MTG: Arena

Vaclav

Vaclav

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Apparently Magic: The Gathering - Arena is the title of the "in development" MTG title that presumably is replacing Duels (and maybe MTGO) - they just announced that the official announcement including closed beta details and such is going to be released on Twitch on Sept 7th.

 
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ronne

ronne

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I wouldn't be surprised if it's some garbage tier battle arena game using "iconic" MTG planeswalkers are characters and has nothing to do with actual MTG.

I mean, I would fucking love a current-decade MTGO replacement, but their track record for digital products makes me feel like that just isn't happening.
 
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Kuro

Kuro

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So we're up to what, the 4th announcement of an announcement from Wizards on this garbage?

%age odds the next date will also be an announcement of an announcement date?
 
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SirJames

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I'm pretty sure it won't be replacing MTGO aka Magic Online (unless it's a reskin or a mashup of Duels + MTGO ). If they do anything detrimental to the MTGO economy lots of people would flip their shit.

They stated a while back that they wanted to ease players into the MTG world. That entry level experience was Duels of the Planeswalkers. With that going away, it's a good bet this is replacing it.

Still just a guess though.
 
Zaphid

Zaphid

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All they had to was re-release Duels with new cards every year or two and not milk it too hard. They couldn't even accomplish that. One price for x decks, AI and maybe multiplayer is what I'm looking for when it comes to Magic on PC, endless money sinks can go fuck itself.
 
Vaclav

Vaclav

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SirJames said:
I'm pretty sure it won't be replacing MTGO aka Magic Online (unless it's a reskin or a mashup of Duels + MTGO ). If they do anything detrimental to the MTGO economy lots of people would flip their shit.

They stated a while back that they wanted to ease players into the MTG world. That entry level experience was Duels of the Planeswalkers. With that going away, it's a good bet this is replacing it.

Still just a guess though.
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IMO There's a good chance its MTGO-related to some degree - around the same time they announced the Magic Digital Team or whatever the team is called they had completely redone the structure for the collection serverside from what was quoted on their forums. Nothing different user wise, but supposedly redone on their end. Meant nothing to me at the time - but with this announcement, it seems like it might be something to allow Duels 2.0 or whatever this is, to share collections. Because for people with a ton invested in MTGO that was a huge turn-off to Duels - and on the reverse side, it would remove the "cap" on how much they can earn per user that Duels had.

Duels was useless to them for generating much revenue - whereas it was initially intended to be a segway to get them interested in MTGO or RL MTG to continue milking more and more money from them - and it failed on the former in a spectacular fashion. (On the latter I'd imagine in garnered some success though, but hard to track)
 
ronne

ronne

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They need to do something about MTGO, as continuing as-is where they are relying on the super hardcore base for all their income there just can't continue forever.

Whether they will admit it or not they are competing with the likes of Hearthstone these days, and MTGO just isn't from the same universe. Hell, the Pokemon CCG blows it out of the water, and is actually relatively consumer friendly (physical packs come with codes for online packs) instead of charging MSRP for packs that literally no magic player has ever paid in physical in their entire lives.
 
Mr Creed

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I could rag about digital WotC products all day, but in the end they're successfully charging MSRP with a barebones shitty client that's always a decade behind actual online games. Gotta be like printing the money. Sure Hearthstone makes a magnitude more, but for a side project that they don't give attention MTGO is probably very profitable.
 
Vaclav

Vaclav

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Mr Creed said:
I could rag about digital WotC products all day, but in the end they're successfully charging MSRP with a barebones shitty client that's always a decade behind actual online games. Gotta be like printing the money. Sure Hearthstone makes a magnitude more, but for a side project that they don't give attention MTGO is probably very profitable.
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The Leaping Lizards era MTGO was amazing for the time - if they'd kept them, rather than trying to do stuff in house, I imagine they'd have the competition on their asses.
 
bleedat

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Be curious to see if this announcement has caused a change on MTGO prices. Might be time to invest some.
 
Leadsalad

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Lack of legacy cards and the over the top animations/sounds, meh. Problem is that the game is too complicated for our current breed of Hearthstone mechanics levels players unfortunately.

And they don't know if they'll be doing any 3+ game modes either yet if I recall.
 
Zaphid

Zaphid

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Leadsalad said:
Lack of legacy cards and the over the top animations/sounds, meh. Problem is that the game is too complicated for our current breed of Hearthstone mechanics levels players unfortunately.

And they don't know if they'll be doing any 3+ game modes either yet if I recall.
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It might not be the blockbuster success, but every LoL has Dota 2, every D3 has PoE, etc ... Although for cards games that might be Gwent already.
 
ronne

ronne

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This will be their premier format for standard/draft going forward. Light free to play mechanics, ability to buy packs still, etc.

MTGO will still get supported in terms of modern/legacy/vintage until it finally finishes dying a slow painful death.
 
Mist

Mist

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I doubt this ends up being anything more than an MTG-lite experience like Duels. Even building standard decks without the ability to trade seems hilariously untenable unless you can draft for a dollar or something, and if they let you draft for a dollar online they then risk canalizing paper cards and hurting stores.

Even with something like 'crafting' it still takes opening over a case of product to get a playset of rares, then try to craft the mythics?
 
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ronne

ronne

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It's gonna be physical tie-ins that drive it. Win promo codes for online packs at FNM, get a free sealed run online for playing pre-releases, etc etc.

I doubt they'll go as far to do the Pokemon thing where each pack has a code for an online pack, but who knows? It's 2017 and maybe they've finally decided to get with the times.
 
Kuro

Kuro

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As long as we get real tournament modes and daily queues, I'm happy.
 
Vaclav

Vaclav

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Nearly exactly what I was anticipating it to be. I do expect them to plan for it to be MTGO proper eventually once MTGO can be sunsetted contrary to their statement though.
 
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