Magic Online Pricing

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rkoelsch

Guest
Spidey I think that MTGOnline's strong point is draft. Netdraft is so cumbersome. You can play constructed but you have a limited card supply and only in Type II.

I will put in my opinion of the pricing. I think the pricing is very unrealistic. People seldom pay full price for cards. I doubt they will pay full price for virtual cards. I don't think it should be free and I would probably support any price up to about a dollar a booster.
 

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
The Rock speaks. However, it might be well to better phrase your last statements, as they are a tad offensive :)

rkoelsch: So are you allowed to trade? Drafting may equalize the deck building field with its card pool, but I'm sure that aspect turns some people off who'd rather just build a deck and play. If you can trade, that'd go a long way towards being flexible.
 
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rkoelsch

Guest
Yes trading is allowed. and it is my understanding that people will be able to buy singles from other individuals but that will be out of the Wizards control and will be handled like a trade I imagine.
 
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Lotus Mox

Guest
some1 dissing Homelands?

It had great cards such as Memory Lapse, Spectral Bears, Serrated Arrows and Merchant Scroll (too good for t1.5)

Not to mention it's nice flavour and it also was a very balanced set for limited play. (except Apocalypse Chime)
 

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
And Autumn Willow, one of the first untargetables...

I think he's talking overall, since hardly any cards have stayed in tourney decks...
 
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BigBlue

Guest
Originally posted by Hetemti
[BBut who cares? Ice Age sux astride from the painlands. [/B]
The "snow-covered" lands mechanic was without a doubt the worst they've come up with.

The other MAJOR good thing besides painlands to come out of Ice Age was the invention of the Cantrip.

I remember the uproar from old players at the re-release of Icy Manipulator.

Hey Rock, perhaps my memory is fading, but didn't Balduvian Horde come from IA as well?
 
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arhar

Guest
Wow, very interesting conversation.

My two cents:

First of all, I would not even consider paying the current prices for the game. I think the same goes for the majority of my group: 18-early 20s college students. IRL, a draft set costs me $7.50, and online $10? C'mon.....

Now, there will definitely be a secondary market, with prices probably the same as the IRL: any crappy rare you could buy for a buck, ridiculous prices for Finkels, etc....

But what really irks me is WHY IN THE WORLD would they do the redemption feature that way - collect the whole set and trade it in for real one. OR virtual foil set for real foil set, yippie!

Why would you want to collect a set, anyway?

If you're a tourney player? No, no point in that.

If you're a casual player, or a collector - maybe, but then you'd want to KEEP IT, not trade it in! And if you want a real set, you collect real cards!

I do agree with EricBess though.... they'll lower it.

PS: Ice Age was an awesome set, with a lot of great cards, but unfortunately it had some REALLY bad cards as well, especially rares like Mercenaries and Flow of Maggots.... those cards are remembered as some of the worst rares in Magic history, and that really hurts IA.
 
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arhar

Guest
Originally posted by BigBlue


Hey Rock, perhaps my memory is fading, but didn't Balduvian Horde come from IA as well?
Nope dude, that was Alliances.
 

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
I think snow-covered lands and phasing were a couple of the most misunderstood and least used mechanics in a set. I think the problem with snow-covered lands was that there wasn't enough stuff using them and with regular lands still available, it probably seemed like a useless endeavor to players.

Kinda like Antiquities that was heavy on artifacts.

As for IA rares, you'll always get your differing opinions: I liked Flow of Maggots and used it, successfully (that is, in a deck that won more than it lost).

Mercenaries: Now that I haven't used (yet).
 
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Hetemti

Guest
I won't get into a delination of the aforementioned laundry list of "good" Ice Age cards, but I stand by my statement. Yes, there's some combo cheese and some good commons...but overall I find it a disappointing set.
 
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EricBess

Guest
Spidey - to answer your previous question. Yes, you can plan constucted online. However, you need to have the virtual card to put it in your deck. I cannot see paying $3.29 per pack to play in a draft. I seriously doubt I'll be able to bring myself to pay that much to simply bust packs. And without busting packs, the odds of being able to put together a decent constructed deck are, well, non-existant. I'd have to play a lot of drafts to get enough cards and, I just don't see that ever happening. Trading or no trading...
 

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
So what you're saying is that it's preferable to draft for the cards to build up your collection rather than just buying packs and building it up? Like how most people do in real life?

'Cause either way you're paying for packs, so you'd rather be drafting than just opening them?
 
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Lotus Mox

Guest
Originally posted by Spiderman
So what you're saying is that it's preferable to draft for the cards to build up your collection rather than just buying packs and building it up? Like how most people do in real life?

'Cause either way you're paying for packs, so you'd rather be drafting than just opening them?
I think many ppl in real life actually draft with the packs the are going to open for their collection, at least I do it.
 

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
Although it does make an additional use of the booster... but as I said before, I don't really have anyone to play with so I just buy them.
 
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Chaos Turtle

Guest
That would different on Magic Online, I think. Drafting or doing sealed deck to open packs gets you more "bang for your buck" so to speak. Rather than just open a dozen packs and sit there trying to figure out what kind of deck to make, you can play several drafts, which carry the promise of more packs to the winner (and runner-up). Combined with the allure of drafting cards you may actually play with (sometimes called rare-drafting, though it can apply to any case of drafting cards you want, regardless of rarity) drafting over simply opening seems to be the best use of your points (and dollars).
 

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
I agree with all of that. However, you (and I mean WOTC) have to weigh whether there's enough people who have no one to play with locally will fork over money to play online and how much would they be willing to pay. And you have to balance that with people who CAN play elsewhere and so are not inclined to pay "big bucks" for online play. And you have to balance whether the people are actually good in draft and figure that it'll be worth it to play, rather than lose and maybe get stuck with crappy cards.

Just my notion of the marketing studies that probably went into this.
 
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BigBlue

Guest
Originally posted by The Rock
how do you stop raredrafting?
How we STOP raredrafting at our local store is as follows:

All Rares/Foils are turned in when you A) Leave early, or B) finish the draft. Then we go in order of finish (with proxy folks for those who left) and pick rares/foils that way. In this way everyone is assured to get back 3 rares, and the better you do, the better you get.

This idea has been submitted to LL/WotC and they seem to dismiss it. I have also suggested they could/should simply return the packs you opened back to you at the end of the draft. In other words you "borrow" the drafted cards and keep what your 3 packs had. Again they don't seem to have taken that to heart. I fear that without any changes there will be a LOT of raredrafting going on. with potentially 24 rares per draft pod, realistically 8-10 come your way (less with other raredrafting going on as well) you'd be able to "build" your collection if you didn't care about your rating.

So if you care about your rating (which wont mean didly-jack at this point unless they give monthly prizes for hightest rating or something) you will get a lot of easy wins vs the raredrafting buffoons, but will also be robbed of your mediocre rares. No one will pass a fatty, but some middle of the road rares will be snatched, when in actuality they'd come back sans raredrafters.

As far as the "pricing structure", it is a farce. One of two things will happen in my view; they'll stick to it and it will fail miserablly or they will "concede" and pick somethiing more reasonable which will still be expensive (like $2). I don't see them making it reasonable at this time. One thing which hasn't been mentioned here is that WotC is "afraid" that if they undercut the cardboard product, that those sales will diminish. What is crazy about that is that by making them equal, folks will have to choose, and given no previous choice (other than apprentice) some will choose online and it will hurt the cardboard anyways.
 
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