The State of the Program for November 22th 2013

This series is an ongoing tribute to Erik “Hamtastic” Friborg.

In the News this Week:

ALL LARGE EVENTS CANCELLED: (from last week) Wizards removed all of the following events from the system:

· Online PTQs - CANCELLED

· MOCS Preliminary and Final Events - CANCELLED

· All Premier Events - CANCELLED

· All Daily Events - CANCELLED

· Thursday Night Magic Online - CANCELLED

status report in a month or so. That would imply that the events may be down for an extended period – meaning months, possibly years. Basically, anything larger than an 8 man queue is gone (except TTT.) This is because of the stability issues over the last few weeks. Worth Wollpert explained the reasoning behind this move here . On the plus side, they are working on this. On the down side, Worth promised ain a month or so. That would imply that the events may be down for an extended period – meaning months, possibly years.

New 8 Man Queues Dropped: After the great event massacre, Wizards attempted to make up for the elimination of PEs and Des by adding more eight man queues. These include 8 man constructed Swiss queues, but the Swiss queues were not popular enough and have been eliminated. That’s a shame: I had planned to try playing some this weekend. Too late now.

MOCS Clean-Up and Next Year’s Season 1: Wizards removed last season’s MOCS Season 1 through 11 QPs from players’ accounts. Season 12 points were not removed – you can use those to play in the draft queues. Next year’s MOCS season starts November 27th. The MOCS promo is Wizards removed last season’s MOCS Season 1 through 11 QPs from players’ accounts. Season 12 points were not removed – you can use those to play in the draft queues. Next year’s MOCS season starts November 27. The MOCS promo is Natural Order

Flashback Drafts Return: This week Wizards is introducing “Flashback” triple Innistrad drafts. They will be around for one week, then Wizards will offer something else. The drafts are more expensive that normal drafts – costing 15 TIX or packs plus 3 TIX. They are available in 8-4 and Swiss.

Pauper PRE Saturday: Pauper players are trying to make up for the loss of Dailies. The Casting Commons website is hosting a Pauper Battle Royale tomorrow. Details Pauper players are trying to make up for the loss of Dailies. The Casting Commons website is hosting a Pauper Battle Royale tomorrow. Details here

Paper Black Lotus Sold for $27,000: It was an Alpha Black Lotus. Alpha was the very first set released, and the numbers are small. It was also in very good condition. Still – that is a lot of money. I bought my Black Lotus for $199 – although it is a Revised version in poor condition, and that was in 2001. Last weekend, I saw a very similar Lotus on sale for almost the same price – just an extra 1 in the price: $1,199. The old cards are a bit pricey. I now keep my Power in the safe deposit box when I’m not playing them – which is a bit insane, but since I already had the box…

HammyBot Update: It’s still around, and still a great way to get cards and support the family of the late Erik Friborg. So far, Hammybot has raised almost 6,200 TIX! Keep it going! Hammybot still has 25,525 cards to sell, including a number of foil Mythics. That includes a very pretty Foil, Lorwyn block Vendilion Clique. If you want a Legacy, Classic and Vintage staple, grab the Clique. You will get a great card, and help out Hammy’s family through HammyBot. It’s good value. : It’s still around, and still a great way to get cards and support the family of the late Erik Friborg. So far, Hammybot has raised almost 6,200 TIX! Keep it going! Hammybot still has 25,525 cards to sell, including a number of foil Mythics. That includes a very prettyIf you want a Legacy, Classic and Vintage staple, grab the Clique. You will get a great card, and help out Hammy’s family through HammyBot. It’s good value.

Opinion Section: What Wizards Should Do Now

Wizard has eliminated every large event – every event that could have more than 32 players at a time. They just chopped off a huge chunk of their revenue stream and upset of a large chunk of their player base. It is a massive, self-inflicted wound to their bottom line. It is also really hurting the players that used to grind MTGO, in addition to those who just enjoyed playing in events.

Public discontent and anger aimed at MTGO and Wizards is pretty high right now. Even I am not immune. I Top 8ed my first paper PTQ in years, and I should be feeling pretty good about Magic. The formats seem like fun – but I haven’t played a game on MODO in weeks. I have been writing weekly columns about Magic since 1999, and playing MTGO a ton since I got broadband in 2003, and I am not playing. That’s bad.

At work, I have a sign that says “Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity.” I have been very willing to assume that Wizards isn’t shafting us deliberately, they just screwed up. I have also been willing to argue that about the many, many price changes that cut the value of MTGO down again and again.

Wizards, it is getting harder and harder to disbelieve the conspiracy theorists.

Years ago, Wizards used to introduce throwback queues around the holidays. We could draft old formats again. But back then, Wizards offered those queues a little differently. They offered something called NIX TIX drafts. That meant that you could draft the old formats without paying anything more than the cost of the product: in other words, for three packs, or 12 TIX.

This time around the events are not NIX TIX. The events are not even full cost: they are MORE expensive than regular drafts. The triple Innistrad drafts will be 3 packs plus 3 TIX, or 15 TIX.

Sure, triple Innistrad was a decent format, and it might be interesting to try it again, especially if I have some spare packs around. But I cannot imagine paying a premium for the experience.

I crunched some numbers. The average value of the cards in an Innistrad pack is $1.30. Opening money is a huge lottery: the only cards worth more than the price of a pack are Snapcaster Mage, Garruk Relentless, Olivia, Past in Flames, Geist of Saint Traft and Liliana of the Veil. All but one of those are Mythics. The resale value of the packs is not all that good, either. But we are paying 15 TIX per draft, for this?

What really makes it worse is that players are already wondering whether the elimination of all Daily events is really because of instability, or because Wizards is just trying to kill the events with a high EV. Players are already complaining that Wizards is just going for the cash grabs.

And with all this going on, Wizards introduces flashback drafts with a higher price than any other drafts. It takes a whole lot of stupidity to explain away this as anything but Wizards needing to add some revenue to offset the losses from eliminating DEs and PEs. And, of course, Wizards introduced the drafts with no explanation, and nothing about their future. If they don’t fire this week, will they be gone next week, like the Swiss constructed queues? If they stay, what format will we see next week? Will Wizards mix in sealed queues?

Wizards doesn’t answer any of these questions.

I was going to talk about what Wizards could do as a thank you for not abandoning the mess that MTGO is at the moment, but it is clear that we are far, far from that point. Wizards is not even close to working on keeping customers happy – they are still desperately trying to preserve their MTGO revenue stream. However, it looks like 3 TIX Innistrad drafts are firing maybe twice an hour, so that approach might be backfiring.

I want to add some suggestions on making players overall happier, but first I make a few suggestions for making the flashback drafts work.

First, let us know what to expect. We found out that we could do Innistrad drafts a day before the queues went live. I suspect that is because the MTGO folks are scrambling to fill the holes after the sudden elimination of big events, etc. Okay, we know about the flashback queues now. So tell us what to expect – and not just by putting it in the blog the day before. My recommendation: announce the next two weeks of flashback, at the very least. Wizards, you had a poll on flashback options last time around – how about letting us vote, or at least nominate formats.

There are two main reasons for letting us know what is coming. First, some of us have to budget our resources. Actually, many of the people likely playing in these queues will have to budget their resources. At an extra TIX per draft in a format where the cards are not very valuable, the grinders are not going to find much EV, so these drafts will appeal mainly to the people who like the format. That’s fine, but those people will be hesitant to blow their budget on format X if format Y might be better. At least, that’s true for me. I don’t know for sure how much my experience is representative, but Wizards may. In any case, I cannot imagine that telling us what formats the flashback drafts will take for the next two weeks can cause any problems.

Here’s another reason to tell us – players may not be happy jumping into flashback drafts, especially expensive ones, cold. We probably don’t remember the details of the formats. We may remember enjoying it and the mechanics, and we might even remember some archetypes. We probably don’t remember the common combat tricks, the pick orders or what the build around commons and uncommons were. For example, Innistrad was not that long ago, but I’m not going to jump in until I have dug up an article on the Spider Spawning deck, and looked over the set a bit. That takes time, and unless I get some this weekend, I probably won’t be able to do so until the format is gone.

If I were Wizards, I would announce the formats, and tell players why the formats are great, in advance. If I ran the website, I would move Jon Loucks’ articles on interface design to Monday and run an article on next week’s draft format on Friday, so players could read it between rounds over the weekend. That might help to fire them up. If you wanted to build suspense, then announce the format on Friday – but that would at least give us the weekend to relearn the format.

The articles should be something more than just “Next Week: Draft Seventh Edition!” At the very least, reprint the best overview article on the format from the mothership. The format recap or “what we learned” articles would be at least something. They are already paid for, after all. Those articles are also what I would be looking for before I would enter a flashback draft, to give myself a fighting chance of not blowing my 15 TIX. Make it easy on us.

Actually, if I ran the website, I would not reprint old articles. I would get some really good players together and let them draft the format. It could be a special, invite-only, “employee only” draft that took place two weeks ahead of time. Have the players record the draft, and comment on their picks and games. Then take a couple of the best of these and post them. Yes, this takes time and effort, but draft videos are popular, and you learn a lot about the format watching them.

The trick is to get people who are good players, who know the formats, and who can do a good job of explaining the format and cards while drafting. If I ran the website for WotC, I would get LSV and Simon Goertzen for sure. Both have Pro Tour level experience in most of the formats, and are really skilled in presenting their drafts. I would also add Ryan Spain for any of the formats he drafted before being hired for Wizards, because the videos he made of those formats were amazing. Personally, I would not add Marshal Sutcliffe for any formats for which he hasn’t drafted a ton, since I question his picks in a new format, but that might just be me. Whatever – the point is to get a MTGO draft together a week or so in advance, and have some good players make videos that reintroduce players to the format. Then put an article with one or two draft walk-throughs, and some “best of” matches, up the Friday before the format goes live. That would build some excitement, and help get some players past their fear of entering the format cold.

That idea may or may not be feasible. I kinda suspect that people like LSV don’t make videos for free, or for a handful of store credit. I would, but I don’t have the draw that someone like LSV, or the knowledge of someone like Simon. More important, editing takes time and effort, so even if the MTGO crew did the video in house, it would cost something to get it on the website. WotC would have to compare the cost with the revenue from additional players entering the event. (That said, it would be fun to see a draft with the collection of Hall of Famers and ex-Pro Tour folks in the Pit – think Aaron Forsyth, David Humphreys, Mike Turian, Worth, Sam Stoddard, Gavin, plus Jon Loucks and Ryan Spain.)

Even if a draft is too expensive, an article with videos is not out of the question for many formats. If the format is fairly recent, then there are videos of drafts and matches from Pro Tours featuring the format. An article pulling together some of those could be produced cheaply, but still provide the excitement and overview. It’s just a question of whether Wizards wants to market the format, or not.

Let’s move on to other things Wizards can do, at very little immediate expense, to get us interested in playing MTGO again.

1) Convert all the old Warmarks in players’ events into Phantom Points: Many players, myself included, hate the fact that we have these untradeable, unusable things cluttering up our collections. Once upon a time, they had a place. Now, they don’t. Converting them to Phantom Points would get them out of our collections and give us a couple Phantom Points which might get us to actually try a phantom event.

2) Add Some High Value, low TIX Queues: Someone in the forums mentioned having Triple Urza’s Saga or Mercadian Masques queues. The formats have the highest value cards, but they are because they were not much fun from a limited standpoint. Still, adding a queue that cost packs plus one TIX might appeal to those of us who want to play the lottery. It might also get a few more Gaea’s Cradle, Show and Tell and Rishadan Ports into the card pool.

3) Grab Bag Drafts: This is something that has been popular at paper events. The TO puts one each of a variety of packs into a bag, and players grab packs at random. Generally, all the packs are different. MTGO could do the same thing by simply generating packs at random. I would probably play in a draft like that, especially if I could keep the cards. Imagine entering the draft, and your first pack is Visions. You get passed 14 cards from an MEDII Pack, then thirteen Avacyn Restored cards.

4) Publish Magic Online Personal Summaries again: Wizards used to send us periodic emails that at least showed they knew we were playing. It would list the packs we had won, our MOCS QPs, our player rewards points and so forth, and so forth. It would generally include a list, like the top 10 cards first picked by people winning 8-4s. Sometimes the numbers were screwed up, but it was at least something.

5) “We Hung In There” Points: If I were in charge of MTGO, and I could do nothing else, I would tell everyone that is still playing on MTGO that we were tracking that, and we would reward them someday. I would award points weekly, with one point for logging in, another for playing even casual matches, and more points for playing in events. The event point should not overwhelm the other points, so I would award 1 point for the first event, 2 points for playing in three events in the week, 3 point for playing in nine events, and 4 points for playing in ten or more. I might also award a point for buying something in the store. The points would eventually be used for something: a special avatar, Phantom Points, an entry into a Grab Bag draft, whatever. What that could be isn’t important now. What is important is that Wizards would be paying attention to who is sticking with them through the bad times, and will thank them when times get better.

If Wizards does just one of these, I would recommend #5. Unless, of course, the client cannot handle tracking this sort of stuff. If it cannot, they should fix that, first.

Cutting Edge Tech:

Standard: The biggest Standard tournament last weekend was the TCG Platinum event at HotSauce Games. The finals were played between two Esper control decks. Here’s the winner.

Modern, Pauper and Theros Block Constructed: Wizards did start printing the lists that won random 8 man events. I am still trying to figure out how to use that data. Until I do, not much to report.

Legacy: We had a Legacy GP last weekend. The breakout card was clearly True-Name Nemesis, a Commander card that is insane with equipment. The GP Top 8 had a variety of decks, but a lot of True-Name Nemesiseses. Coverage is : We had a Legacy GP last weekend. The breakout card was clearly True-Name Nemesis, a Commander card that is insane with equipment. The GP Top 8 had a variety of decks, but a lot of True-Name Nemesiseses. Coverage is here

Classic: Classic fired its last DE, at least this year, and did so in style. For the first time in a long time, two players (Montolio of : Classic fired its last DE, at least this year, and did so in style. For the first time in a long time, two players (Montolio of YSO and thewoof of Classic Showdown ) went undefeated. Both players were playing Shops builds but I want to feature the deck with 4 Memory Jar s.

Shopping for Memories

Card Prices:

MTGOTraders Bots, so check out mtgotradersbot, mtgotradersbot2, mtgotradersbot3, mtgotradersbot4, mtgotradersbot5, CardCaddy and CardWareHouse, as well as from Notes: All my prices come from MTGOTraders.com . For cards that are available in multiple sets, I am quoting the lower price. Thus, the price I’m quoting for Thoughtseize is generally the Theros price. In certain other cases (e.g Brainstorm) I will note which version I track. All these cards are generally available from theso check out mtgotradersbot, mtgotradersbot2, mtgotradersbot3, mtgotradersbot4, mtgotradersbot5, CardCaddy and CardWareHouse, as well as from the website directly. Now, on to prices.

Standard prices are down, but they have not crashed as hard as people had feared / predicted. The biggest losers are rares like Hero’s Downfall and Nykthos. That may be due to redemption holding the prices for mythics higher than they would otherwise be, but that’s not certain.

Modern prices did not crash as hard as Standard, and a number of cards are up from 2 weeks ago.

Pauper bounced around a bit but there is no sign of a big crash here.

Legacy and Classic were pretty silent this week. Natural Order went up, again, probably because a few well known players made videos with Legacy decks featuring the card, and because people had not yet heard that it will be a MOCS promo. As for the crash – it didn’t happen here.

The Good Stuff:

The Good Stuff starts with a list of the non-foil, non-premium cards on MTGO that cost more than $25 each. Force of Will is holding at a touch under $100 – as are several other chase cards. Rishadan Port has passed Force, and is over $100 each. The expensive stuff hasn’t been affected by the elimination of big events.

Card Rarity Set Price Lion's Eye Diamond R MI $ 157.72 Rishadan Port R MM $ 102.26 Force of Will R MED $ 99.76 Show and Tell R UZ $ 93.19 Misdirection R MM $ 79.52 Wasteland U TE $ 79.39 Tarmogoyf R FUT $ 71.55 Tarmogoyf M MMA $ 70.33 Gaea's Cradle R UZ $ 64.79 City of Traitors R EX $ 56.64 Liliana of the Veil M ISD $ 48.25 Underground Sea R ME2 $ 42.68 Natural Order R VI $ 42.33 Mox Opal M SOM $ 37.92 Sneak Attack R UZ $ 36.58 Vampiric Tutor R VI $ 36.41 Tundra R ME2 $ 33.25 Jace, the Mind Sculptor M WWK $ 33.24 Underground Sea R ME4 $ 33.20 Tundra R ME4 $ 32.34 Tropical Island R ME4 $ 32.28 Tropical Island R ME3 $ 32.22 Bayou R ME4 $ 31.80 Sphinx's Revelation M RTR $ 31.63 Karn Liberated M NPH $ 31.62 Bayou R ME3 $ 30.88 Jace, Architect of Thought M RTR $ 30.79 Tangle Wire R NE $ 30.08 Volcanic Island R ME4 $ 29.98 Flusterstorm R CMD $ 29.49 Volcanic Island R ME3 $ 29.39 Vindicate R AP $ 28.94 Vendilion Clique R MOR $ 28.19 Voice of Resurgence M DGM $ 28.09 Fulminator Mage R SHM $ 27.45 Vendilion Clique M MMA $ 27.41 Mana Drain R ME3 $ 26.69 Mishra's Workshop R ME4 $ 25.96 Polluted Delta R ONS $ 25.68 Mutavault R MOR $ 25.10

The big number is the retail price of a playset (4 copies) of every card available on MTGO. Assuming you bought the least expensive version available, the cost of owning a playset of every card on MTGO you can own is $24,310. That’s down about $300 from where we were before Wizards announced the elimination of PEs and DEs. The “great” crash is, for the most part, over.

Weekly Highlights:

I played in one actual sanctioned MTGO event this week: a Theros Swiss draft. I chose the format on the tried and tested “what is going to fire next” principle. I went 2-1, but I had to reboot the client twice. I’m not sure whether that was because my opponent was double queuing or because I got disconnected; I just rebooted when it showed my opponent as still having priority and doing nothing for more than five minutes. I suspect I was only actually disconnected once (based on time expired when I logged back on), but why should I not know. Isn’t this problem almost five years old?

PRJ

“one million words” on MTGO.