE can write an article... and by it being that way none of the articles represent MTGO Traders' or anyone elses opinion for that matter other than the Author's
As for the article I have to agree that the comedic effect was outweighed by the subject matter. It was funny but the vid just laid the complaints on a bit too thick. I imagine if all those jokes had been seperate entities as a quick knock in one of your normal vids they would have be hilarious but all of it together in one vid just hurt fiercly.
I laughed, Ill be honest I didn't have a problem with it personally but as it is seen others did.
Well I was awfully surprised to see this video on this site as opposed to that other site where I traditionally find them. Surprised, and a little excited. Then I played the video.
Evan, you came all this way just to bash MTGO? Sorry dude. I support your opinions in most things, and we all agree MTGO has its problems. But if your intention was to get us fired up, well in my case, you did - just not in the direction you were expecting.
It reminded me of the continuous topic starters that whine and whine over and over about how ridiculous the servers are getting and how unplayable the system is becoming. We've heard it all before. We all know there are issues, Worth and the guys know it too, and they're working on them as best they can.
I know nobody here knows who I am. I'm just a guy with something on his mind. I'm not trying to get flamed here, and I apologize if my comments upset anyone. I have a lot of respect for you, Evan, but man, this got me riled up.
hahahahhahhhahaha did he just say f-t-w lmao hilarious.
I'm pretty sure you missed the joke. This is a pretty solid comedy piece.
Oh, I caught that there was a joke embedded. It just didn't catch on with me. To me it just seemed like the same complaints in countless message board posts over at Gleemax that I just got sick of hearing.
But I guess it's just me.