Holier than thou is completely off base. I consider myself a hypocrite bc I spend money on paper and I spent money on Arena when it first came out despite consistently holding the same position.

Meh... I'm still waiting for them to let us buy singleton cards. Until then, I will never play this game - probably still won't play it if they do, simply because knowing them it will be way too expensive. Also, as soon as they make a big enough mistake (which they will, it's WotC after all) and get a major black eye from the fan base, they'll probably just start hyping some new-new game, with plans to replace MtGA.

Mostly joking, or maybe partly. There's some truth up there.

They aren’t going to replace Arena bc it has morphed into the new MTGO. If they release a more casual product down the road it will be another gateway attempt like doto.

I hope so

I'm being absolutely serious about that. For anyone interested in what is going on with MTGO in the last few years, this is a good enough starting point:

https://www.channelfireball.com/article ... ic-online/

Rereading it, I also find that article kind of spooky given.... events.

One point I forgot to mention - it sort of bothers me with historic that they are removing nearly all the card bundles and just keeping the 45pack one for historic sets.

With the reason being "it's the most popular bought bundle".

AKA: you're not buying any more single packs with gold once a set rotates out.

Why limit options?

I know, some dude with an excel sheet found a way to calculate more profit this way. Probably.

There´s no way they launch another game to replace MTGA, its more profitable for them to just fix Arena...
I can't believe it but I´m actually with mjack here... I´m out of outrage... for this BS

you can't be with mjack unless you're posting several times in a row with walls of text and bothering Sixty

That's exactly what people used to say about MtGO. (It's also what people kept banging me over the head with - "why on earth would you expect them to keep their promises with Magic Duels?.. MtGO is the flagship product, and it will NEVER be replaced.")

But, really, I shouldn't be talking negatively about MtGA. I don't play it, I haven't spent any money on it, and I have no intention (at this time) of doing so. So honestly, my opinion is completely invalid on the game. That said, my opinion on WotC is very valid, and isn't likely to change - they seem to be an awful company, albeit with a great product or two.

Sorry for butting in.

I'm sure Hasbro has put enormous pressure to better monetize the brand (Magic), so we'll see what's what.

MTGO was outdated the minute it was out... whomever looks at that interface is going to need a gigantic amount of imagination to fool themselves to think that the client has any future moving forward.
MTGA has a life spam at the very least of 5 more years, in comparison to Duels that was never monetized, MTGA is very profitable, its made by WOTC for WOTC, so they keep all the money and don't have Stainless issues -by the way we never knew what broke that partnership?- it was built in Unity and has MTG rules engine so it was made to last, currently hosts FULL standard and semi optimal limited, two things none of the Duels iterations did.

The Historic fiasco is going to be the place for MTGO whales to buy in... and they will find MTGA cheap in comparison, this is going to be obnoxious but it will not break the game at the point Hasbro decides to shut it down and start fresh... that would be a monumental loss of money for them.

I dunno what would have to change to make MTGA obsolete like MTGO is ATM... MTG VR?

By the way I do think they are going to fix this abortion of announcement.
Coz they are "listening"

I'm with you that this isn't the first incident of WotC mistreating their customers. And I also have a post-history voicing different concerns throughout the last ~15 months (not that I'd expect anyone to go through that, only one opinion anyway).
But I believe we have to continue calling them out on their BS. There's plenty of outrage and mockery on reddit already, so they have to have noticed what their announcement has caused. Good gaming companies act on feedback like that.

I don't actually see them sticking to that obvious 2:1 crap, but I'm not good with them only reversing that back to 1:1. They have to deliver better - by not introducing overpowered cards into our Historic pool. I mean, how hard can it be to not do something?

And if they fail once more - I'll get my life back in ~6 weeks which will allow me to play more time-demanding games again

The only thing needed to make MtGA obsolete, is for someone at WotC to realize they can keep forcing you guys to start your collections over (and thus simply decide to stop updating MtGA), and that doing so makes a lot more money than continuing an already existing client (not sure if it does).

That and generally poor decision making at the company.

Per your other statement, giving MtGO a much-needed facelift should have been MUCH easier than creating MtGA from scratch - the engine already exists, it just needs some animation, higher resolution graphics, etc. The fact that they didn't do so is very telling, at least to me. People who have been loyal supporters of MtGO for years, SHOULD have a way to transfer their collections to MtGA, should MtGO be cut permanently. Right now, I seriously doubt WoTC has any intention of taking that basic, and extremely fair/reasonable, step.

These things tell me everything I need to know about the likely future for MtGA as well.

There's not enough e-botox out there to lift MTGO face.

I don't have any trust in WOTC whatsoever, but I trust in their greed and its just not good business to shut down Mtga in the near future, I would guess that it's their most profitable platform ATM... So as long as MTGA is making money it will be safe.

There we totally disagree. If they were an honest/decent company, they would have done something about that interface a very long time ago, and it would never have gotten so badly out of date in the first place. By this point, MtGO ought to have been ported to a number of platforms - possibly incorporating light editions of the software in some cases, or versions that still require a 'main' account held on a different platform. This could have/should have been done way before they made MtGA (probably instead of making MtGA). Some people are going to lose, eventually, the huge investments they've made into WotC's former product - in some cases I suspect tens of thousands of dollars.

Don't get me wrong, I think MtGA is a step in the right direction, generally speaking, but it is a HUGE slap in the face to all of their long-time supporters in the digital realm. It somehow hasn't come across that way, but I'm totally surprise that it hasn't.

If you look into it, people have already lost quite a bit of the “value” in their MTGO cards. The real question I personally have is where is the theoretical threshold where people “cash out” despite the sunken cost? I’m mainly interested from a sheer economic curiosity standpoint.

I think Arena didn’t insult MTGO players bc none of this was originally intended imo. No one including Wotc realized how truly outdated it has become until Arena started poaching notable streamers.

Edit: what I mean is that i think the games were meant to coexist but they decided to roll with it after Arena was doing a better MTGO impression than a HS one.

When they were planning to launch Arena, why didn't they announce that people in MTGO would be able to transfer over their cards or have a really good amount of credit based on the value of their MTGO collection.

Then at the same time, announce that they are no longer updated MTGO and will keep the servers running for one or two more years so people can still play with what they have before they should plan on moving over to Arena.

Isn't that typically how these things should go down?

Arena was meant to be MTG Hearthstone; which would theoretically be a completely new and different audience. The current system is them leaning in on what happened and I don’t think it was the original intent.

If WOTC gave MTGO players a conversion on their collections would they swap to Arena?
A full collection could cost almost 30K and now is at 13K...


Yeah agreed Barns... if you are talking about this kinda cash they need to give better answers...
I wonder how much would cost a full MTGA collection coz I dont think is more than 1k.... The economies are far different

what a cool chart, i'd love to see a timeline on the x-axis, but it seems like they've got their money's worth for someone that's been in there for a long time. I spent thousands on a competing online card game platform that only lasted a few years. I sold it all off and cashed out more than I thought I would, but still. It was an awful investment. This looks much better. But all things come to an end.