f13.net

"Eternal Life or your money back!" (http://www.f13.net/index2.php?subaction=showfull&id=1121062924&archive=&start_from=&ucat=1&)

I have no idea what that article just said.

I'm sort of curious why you feel the older sets are better than the new ones?  I've gone through two phases of playing magic.  First, back when I was in Jr. High/High School, which had me cover basically from around The Dark till Tempest.  I just started playing Magic Online with the release of Champions of Kamigawa, around December, and have kept up till now.  The number one thing that has struck me so far about the way magic has changed since I played was how incredibly fucking powerful the cards are now compared to when I played.  The shit I run into in Kamigawa and Mirrodin kicks the crap out of what I had back in the day.  When I played they had everything ultra balanced, so really powerful shit was rare, and its main power was often just being more cost effective.  Now I run into ultra godly artifacts and legendary creatures that are cheep, have powerful abilities, and have no drawbacks to casting them.  Which is fun in its own way.  Instead of a carefully balanced duel between two decks, it feels a bit more like a nuclear war between two super powers, which is a bit more exciting anyways. 

Your theory seems to be more true for back when I first played, as previous sets like Legends and Revised all seemed to have powerful cards we could never hope to get in the newer expansions, like Ice Age and Mirage.  But that seems to have changed in the space between when I first played and now.  Just curious why you see things this way.  The newer sets seem like powerhouses to me.

Also, why the dislike of Kamigawa?  I played some Mirrodin and found I immediately hated it, but I'm having a lot of fun with Kamigawa.

As to the problem of the economics, thats a valid concern, but I think its great that are deciding to release older sets.  I was pissed when I first heard about Magic Online being developed, and that you had to buy cards instead of getting to play all the old ones for some monthly fee or something.  Trying it now I find that I actually like that, but the joy I'd get of  being able to play old, hard to get shit is still there.  I DO feel that since they aren't backing up the booster packs with actual cards, they should drop the fucking price for the damn packs.  Sure, charge something to give the online cards value and rarity and pay for the cost of running the game, but fuck, theres no need to charge 4 bucks for a pack of virtual cards that will never have costed you a cent to make.  Thats the only real hang up I have with this plan.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say.  Paying the same price for out of print sets is bad?  

Meh, I say.  Same price model as for all the other sets.  Doesn't really bother me or the serious collector, as most of us get our cheap cards in bulk from the trader-bots or the vendor sites online.

I don't think it'll do a thing to the value of IPA/OTJ/WTF.  Those two sets, particularly IPA, are expensive not because they're OLD, but because they're SCARCE: they were vastly underdrafted compared to everything OLS and forward, when a huge shift of new players came in.  Drafting (and currently release leagues) is where most of the online card pool comes from - thats why Apocolypse, the least drafted set online, has the most expensive cards.  

As you mentioned, Mirage and Version 3.0 should bring in a huge influx of new people.  Pretty much all those new people, plus the old people, are going to want to buy and draft the hell out of Mirage block, keeping prices for those cards low until the set isn't sold anymore.  And aaaall those new people online are going to want to get copies of old cards, even shit like OLS, making the old cards worth MORE, not LESS, since there will be a certain percentage of the new blood willing to pay 30 tix for Decree of Justice, 120 tix for 4x.  And a few years down the road, the landcyclers (Chartooth Cougar, etc, and the king, Krosan Tusker) are going to be what the chase commons of IPA are now.

If anything, I'd worry about limited numbers of Ravnica cards hitting the market, since Mirage will steal some of the thunder that a new block set brings with it.

Good to see a Magic article on the site.  

Who is that in your avatar Raging Turtle?

It looks like Zhang Ziyi.

I don't think its Zhang Ziyi, as thats a Chinese name and I'm 93.2% sure she's Korean.  My guess would be Chun Ji-yeong (spelled phonetically), a popular Korean actress, although I'm not positive.  I stole the avatar from an Korean ESL teacher's board.

Kind of hypnotic, isn't it?

Schild, i cannot fucking belive you are bitching about 9th edition not sucking?  Fuck the secondary market right its its ass with a sawsal if its the reason each set is weaker then its previous iteration.  I happen to HATE that shit, its the reason i bought not even a single pack of 8th.

Also, i would dispute your IPA>OTJ comment.  OD block gave us decks that are competative in vintage, as well as (real) extended.  I like the IN block in general, but i hardly think its "power level" steamrolls OD.  I also cant belive you put MI behind ON?  Uhm, i and most people i know would put MI ahead of everything since Urza, and onslaught sucked pretty bad besides the goblins and tendrils of agony.

As for mirage's impact on the online market, i wouldn't sweat it.  Thier are some cool cards for sure (i happen to really like Femeref Enchantress (http://www.anycraze.com/showcard_full.asp?id=VIMR129&pp=magic_search)), but i doubt thier is enough fast mana available in the online card pool to really break things like Lions Eye Diamond.  I haven't done any real in-depth probing of the sets, but a cursory glance makes it pretty obvious mirage was picked perciesely because it WOULDNT impact the secondary market so heavily.  This isn't tempest, its not urza.  Foreshadow is cool... but its a crappier version of predict.

I wouldn't claim the sky is falling just yet.  The painlands wont be as expensive, but thats a good thing.  Duals are core deck building blocks, and people need to have as "free" access to them as possible, imo.

I'm sorry but I really cannot believe people actually pay upwards in the amount of 90$ for a virtual magic card.

It's almost as bad as me wanting to go back to Everquest.


Almost.

For a rough equivalent of what Schild is talking about, imagine if say Everquest brought back some broken items they had removed many expansions earlier.  Say... manastones.

Some players would be thrilled to get their mitts on a powerful item that was only going to be available to them if they bought an elder account that had one on it already.

But if you happened to own one of those items already, the value of your account on the secondary market just took a huge nose dive.

Should the dev's care?  Should the players?  What intentional impact should dev house have on the seconday market? What if they are involved in it?

Hell, I feel the need to write something longer...

Xilren

I feel the need to write something longer, and put it into retard speak.

Every set except for Mirage can be redeemed for the real deal.

Mirage cannot. Mirage is a _very_ good set. Hell, it's a good block.

But they are charging full price for cards that can not be redeemed and therefore are not real. It is purely a set of virtual items.

I'll talk about it more when light doesn't hurt my eyes.

Edit: And Xilren discussed something above that I planned on elaborating on when my idea took a 180 and went towards the issue of guaranteed value.

The move is a risky one, but I think they have been making smart moves so far.

If they are rational, and I think they are, they are assuming at least two things:

1.  people accepts buying virtual goods (their redemption record probably has something to do with this assumption)
2.  the demand from new players for cards in the primary and secondary market will be close to the new supply (thus if secondary traders will make less money per card, they will make it back with more volume.

Also a release of something rare and valuable usually stir up a frenzy, so perhaps they are also assuming

3.  controversy shakes the equilibrium and is good PR

Frank

I can only imagine that most players really will only worry about the redemption for real cards when the shutdown of the service is iminent.

I wonder how many people actually redeem sets? For someone like me it's a non-issue - I'm never going to own a full set of anything, and paper cards take up a lot of space anyway.

As far as Mirage lowering the value of newer cards, you have to remember that Mirage will not be playable in the most popular forms of magic. (Type 2 and Block constructed, newest block and newest core limited) WoTC does a good job in turning over prices with their rules in general, old better cards naturally see some dropoff in price once they rotate out of the main competitions.

Very interesting read.

To those of you wondering why it seemed like MtG was pure and simple back in the day and now is a clash of nuclear super powers...

Consider your age during Antiquities -> Ice Age, compare said age to now.

I remember those times, when you killed other people with creatures and a combo had nothing to do with turn phase manipulation.

Trust me when I say, the things you could do with the really good old cards were incredibly sick compared to what you can do now.

When I was young Magic didn't seem simple at all - actually it seems much simpler now.

I stopped playing Magic way back then because all the new cards got so complicated, people kepts talking about internet rulings about various cards (nobody knew how Eater of the Dead worked, for example) and other things like that. I couldn't play a game without stopping 20 times to say "can I read that card?" I'm talking about the retarded cards that had like 3 different optional effects you could choose one from, tide counters (put a counter on this thing every 3 turns, and if your counters are prime number remove 4 of them and do 1 damage!) and all that crap.

And back then everyone knew about channel->fireball and tiem vault/time walk wackiness and all that lamenes.

It was a bad time because unless you were an internet fiend or friends with comic shop owners you really didn't know WTF was going on.

Honestly, Magic gets easier with age. It's just like any game where patience is involved.

I stopped buying paper cards shortly after the Urza Saga. I didn't play MtG:O because it looked like nothing but "bullshit combo of the week", which was...well, fucking affinity decks forever and ever. I was never a fan of sealed deck either.

Me and a good dozen friends of mine still play paper magic every now and then, and pretty much none of us have cards past Urza. My favorite set actually is Weatherlight, followed by Mirage.

I always liked Ice Age alot for some damn reason, maybe it was the atmosphear.  Alliances remains my favorite expansion.

I wish I had been around for the Onslaught block; I really like how the Tribes worked.

Yea, i think i'm definitely in the "MTG is now child's play" camp.

I stopped playing around Urza, but have friends that still play in tourneys, etc... and from time to time i play them with one of my old decks, just for kicks. To be perfectly honest, i can't remember when i actually lost a game. Old magic just has so much more nastier stuff then what they release these day. Sure, some of it is really beastly when you look at it (that indestructable thingy in Darksteel what omgwtfpwns everything?), but overall almost every deck i've played is just so god damned simple to pick apart.

Schild might be right, its an age thing.

 - meg

Antiquities 4 life, y0.

Heh. "Opponent loses next turn" indeed.

Mountain, Black Lotus, Channel, Fireball. One-turn kill. You don't get that these days.

And outside of tournament play? 20 Mountain + 40 Lightning Bolts.

What I wish for MTGO is that they reintroduce the 4C-2U-1R tournament format as an option.

Legends.

... without the distribution errors, the small print run and the fucking Kobolds: Yes.

"Legends" as it actually transpired: No.

Plus, all the bestest cards ended up in Chronicles anyway.

If by bestest, I assume you're referring to the Elder Dragons and other Legends. To which I say, the best creatures were reprinted in chronicles, yes.

I'll tell you what I still miss:
Maze of Ith, City of Shadows, hell, I miss a lot of Dark. And wish that they'd reprint the set. There wasn't anything TERRIBLY broken about it. Not like affinity.

Arabian nights

I haven't kept up, but it's the one set that is based on historical tales.

Favorite opening: Swamp, Swamp, Dark Ritual, Juzám Djinn (2nd round)

The specials lands and artifacts were fun: Diamond Valley, Library of Alexandria, Ring of Ma'ruf, Shahrazad,etc.

Edit: the opening

Bring back Juggernaut and Nevy's disk....

Xilren

I started collecting at the worst possible time, Fallen Empires. Most of my cards are 3rd edition, with large handfulls pulled from The Dark, Antiquities, Legends, Ice Age, Mirage, Weatherlight, Homelands (bleah), Alliances (Force of Will for the win), and well, pretty much everything up to the end of Urza.

I managed to trade and get some rare cards, like Balance and Wheel of Fortune.

Shit, I used to love me some Nevy's disk. Throw down Tawnos's Coffin, with a Serra Angel in it, drop the Disk, drop Armageddon, PE-YOW, ownage.

Of course, this was in mostly multiplayer games (which were always more fun than 1 vs 1 tourney style fights), and as soon as I dropped the coffin, I was blood in the water. I only had to do that combo once to make myself very popular.

The kingpin cards for getting you a first-round gangrape in multiplayer games are Ivory Tower and Black Vise. Naturally, our house rules banned both of those fucking cards.

I used to love me some Icy Manipulator and the Assassin that killed critters that were tapped.

The Royal Assassin, I believe. Goddamn that card was a pain in the ass.

You can kinda still do that... (http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/article/9103.html)
He's still around in 8th Ed, though I don't see him often. I traded my copy away.

I have a deck that uses that exact combo, and throws in some nettling Imps just for good measure.

Mmmmm. Nostalgia.

I prefer the Megrim/Wheel and Deal to black vise any day. My multiplayer deck is the devil. But when it lands, which it usually does, it will take out every opponent at once. I need to mix a third color in so people don't see it coming though.

Fuck you and your Megrim deck. One of my friends played with one of those and I hated it more than anything. I ended up making a mass enchantment destruction deck just to piss him off in multiplayer games.

His obviously wasn't fast enough.

After he first started playing with the deck, his Megrims would typically get disenchanted or otherwise popped the instant they were played. I Jester's Capped them out of his deck once or twice with the help of quick colorless mana.

I beat one of your meagrim decks once.  :evil:

Jester's cap doesn't exist online. Yet. Sigh. Like I said, playing field changing. A lot.

Juggernaut came back in Mirrodin. Royal Assasin is one of those cards that is fun but really doesn't work well in creature decks. It isn't a win condition, just a stall. I imagine in limited it's quite good though.

Edit: What the hell did I write above? "Creature decks?" Good one brain...that should say CONSTRUCTED decks. It's too slow and too much of a creature-staller to be good in constructed. Sure you can combine him with some tappers to kill creatures but that won't help you against combo decks, control decks, or just fast creature decks.

Edit 2: TONS of people play with Oblivion Stone! Many Tooth and Nail decks ran them, as did Mono Black Control. Outside of affinity it was one of the most common artifacts! Juggernaut would be a lot better in a core set where there isn't so much artifact hate.

-  Juggernaut and Nevy's Disk were both reprinted in Mirrodin.  Cept the Disk was called Oblivion Stone.  And no one really used them, because they aren't very good now....

-  Black Vise was a son of a bitch.  It was restricted,  especially when combined with land destruction (sinkhole, stone rain, ice quake, etc.).  Nezumi Shortfang was an attempt to bring back a Rack/Black Vise type affect.

The cards haven't gotten weaker as time has moved on.  "Card power" is more of a wave type function.....   you have peaks and troughs.  You can generally find the peaks by finding where the restrictions/bannings go into effect.

Peaks:  Unlimited/Dark/Arabian Nights era (Power 9),  Urza's block (heh...  lots of banned shit here.  Academy tops it),  MIRRODIN (actually)

Mirrodin was a festering pile because it was 95% filler to round out the couple of bomb cards.

Edit:  Man....   have alot to say on the topics broached here that really begs for more comprehensive treatment.

Speaking of paper magic and casual playing, what house rules did/does everyone play by?

Me and my friends just had a banned card list. I'm trying to remember the notables...Ivory Tower, Black Vise, Mana Web (one of my friends really really fucking hated this card for some reason), Channel, Memory Jar (HATE)...that's about all I can remember.

We used to play for ante after it was out of vogue, although usually we would play nice and trade back nice cards at below value. So if I got your chase rare in an ante I might trade it back for a few uncommons.

Ante was really messed up in general, in Revised 2 or 3 of the Black rares dealt with ante, and hence were unplayable most of the time. Of course ante was a terrible idea, a friend of mine made an all commons deck just to exploit it. Didn't really matter how many times he lost, as long as he won now and then.

Heh, Ante.

Ante is the classic example of a developer's intentions and design running smack down into the cold reality of how people actually play a game.  Richard Garfield never envisioned the "mr suitcases" of the world ever having 4 of every rare or playing cutthroat to win, let alone the value on the secondary market or cards, all conspiring to make ante a the black sheep of the game.

That being said, Ante is something you could easily incorporate into the "MtGORPG that I want that no one is working on damnit!".

Xilren
PS Yeah, I know about the reprints of jug and nevy's disk; it was just old school tongue in cheekness :-p

I think the only things we ever did as far as house rules was about ante. We never played with that shit. Nice idea, but really, unless all the cards are of similar value and rarity, almost no one will want to give up their valuable ass cards. Hell, I sold most of my first set of stuff for around $600 after Fallen Empires came out (piece of shit expansion that was). And I actually got ripped on the deal, though I was happy to have the money at the time since I used it to buy a shitton of miniatures at a con I went to that week.

We also usually only played in 4-6 player multiplayer games, and most of the time it was with decks of at least 75 cards or more. None of this 40-card speed deck bullshit, this was much more strategic, longer-lasting play. Of course, with that size of decks, we'd often have at least one person who just never got any lands quick enough to do anything. We called that "manapause."

Ahhhh, good times.

I wouldn't call 75 card decks more strategic. They just require more card advantage.

40 Card decks back when millstones were around had to be incredibly strategic. Get in, get out, get'er done. You generally had 10 turns or so to really blow through that deck - and it simply wasn't as easy as it is now. I wish I could make 40 card decks now. I miss those days of streamlining.

Just make 40 card decks and play in the Open format on MTGO. I have a 50-card (used to be 40) white Soldier deck with 12 Glory Seekers in it. It rawks.

You are a bad, bad person.

Speed-deck type of play always reminded me entirely too much of RTS-style gameplay. Most of the strategy went into deck construction. I like a slower-paced type of game.

This was written as a supplement to Schild’s piece on MTGO’s decision to reprint an old set.  Sorry if it runs a little long.

While I don’t believe reprinting an old, non-redeemable set will have near the impact in MTGO as it would in paper magic, it does highlight how almost anything dev’s do now has an RMT impact in online gaming.

In terms of MTGO, WotC has always maintained that they have no interest in the secondary market and to them, each card cost the same to produce no matter if it’s a common, uncommon, or rare (or virtual for that matter).  They have long stated they will never sell single cards nor publish price lists or track such thing for secondary sales.  Yet, at the same time, there is also no denying that they alone have the greatest impact on the secondary market by their control over set rotation and card reprints.  Just like baseball cards, many cards value is strictly due to their rarity.  However, in MtG, their value is also tied to their usability.  Tournament quality rares always command the best prices, so when sets rotate out and what is now Standard tournament legal changes, the secondary market prices also change.  If WotC ever reprinted moxen in a new set, the prices for old moxen would plummet, and WotC KNOWS this.  The good news is they don't seem to let it control their marketing and development strategy.  If WotC ever changes this and decide to sell single cards directly themselves, whether paper or online, that would have some significant affects on any number of real world businesses (perfectly legal businesses at that).  To date they have never shown interest in this approach.

But here's the fear; not all dev house will take this same approach.  MMORPG devs s in particular are trying really hard to come to terms with RMT in their games.  Some are trying to outlaw it, some are trying to marginalize it by design decisions, and others are trying figure out ways to profit from it.  Just recently, SOE launched their own Sony Exchange service so they could grab a slice of the RMT.  But, is it such a difficult logical leap from offering brokerage services between players, to simply offering uber items and characters straight out for purchase? (Hell, some games, *cough* UO *cough* already do this).  After all, who control what items are the "best" or most desirable?  Who controls what character/skills are most effecgive?  And who can also CHANGE the environment to suite their needs, including nerfing or removing "overpowered" items?

Tinfoil hat time.  So, lets say the best current sword in EQ is a +5 WeaselWhacker.  Sony sells them for a few months directly, then decides since sales have slacked off they need to take some action.  Next patch they nerf the WeaselWhacker, or introduce new content highly resistant to the WeasalWhacker, and then the players aren't as effective as they used to be.  The following month, they now begin selling a new "best" sword, the +6 VorpalBunnySlayer.... until it's sales level off and the cycle repeats.

THAT’S the fear, that the game itself will become nothing more than a thinly veiled marketing scheme to sell crap via micro transactions, turning them all into Project Entropa wanna be’s or some foolishness.  The reason it scares me is because I can easily see this making perfect sense from a business point of view.  Fun? Screw that, what decisions net me more profit?  Hell just selling gold or platinum directly makes a lot of sense.  Who does it really hurt?

My question is, do we really want design decisions being based solely around what sells more instead of what makes a game better from a player’s perspective.  Sometimes, the two desires can go hand in hand, but more often than not, they could lead in opposite directions.  Just imagine playing WoW if every time you wanted to take a griffon ride you had to pay 50 cents.  Sure, you don't HAVE to pay, you could just run for a long time.  And that’s where I fear we are headed; good games where the fun gets frozen out by the dollar signs…

Xilren

Isn't this a legal CYA?

This thread highlights the fact that I have forgotten more MtG than I remember.  I stopped playing sometime after Ice Age.  I learned and played in Auburn, AL, which is or was a tournament town... meaning that if you didn't abide by tourney rules, you could not get in a game anywhere in the "real" group of players.  I carried my deck around in an Unlimited box just to scare the new kids.  Now... not sure I could manage a basic red deck.

I remember my Balance deck.  Only time I got to the final 4 of a fairly large local tourney, where I lost to another Balance deck...

Yeah, I always preferred the slower play with room for more whimsical decks. I loved playing landdestruction or Millstone decks against the 40-card killer decks... I was rarely fast enough, but when it worked I had one pissed of oponent.

I'd love a mmopg based around Garfields original vision of Magic. Basically the old Microprose game, but with the new sets and real players instead of computer players. Loot would be cards... maybe with some sort of colour crafting system as well (you specialize in a colour or a type of cards - go beat the Serra Angel leader to be able to make that card.... oh, PvE just got added there). A binding system like WoW should render the secondary market useless.
But cards truly being limited by rarity (now both online and off- money is the only limiting factor) and ante being required for high-level play.
And of course it would be a flat fee game... no buying of virtual cards.