An Imploding Economy
Economics forum
Posted on July 25, 2015, 9:14 a.m. by CanadianShinobi
For those of you who are unaware the economy on MTGO is teetering on a very fine edge right now. In fact, the economy has been in steady decline since the release of Gatecrash because Wizards decided to raise the price of redeeming sets from a $5 fee, to a $25. The short and sweet answer is that less sets are being redeemed and the market has become flooded with boosters and cards, which has devalued everything. Wizards solution to this, was... inelegant, to say the least. But, I am going to provide two links to articles which offer a little more insight than I can give. You can find them here and here.
Now, to most of you who do not play online this really isn't a problem, but for players like me, that small minority who only have access to Magic through MTGO this is something of an issue. It further highlights another aspect of Wizards mismanaging something. I mean, to say that, their solution benefits the company at the expense of the players, which is rather unfortunate if they wish to maintain their presence as an online client. However, I believe it to be beneficial to discuss this issue.
Because this relates to both economics and online play I will leave it up to the discretion of Epochalyptik or ChiefBell to move this thread if they believe it requires moving.
This thread was moved to a more appropriate forum (auto-generated comment)
July 25, 2015 9:21 a.m.
VampireArmy says... #4
Yeah honestly getting just a tad fed up with the greed. I was seriously going to give mtgo a shot recently until i heard about this.
July 25, 2015 10:13 a.m.
Named_Tawyny says... #5
Surely the MTGO economy declining actually makes it BETTER for online players, no? If you can get the 'cards' you need more cheaply, that means more decks you can build.
July 25, 2015 11:04 a.m.
VampireArmy says... #6
The problem i was seeing is the new play points (or whatever they were called) they're essentially monopoly money and make competition more or less useless as an investment
July 25, 2015 11:10 a.m.
Named_Tawyny: It also means less people are playing, which is where I think the problem lies.
Not to mention now that the redemption fee is so high, non americans have to pay import taxes ad expensive shipments on the sets, it's actually cheaper to just order the sets from retailers.
July 25, 2015 11:15 a.m.
JakeHarlow says... #8
My goodness. Wizards is really starting to suck as a company. First they start to cut corners with print quality in paper magic (remember MMA2? Or maybe you've busted some DTK packs with damaged cards lately; I know I have), now this?
It's a litany of statements that say one thing: "we don't care about our customers." I may stop patronizing the company on principle alone. Their mismanagement of the game and refusal to implement reasonable solutions, or even enforce quality control, is appalling.
July 25, 2015 12:03 p.m.
CanadianShinobi says... #9
Named_Tawyny cheaper prices are generally fine, but even at the best of times MTGO prices are not par to most of its paper counterpart. The very large problem right now is that the MTGO is dwindling and no one is playing. Not even three months ago I could fire up a game of Commander within 5-10minutes depending on how many I wanted to play with. Last night I was waiting for half an hour to start just a 4 player game.
July 25, 2015 4:41 p.m.
alanwescoat says... #10
Wizards of the Coast is double dipping. While it does cost for programming and server maintenance, they are collecting $4 per pack for cards which do not exist, then actually profiting again on the redeemed product, most of which does not get redeemed. I for one am thrilled that fans have responded b abandoning the game. WotC is responding with Magic Duels in a free-to-play scheme. We will see how that goes.
ChiefBell says... #2
Maybe more about economics than online magic? I'm just going with my gut feeling on this one.
July 25, 2015 9:20 a.m.