Talk:Magic: The Gathering Online

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[edit] Number of players?

Does anyone know the # of players on MTGO? --Garric 00:48, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

I worked on MTGO (2002-March 2004), and in March 2004 they had about 120,000 registered accounts. some of these were inactive, some were created for the sole purpose of credit card fraud, and many people owned several accounts as a way to better manage their virtual card collections (since accounts themselves are free; only the cards cost money). So the exact number of players on MTGO is unknowable, even by WotC itself.
—Preceding unsigned comment added by Saulpwanson (talk • contribs) 22:19, October 7, 2005

[edit] Down Times

Shouldn't we add something about the infamous downtimes that MTGO constantly suffers? Also, is there anything about version 3.0 we can go ahead and add?--Bedford 01:17, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Version 3.0 Info

I added info on version 3.0, or Magic Online III, as WotC seems to want to call it. More information at http://pc.ign.com/articles/691/691016p1.html —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.4.53.156 (talk • contribs) 20:34, March 22, 2006

[edit] Physical card trade in?

I used to be a big MTGO player, but lost interest after a while. There used to be a policy that you could trade in a full set of online cards for a full set of physical cards. Is that policy still in effect? Is it limited to certain sets? For instance, are older sets such as Invasion still supported? Seems like there could be a section to address these issues. Warthog32 20:49, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Sorry for my inaccurate edit, when I used to buy MTGO cards, I remember all the cards being more expensive. Given, that it was in the early days of MTGO before buying online cards outside MTGO was widely available. The card market seems to have changed alot since then, making the physical trade in option more valuable. --dark420bishop 3:07P, Dec 17th 2006

[edit] Ownage

I've read somewhere (mtgnews.com) that you don't actually "own" the digital cards, like you do the physical cards in real life. If something happens to the cards, Wizards does not need to do anything about them; since you had never "owned" these cards in the first place. Can someone maybe add this into the article?

First, the word is "ownership". Second, if "something happens" to your physical cards, WotC doesn't have to do anything about that either. So instead of stating obvious facts, you should state the point that you are trying to make. Ham Pastrami 08:19, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
This is discussed in the article. SnowFire (talk) 22:03, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] What happened?

This article reports that MTGO will be released on Fall of 2006, and the beta in Summer of 2006. However, from the looks of the latest video at the Penny Arcade Expo (with an interview with one of the developers), it was mentioned that we should expect the beta to be released in January or February of 2007 -- 3 months prior to the release of the actual game; so the actual launch will be in the first half of 2007! This is MUCH later than what had been reported at Wizards.com, or what this Wiki article states. How can that be? It went from being released this Fall (2006), to Summer or maybe even Fall of 2007? That's almost a year jump -- a year in difference! What happened?

Several of the sections (most notably on the transition between Version 1.0 to Version 2.0) could be considered highly biased with coached and subjective wording. Has someone reviewed the text properly?

PJammaGod 13:25, 30 April 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Delete "Note on using MTGO under GNU/Linux (WINE)"?

MTGO appears to be broken (new bordered cards do not display properly) using WINE as of the release of Future Sight.

MTGO v.3 will not work under WINE (as far as I can tell... ??)

MTGO3 uses some unholy combination of the win32 api, .net and directx 9. Theres no way this is going to fly under wine . . . Why a children's card game needs directx 9 and .net - the world may never know, but as it stands, they couldn't have made it harder to port. Back in my day we used c++ . . . —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.203.109.44 (talk) 00:02, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Cheese

I am often asked the definition of Cheese by other players in MTGO, and there is a quite common definition of the phrase (although a minority of players argue about the finer points).

I think it would be nice to put forwards a clear definition so that we can point people towards the MTGO Wikipedia page for the clear definition.

Cheese deck, or cheese cards are those decks or cards which create an unfair advantage or more importantly reduce the fun of a game. The most common type of play referred to as cheese is the destruction of basic lands which stops the opponent(s) from being able to play anything. Around half the MTGO players feel that any sort of card can be played and that there are no bad cards, while the other half feel that certain types of cheese cards reduce the overall fun of the game and want to avoid games that contain them.

Main types of cheesy decks are: - Theft - Basic land destruction - Decks that have many counter spells in - Decks that cause mass discard, or individual mass discard cards such as Black Myojin - Time stretch spells (player takes further turns) - Combinations that allow for infinite loops - Heavy bounce decks - Certain combinations of doubling season (such as with Plainswalker) - Decks that kill through heavy direct damage (using X spells and cloudposts or coffers to deal very heavy amounts of damage)

Other very cheesy cards: Mind slaver, Ishoron scepter with counter/bounce, platinum angel, decree of silence (and other similar heavy counter cards).

I would appreciate some feedback and assistance to expand this section a little from those people who have played MTGO for many years and have a good feeling for the common definition of cheese. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kit Temple (talk • contribs) 15:23, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

1, complaints about cheese aren't a topic unique to MTGO. The same debates happen at kitchen tables and gaming shops. It's just harder to avoid on MTGO, because you play with unfamiliar people a lot more, so if this is discussed anywhere, it should be in a general article.
2, a section on the subject would almost certainly be "original research" by Wikipedia standards. There's a long-running forum thread on this at the wizards.com official MTGO bulletin board, and there are other MTG-specific wikis out there where this can be added to, but I don't think it's appropriate for Wikipedia.

3, while this talk page itself isn't really a discussion forum... I would propose you're looking at it in the wrong way. Power level imbalance is a much bigger problem for fun games. Fully powered Ravager Affinity back in its heyday isn't very fun at all to take on with an "average" deck, but a janky bounce or burn deck isn't offensive at all. Many of the strategies you describe aren't actually that powerful, in general. SnowFire (talk) 22:03, 25 January 2008 (UTC)