
What Broke the Magic Online Economy? - minimaxir
http://www.channelfireball.com/articles/what-broke-the-magic-online-economy/
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hansjorg
Planet Money on NPR did a piece recently on how WotC avoided some of these
issues and made the card game such a success twenty plus years ago.

There's also some interesting anecdotes regarding the Hasbro buy out.

[http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/03/11/392381112/episo...](http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/03/11/392381112/episode-609-the-
curse-of-the-black-lotus)

~~~
cdr
That was not well researched though, if at all - it's by complete outsiders
with little actual knowledge of what happened. Even the person they talk to
(Skaff Elias IIRC) gives them a dubious offhand anecdote. It's a Malcolm
Gladwell level story.

~~~
hansjorg
The stories about the Hasbro buyout I was thinking of were actually from Peter
Adkison's blog, read that just after hearing the NPR piece and got them mixed
up:

[http://www.peteradkison.com/blog-entry-3-wizards-of-the-
coas...](http://www.peteradkison.com/blog-entry-3-wizards-of-the-coast-equity-
distributions-part-2/)

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brandnewlow
I've played online now and then for about 10 years. For me, the biggest
difference was the addition of phantom events. Unlike normal online
tournements, where you have to buy some packs to paticipate, with phantom
events you just pay a price. In return you don't get to keep the cards you
play with.

For people just looking to play, not to compete or build a collection, phantom
events make way more sense. I have to imagine their popularity has also
depressed the secondary value of packs.

~~~
thom
Yeah, if they just had a flat monthly fee for infinite phantom drafts, I would
love that. Although having played on beta servers, infinite would probably be
the wrong number as everyone just drops at the first sign of trouble.

~~~
lacker
Maybe infinite drafts + some ELO that people care about. Or Hearthstone style
where you don't have to face the opponents you just drafted against.

~~~
jpreiland
Not facing who you just drafted against would be absolutely horrible. Magic
sets are designed with draft in mind, and the draft tournament structure takes
advantage of the rotating aspect of the draft portion. When you see your 14
potential picks, you know that a number of them are coming back to you and you
get to pick another one later. You also know that every card you don't pick is
potentially going to be in one of your opponent's decks.

Being aware of what's opened in a draft as well as what's being passed has an
impact on how you pick (for example: tons of red cards keep going by - table
isn't into red, so you can A) wheel red cards easier, and B) bank on not
running into a hyper aggressive deck and build accordingly). If you were
thrown into a match against someone who didn't draft at your table, they might
have a deck that wasn't supported by the collective pool opened at your table
and you'll be caught completely off guard.

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alasdair_
The main reason the MTGO economy is broken is simple: MTGO is incredibly
shoddily designed and coded. It crashes all the time and has so many memory
leaks they still plague users ten years after it was built.

All of the issues lead to a LOT of refunds, essentially doubling the product
(tickets and cards) in circulation.

Recently, the game moved over to "4.0" which was even worse than 3.0 which
has, in part, exacerbated the problem.

This actually has a knock on effect on the paper magic markets where card
redemption (can turn digital cards into paper cards) has a big impact on
prices. There are countless articles on MTGPrice.com about this.

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Vraxx
I've actually taken the opportunity while the economy is "broken" to get into
the online game versus the paper game. I've quite enjoyed being able to draft
for about half the price it is on paper in order to get practice, as well as
build a smallish online collection. Seemed like the perfect time to jump into
the economy.

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brandnewlow
For those interested in analysis with some actual data of the MTGO world, this
site has a few folks who follow it rabidly:
[http://puremtgo.com/articles/state-program-
june-12th-2015](http://puremtgo.com/articles/state-program-june-12th-2015)

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jvdh
The article is using 'fancy' graphs, economic 101 and a long analysis to hide
the fact that he is basing most of his theory on gut feeling. There are
several points at which he states this himself, but fails to mention that
these become crucial to the whole analysis.

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gohrt
Why do players think it's acceptable to have an "economy" for trading virtual
gamepieces? Why don't they walk away and play game/culture that charges a flat
fee or a time/usage-based subscription?

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imancit
In short, because Magic is one of the best games ever designed, and this is
the only sanctioned way to play the full game online. Magic online was created
a long, long time ago before more modern concepts of game monetization
(freemium / mtx based) were developed. It's ended up as something more akin to
an online poker room than a gaming server.

~~~
Naga
I've tried other games that are similar to Magic, such as Hearthstone, but I
always go back to Magic because there is nothing like it.

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bsder
Hearthstone is _very_ well designed for what it is--an online-only Magic the
Gathering that is accessible in a casual way.

I simply won't spend on Magic Online since I can't exit. In addition, why
should I spend hundreds of dollars on something whose value can plunge
drastically?

If you have actual physical cards, you can sell them. Powerful modern cards
hold their value reasonably well.

~~~
whateverfor
You can exit from MTGO pretty easily? There are automated bots that will buy
your cards for tickets, and those same companies will give you cash for those
tickets (95 cents per ticket right now, not a terrible rate).

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CurtHagenlocher
"Again, I have no data to back this up, just a sense of this trend."

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danielvinson
That statement just doesn't fit well with what is being said - what the author
meant was something more like "my hypothesis is that constructed popularity
goes down over time but since Wizards doesn't release data on this we cannot
know for sure". This really should have been caught by the editor ( _cough_
Andy... _cough_ ) and clarified.

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nosuchthing
The whole concept of collectable cards feels like a scam, right alongside the
freemium pay-for-virtual-clothing hustle.

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carapace
When all my friends got into MtG back in high school I said, "I'll play but
I'm going to make my own cards. I don't want to buy them from the store." But
no one would go for it. I never understood. I used to say, "But there are no
actual wizards at Wizards of the Coast."

~~~
spiritplumber
Yeah, that was a thing for us too circa 1996. It ended with there being two
groups of players: "Poor" players that printed cards and had access to the
entire card catalog and could build insane cheese, and "rich" players who
didn't and didn't.

Then there were the my-dad-owns-a-textile-mill types who would learn a cheese
from the print-it-yourselfers, spend millions of lire on cards, and replicate
the cheese with the people who played with the official cards.

~~~
AcerbicZero
It seems making it "pay a lot to win" isn't that much better than straight
pay-to-win. I never understood how these players could tolerate broken
mechanics in such an expensive game.

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soup10
Hearthstone.

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PhasmaFelis
I feel like there's a great MtGox joke to be made here, but it's not coming to
me.

