Well, in case you haven't heard yet, Magic the Gathering: Online (MTGO) is dead. Why, you may ask? Wizards has finally announced the long-awaited pricing scheme for Magic Online. Is it a flat monthly fee? No; you get charged per pack. Well, are the packs at least reasonably priced, considering that the cards you're getting aren't real and don't cost Wizards a dime to print? Absolutely not. In fact, if you're an avid player who buys cards by the box, you'll be paying more to play Magic Online than you would in real life.

That's right: More. The link is here if you don't believe it, as I didn't. Way down at the bottom of the press release, almost as an afterthought, is the most important decision in MTGO's short history:"Cards will be offered at $3.29 for 15-card booster packs and $9.99 for 60-card theme decks, the same price as the physical cards."

So - when you can get a box of real packs from StarCity for 75 dollars, which comes out to $2.08 a pack, Wizards will give you the privilege of buying virtual packs for only $3.29 a piece. Given that Wizards pays nothing to print these cards and not much to keep the servers running and a maintenance staff employed, once the costs of development are made up, virtually every penny of that $3.29 will be pure profit for Wizards. If that doesn't reek of ugly, fat-slapping corporate greed, I don't know what does.

The response on message boards and on MTGO itself was immediate and overwhelming negative, as well it might be. Actually, I would say it was completely and utterly negative - but since I am not omniscient, there may have been one lonely person out there willing to let Wizards rob him blind.

Thus was a great program damned to hell.

Certainly, Magic Online is a wonderful program. It allows you to play Magic with people of all skill levels from all over the world at any time of day or night. Its interface is clean and intuitive, a marvel in itself given the complexity of Magic. Its rule enforcement system prevents cheating or simply incorrect play before it begins. But as they say, you can pay too much for anything - and full retail price is far, far too much.

One has to wonder at the reasoning (if any) behind this decision. By setting the price of a virtual booster the same as that of a real one, they are putting Magic in direct competition with real-life Magic. Since the serious player can get cards in real life for 33% less, it's a battle Magic has absolutely no hope of winning. Then throw in server crashes, database resets, or malicious hackers (similar things have happened with Blizzard's Battle.net), and things look even grimmer. Losing ten bucks in a draft because the server crashed isn't going to sit well with a lot of people. And, in the beta at least, the server crashes. A lot. Even if the server never crashes, the database is never altered or erased, and no one ever hacks the system, the fear of such things is real, and makes virtual cards worth less than their cardboard counterparts.

At this point is should be mentioned that Apprentice, with its clunky interface and inherently insecure design, will always be free, as will its companion, NetDraft. In addition, Apprentice gives you access to every card ever made, something Magic Online will never do, as they don't plan on supporting sets before Invasion, ever.

Given this staggeringly idiotic decision by Wizards, it's hard to see why anyone (barring the super rich) would even consider using Magic Online. My advice is to get in on the Beta test while you can, because the golden egg that is Magic Online will soon be crushed under the weight of Wizard's greed.

Shawn Forney
sdf130@psu.edu
Raeth28 on MTGO, Raeth on IRC