Magic: the Gathering |OT13| Ixalan - Port to Sideboard

Angry Grimace said:
There's like nothing that suggests they're making less and less money. The current playerbase of MTGO isn't moving to Arena. Probably ever.
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But there's plenty to suggest this? The very existence of Arena suggests that WotC feels that the MTGO zenith has long since been reached, curtailing redemption could be seen as them needing to shore up the margins, they haven't released numbers on it for years, they don't get separate advertising budget anymore, treasure chests and all the changes brought with them could also be seen as needing to shore up the margins, the list goes on and on.

I could buy that the current playerbase might largely not transfer over, but only because I didn't realize how small the MTGO playerbase actually was. 300k registered users in 2007, 5 years after release. That's an abysmal number for something as huge as magic and speaks to the fundamental failure of MTGO as a whole. Zero players could transfer over and it would still be hilariously easy for Arena to eclipse MTGO.
 
Question: What was the biggest factor behind the boom that started with Magic 2010?

(The answer explains why MTG:Arena exists!)
 
kirblar said:
Question: What was the biggest factor behind the boom that started with Magic 2010?

(The answer explains why MTG:Arena exists!)
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Ya, duels. Which is why Maro trying to tout design things from that year as super important is always weird, advertising and the advent of a younger demographic caused the boom, not design.
 
But duels was never meant to be a full featured game which was a mistake they are now correcting. The advent of much better digital CCGs means they have to change their thinking, and everything lately has been in line with that.
 
kirblar said:
Question: What was the biggest factor behind the boom that started with Magic 2010?

(The answer explains why MTG:Arena exists!)
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Right, DotP and M10 was like a 1-2 Punch of success and why I was so sure they weren't going to axe them in one of the older threads.
 
I'm sure a polished feature filled version of MTG Arena will be set for full release just as Artifact: The DOTA Card game comes out.
 
Justin said:
I'm sure a polished feature filled version of MTG Arena will be set for full release just as Artifact: The DOTA Card game comes out.
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Best thing for WotC is that Artifact doesn't look like it'll be competing that much with Arena. It sounds like it'll be more of a Clash Royal game.
 
duxstar said:
The most disappointing news was that this is PC only.... i need this on my phone, i already have mtgo for the computer.
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This game is 100% coming out for Windows, Mac and iOS, and very very likely Android as well. You do the initial beta for something like this on your biggest platform only as you want to focus on core mechanics and worry about the platform-specific stuff later. Hearthstone launched on Mac even though it spent a year in PC-only beta.

Angry Grimace said:
There's like nothing that suggests they're making less and less money off of MTGO
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Events of all stripes have fired less over time and prices on lots of cards have declined. MTGO has a non-growing population and if you have a non-growing population, you're about to have a shrinking population. The Hasbro earnings reports have also hinted that digital has been a shrinking percentage of total MTG sales.

They'd have to program every single card that's in MTGO into Arena + enable trading and tickets for that to ever be a viable plan.
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In WotC's view trading is basically a miserable legacy feature that they'd like to be rid of altogether in digital. The market wants CCGs with a self-contained pack/crafting economy and you can actually cover 100% of everything MTGO does from a gameplay standpoint without enabling a secondary market.

I legitimately do not understand what position you are taking here and it's particularly confusing given you were apparently on the "Digital Next is the MTGO replacement and WOTC will delete/make obsolete all existing collections" train as recently as a couple of months ago.
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I think I've been pretty consistent in saying that any end to MTGO would take a long time just because there's no way to launch a new game with 25 years of cards on day one and there's no reason not to keep supporting MTGO while there are major things Arena can't do. Long-term though one of these platforms is a money-maker and one isn't so their incentive structure is gonna lean strongly on migrating everyone to the one that makes more money.

There isn't a single cogent reason I can think of to pretend this is a Duels replacement when it's secretly a MTGO replacement.
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There's a reason that they basically didn't even reference Duels in the stream and all the FAQs were about MTGO -- that reason is that mostly nobody cares about Duels. This is a "replacement" in the sense that it's an onramp for new players (which every iteration of Duels was and no iteration of MTGO ever has been) but one that they don't have to abandon afterwards.

FreedomFrisbee said:
But there's plenty to suggest this? The very existence of Arena suggests that WotC feels that the MTGO zenith has long since been reached, curtailing redemption could be seen as them needing to shore up the margins, they haven't released numbers on it for years, they don't get separate advertising budget anymore, treasure chests and all the changes brought with them could also be seen as needing to shore up the margins, the list goes on and on.
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Yeah, I mean, the core problem is just that the economic model is fundamentally fucked. You can get to a million players on Magic Online with a setup like they have, but paper Magic has like 25m active players and Hearthstone has 70m registered. Arena is a product that can unlock a ton of growth digitally that simply isn't possible with MTGO.
 
Long-term though one of these platforms is a money-maker and one isn't so their incentive structure is gonna lean strongly on migrating everyone to the one that makes more money.
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ESPECIALLY one that will have ties to paper.

edit:

My wife has started to take out all the rares from our BFZ/OGW binders and put them into the collection proper. It's almost that time again, full rotation is always fun, especially tuning up decks to fit the new format.
 
Santiako said:
lFJ1Mio.png


I feel like most people glossed over this because of the stream and the cradle. This card looks insane to me.
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It IS INSANE.
 
aidan said:
Everyone keeps pointing at Hearthstone (which set the precedent for digital CCGs), but Arena reminds me more of Eternal.
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Never seen it before (and will probably check it out now), though does Arena have motion graphics on the cards?
 
StrategyFan said:
i like this one

boring interrupt decks don't want it for constructed
and it's not at common rarity to ruin limited too much
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If there's a decent blue-red or white-blue tempo deck, I could see this being played in Standard. It's certainly great for cube.
 
Mark is posting photos of the Hascon floor on Twitter and I honestly have no fucking idea how this convention makes any sense or who it is supposed to be for
 
The Technomancer said:
Mark is posting photos of the Hascon floor on Twitter and I honestly have no fucking idea how this convention makes any sense or who it is supposed to be for
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I can't imagine WotC folks choosing to do this when PAX Seattle is right down the the street. Hasbro must be tossing around hella money, because they got Mark Whalberg and even Chris Rahn to come.

Literally the only articles I'm seeing about this event are from Rhode Island newspapers and MTG centric sites. Maybe there's some interest in the Transformers scene, but IDK.
 
Wulfric said:
I can't imagine WotC folks choosing to do this when PAX Seattle is right down the the street. Hasbro must be tossing around hella money, because they got Mark Whalberg and even Chris Rahn to come.

Literally the only articles I'm seeing about this event are from Rhode Island newspapers and MTG centric sites. Maybe there's some interest in the Transformers scene, but IDK.
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There's a lot of hype in the MLP scene, due to news about the movie, season 8 (before season 7 even finishes), and likely the Equestria Girls spinoff series. But yeah, it seems like it's only MTG and MLP that have anything interesting going on there.
 
I was really excited about new Gaes Cradle thinking man srams expertise into decimator of provinces might be a thing now.

Then i realized the eldrazi are going =(.

I still havent seen a card worth ramping into like Ulamog. Ulamog was basically cast and win the game, no dinosaur is worth the hour of promise level ramp so far.

Gishath just dies to removal and doesnt effect the board the turn he comes in.
 
We obviously won't know how good the set is until we are actually playing it but I am loving what we have seen of Ixalan so far. It really seems like design stepped their game up especially with the DFCs. I can't wait to see the remaining ones.
 
I was worried about the power level of the set, but sheesh it looks like it's off the charts. And we're not even to Dominaria yet.
 
SigmasonicX said:
There's a lot of hype in the MLP scene, due to news about the movie, season 8 (before season 7 even finishes), and likely the Equestria Girls spinoff series. But yeah, it seems like it's only MTG and MLP that have anything interesting going on there.
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I knew I was forgetting something. But yeah, you have to wonder what's the rationale for renting out a convention center when they probably could have rented booth space for cheaper at the usual locales.
 
Wulfric said:
I can't imagine WotC folks choosing to do this when PAX Seattle is right down the the street.
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Last year WotC had an enormous blowout at PAX. Not only is this a far worse event for them with far fewer eyes, but the actual scope of promotion they can do is somehow dramatically limited as well.

I suspect that given the current WotC CEO situation whatever dipshit at Hasbro ordered this is gonna get an earful about it after it underwhelms this weekend.
 
Ashodin said:
I was worried about the power level of the set, but sheesh it looks like it's off the charts. And we're not even to Dominaria yet.
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Dominaria has to be crazy. I can't imagine how stressful it must be for them needing to nail it. I'm excited because GP Seattle should be the kick off for spoilers.
 
Very strangely, Ixalan is actually making me want to play Standard again. It hasn't been since RTR/THS that I've played Standard.


I was just quoted $830 cash for my Modern Jund and Prossh EDH decks (MTGO). It's tempting...
 
I'm not worried at all about Dominaria from a flavor standpoint. I don't think it's too hard to get the fluff right here. I'm super curious about what they did with the set mechanically though. I don't know how you condense like 15 years of magic into 3 to 5 mechanics.

[EDIT]
Hero said:
Is anyone here going to HasCon? Would love to get one of the promo Magic sets.
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The promo sets will be on the Hasbro site for sale eventually. They're 'only' $35 if I remember correctly.
 
FreedomFrisbee said:
But there's plenty to suggest this? The very existence of Arena suggests that WotC feels that the MTGO zenith has long since been reached, curtailing redemption could be seen as them needing to shore up the margins, they haven't released numbers on it for years, they don't get separate advertising budget anymore, treasure chests and all the changes brought with them could also be seen as needing to shore up the margins, the list goes on and on.

I could buy that the current playerbase might largely not transfer over, but only because I didn't realize how small the MTGO playerbase actually was. 300k registered users in 2007, 5 years after release. That's an abysmal number for something as huge as magic and speaks to the fundamental failure of MTGO as a whole. Zero players could transfer over and it would still be hilariously easy for Arena to eclipse MTGO.
Click to expand...

No it suggests that digital Magic only appeals to a certain segment of the population, not that they have some grandoise plan to eliminate MTGO.
 
Angry Grimace said:
No it suggests that digital Magic only appeals to a certain segment of the population, not that they have some grandoise plan to eliminate MTGO.
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You're moving the goalposts here. I was responding to the assertion that there was no suggestion that 'they're making less and less money'. And the points you're making aren't even mutually exclusive from the ones we're making.
 
duxstar said:
I was really excited about new Gaes Cradle thinking man srams expertise into decimator of provinces might be a thing now.

Then i realized the eldrazi are going =(.

I still havent seen a card worth ramping into like Ulamog. Ulamog was basically cast and win the game, no dinosaur is worth the hour of promise level ramp so far.

Gishath just dies to removal and doesnt effect the board the turn he comes in.
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He does, but there isn't all that much good removal - everything cheap is either sorcery speed (if you have a Walk the Plank and your opponent plays a Gishath you're probably scooping), or just doesn't kill him.

He's a win-more Commander card, though. 8 mana is just too much for something without any relevant protection from what removal IS around.
 
Looking at the photos for Hascon, it feels like such a random collection of IPs. I feel most people going there are only going to be interested in a very small number of the stuff there.

Anyway, I missed the Magic Arena reveal so I'm going to have to go hunt down an twitch or youtube archive. Impressions seem mostly good?

As an aside, I will say I like how Ixalan is handling Dinosaurs. Looks like the entire curve will be covered with a good amount of enablers. After this one set, Dinosaurs will probably be a more competitive tribe than old favorites like Giants and Treefolk ever were LOL.
 
they're making mtg a multi-product brand right (movies, mmo, etc.)?

10M players spending an average of $5/yr is more desirable for them than 500K spending $100/yr
 
Angry Grimace said:
No it suggests that digital Magic only appeals to a certain segment of the population, not that they have some grandoise plan to eliminate MTGO.
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It isn't just digital Magic that that small population represents. It's digital Magic that is an extremely close approximation of real world Magic in terms of price and event organization. Some people certainly want to be putting 5-15 dollars on the line in a 3 match series when they play so that they can win, enter again, go infinite, and be a grinder.

Way way way more people would be into playing a single match of Magic, for free with the stakes of some ranking points and F2P coins before they go to bed where it doesn't really matter if you win or lose, but it at least feels like each side is trying.
 
Justin said:
Dominaria has to be crazy. I can't imagine how stressful it must be for them needing to nail it. I'm excited because GP Seattle should be the kick off for spoilers.
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Richard Garfield is on the team. I don't wanna say he is a lucky charm, but the last two sets he was on the team for were two of the best limited sets of all time. Probably the two best.
 
I'm really optimistic about Arena. The F2P model used in Duels was fair, from my perspective. If there were more things to spend the currency on, I might have.

Arena will most certainly not be as generous, but I hope they aren't too stingy.
 
GoutPatrol said:
Richard Garfield is on the team. I don't wanna say he is a lucky charm, but the last two sets he was on the team for were two of the best limited sets of all time. Probably the two best.
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His list of design credits is Alpha, Arabian Nights, Tempest, Urza's Saga, Odyssey, Judgment, Ravnica, Innistrad, and now Dominaria. Odyssey block is the only one that wasn't a standout high at its time of release, he easily has the best individual record of anyone who's ever worked on 5+ Magic sets.
 
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