[GoT]

MAGIC THE GATHERING ONLINE

and

MAGIC WORKSTATION

Gday,

I'd like to do a fairly in-depth rating of both Magic: The Gathering Online the official wizards of the coast program and Magic Workstation, the unofficial collector card players software by Magi-Soft Development.

MAGIC ONLINE

Wizards of the coast, in their infinite wisdom, created Magic online and it went live online in June 2002. I was there for the launch and got into it straight away. The thing that amazed me at first was that all of the cards you get on Magic Online you have to purchse with Magic online TICKETS. TICKETS are worth $1 US each. Since there's no set value of cards online the worth of cards comes purely from players. The most important rares are sold at MUCH higher prices than the less important ones. Even some Uncommons and commons can be sold at higher prices than basic rares due to the demand for these cards.

Standard constructed decks are usually fairly cheap to buy and if you sell it to make a new one months later you can usually make a profit.. if you have patience to sell the cards slowly bit by bit. Bots are also available from 3rd party websites that you can set up to have your Magic Online Account Auto-trading cards for you whilst you're out of the house.

Magic online in general is a great game. The graphics are fairly nice, with plenty of bright colors and clear pictures. The avatar rooms are interesting with all sorts of avatars seen to be playing against each other at little tables. When you want a game, you simply sit down at one of the tables with your deck and start playing that opponent. There are no Bots to play against in Magic Onine, its all real players with real cards they've purchased or traded for.



When you build decks you simply pull cards out of folders into a deck building window like this.:



One of the best parts of Magic online is how easy it is to get a game and the playing rooms are divided up so that new players can play together, moderate leve players together and the serious hardcore freaks can test their immaculate expensive decks together also. For example, a serious player might be testing for a big real life tournament coming up and dosn't want little 6 year old Johnny with his deck of crappy commons coming to play because its just going to waste time and upset Johnny who will wonder why he's never winning. So sticking to the appropriate room is important. You'll find serious players lack patience and will just /quit if they come up against someone not of their level. Also Magic online has an AUTO STACK system. Which, without going into too much depth means that all game mechanics happen automatically when you activate them and you get prompted about what to do next. Althought this is a great feature some players believe that this makes one lazy and causes mistakes in real life where there is no such luxury.

As you can see in this picture, there is a red burn spell being played to destroy one of my black creatures in play. You can see who owns the red spell, read what its doing, and see from an arrow what it's targeting. Quite handy.



In another shot here you can see that my opponent is all "tapped out" meaning that he exhausted all of his cards in his last turn and so now i can attack through without worrying about being blocked. I've also played a "Pithing Needle" which is stopping his black rat creature from using its activated ability which removes my cards from the game.



In general i would reccomend Magic online to anyone looking to start playing magic, but with caution. DONT go buying a heap of cards off the people advertising in the game. Most of them are actual real life shops making a living off magic online. Although they have everything you'll need for sale their prices are usually quite stupidly high and not worth wasting time on. Choose your own buying prices a bit lower then theirs and advertise yourself that you want to buy them. The best thing to enter tournament wise online when u first start is a league. A league is a 4 week tournament that you can play as much or as little as you like. But don't be dismayed. If you dont want to play tournaments, casual gaming on the server is free.

It does get expensive but its worth it because its such a fun game. You can also take it ultra serious if you wish. Making room for both casual and serious gamers alike.. unlike MOST MMO's out there which only accomodate serious gamers and waste casual gamers time. If you create an account feel free to message me in these forums so that i can add you to the Magic online friends list. then i can help you out and get you started.

If you don't want to spend any money at all however or don't even have a credit card then Magic Workstation MAY be for you... but read on to find out!

MAGIC WORKSTATION



Magic workstation is 100% free unless you CHOOSE to pay for it. You can download it for free and download its required extras and install it all in a matter of minutes. You can also play magic sets on it that arn't even out on Magic Online, making it great for testing out new decks before you go to real life tournaments if Magic ONline hasn't been updated at the time.

BUT.

This isn't official. Theres no help with the program from its creators unless you pay their registration fee for which you are offered technical assistance and online Avatar and background changing options. thats about it. you can also create your own cards and use them if you like. NONE of the cards cost money and you have every single magic card ever made at your disposal. There is no artwork on the cards unless you go to the trouble of installing art packs. There is no automatic stack infact the entire game is 100% manual. Everything you do in it is done manually like a real game of magic with paper cards. This will influence non-serious players to give up QUICKLY but serious players love it because 99% of the players are serious like themselves. SO they dont have to worry about little johnny coming along with his crap commons because 1. little jonny dosnt know how to install workstation or dosnt know it exists and 2. little johnny could build a deck of kick ass rares if he wanted to. Which brings us to deck building.



Although slightly confusing at first the system is pretty common with a lot of other computer programs you'll use out there with the arrows used to move cards from the main card pool to the deck. ONce you've worked out whats what it'll only take you 5 minutes to make and save a deck. you just type the name of the card you want in the left and drag it into the right. Once you've created the deck and saved it you can then progress to a small text box where you can join other players for a match. Most of them will have joining instructions like: Pros only, but if you're sufficiently quick they wont notice you're not a pro and will keep playing. there are errors from time to time and problems with firewalls that exist but once you work your way around it all you'll like workstation a lot more due to the FREE factor and the fact that you dont have to wait for new sets to come on anymore, you can play them all straightaway and you have EVERY card!!

BUT

there are no prizes, there are no chances to win awesome trips to Europe or the US or wherever that wizards offer from time to time. There are no rising card prices allowing you to CASH IN big time once you get sick of it. There are no admins running around policing the place, there is no swear filter, there are no avatars and backgrounds unless you pay and no swish sound effects or animations. Remember.. this is the FREE version.. you get what you pay for.


My personal opinion: I test decks thouroughly on Magic Workstation. Once i am happy that im winning about 80% of games i buy the cards for real on Magic Online. Then i enter tournaments and attempt to make a profit.. which works like this: Entry fee 6 tickets. First prize after only 3 rounds of playing if you win is 4 boosters. You'll sell them for 12 - 13 tickets to someone who needs it. You can now re-enter for free and have made about 6 or 7 tickets profit. Tickets can now be sold on Paypal Thru a magic online feature.. nice... obviously this isn't fool proof. Make mistakes and bad draws will mean you loose, and get either less prizes or no prizes. So.. if you rate your chances go for it but practice plenty first.

Ratings for gamers in general: Magic online 7/10 Workstation 6/10

Well, this was a fairly long winded review.. hopefully you've gained some valuable information on what type of Magic to play. If you're not sure about either then go to your local Magic Store or Game Store and start playing in real life. At least then you can learn from real players before venturing into the online world.

Good luck and Have fun.

GoT

[UPtimist]

I've played all, but I rather use Apprentice than MWS. Maybe it's just loyality... Not that Apprentice would be inferior, well, in my opinion. I guess both have their better points...

Anyways, I've waited for your MtG Online review (though you actually talked about reviewing v.3 when it comes out). A bit narrow on some matters, perhaps, but it's not like this is supposed to be an official game review I guess I could add that MtG Online has a free trial that you can play with pre-constructed decks, and it has a teaching tool too, I think. Since I haven't had an account since the original version was beta (and free, oh the days (I mean cards were free, this doesn't have any costs other than buying cards and such)), I like to play that every once in a while for fun, when I can't play with anyone else

[GoT]

Ah yeah thanks dude

um.. i actually submitted the maximum number of characters allowed for a thread post. I had a MUCH more in depth look at magic online vs workstation (the two most popular online versions) but i had to edit heaps out.

Hopefully a lot more people start playing soon as the latest set Timespiral is so fantastic that its convinced me to go to a real life booster draft again tommorow for the first time in over a year and a half.

I did want to do a V3.0 write up but i think my first review is important because people will be introduced to it before v3.0 come out and then they'll understand the review more...

cheers

[lostwolfe]

i /can't/ vote in the polls as i use another option entirely [though it's a bit convoluted]

i've been - for the last year and a bit - playing through a thing called "generic collectible card game." essentially, it's a linux based affair that lets you use virtual money to collect virtual cards. in this way, i have the "economy" of a real life magic environment and the added bonus of having access to all of the cards. well, most, since they don't implement foiled cards/alternate foiled cards and so on.

our playerbase is [naturally] somewhat small - and mostly "good" players [by which i mean that in the kamigawa/ravnica type two environment, nearly everyone was running some variant of guys and jitte.]

i'm not fond of that sort of thing, [i'm more johnny and less spike] but i put up with it because i miss the habit of buying cards.

apart from that [and a little thread hijackery] - but is anyone paying attention to the "world of warcraft" collectible card game? i've been thinking about getting into that in a half-hearted kind of way - if i could find someone implementing it on computer, that would [clearly] be better, but i'm not sure that'll happen for some time - and so far, upperdeck entertainment [the people responsible for doing the "versus" system and others] seem to be somewhat loathe to go digital. ah well. i suppose it would then directly compete with "world of warcraft" itself for revenue.

in any event - and all the rest aside - nice review and thanks for looking into that.

[GoT]

Thanks so much for the words of wisdom. Its always good when you're using something more obscure and less known that you will know that the majority of players will be good players (like workstation). I'm unsure if workstation works on linux but im certain it would you should try it. I'm currently playing Timespiral Type II on workstation testing for states which is coming up soon. Its great because magic online wont have TS for quite a while yet and states will be well over by then. So all of the series players are testing decks for states right now on workstation and im assuming - apprentice.

As for other card games i've tried a few over the years - star wars (deciphers), vs, teenage mutant ninja turtles and simpsons and apart from simpsons which is supposed to be a bit of a fun drinking game, the others dont campare as far as series card games go. vs obviously is popular but thats mainly because they've got high money for their pro tours and people pretty much play for that reason OR because its about mainstream popular super heros. i've just found that magic has the best game base to it, its more for adults than children and thus has more complicated combos you can pull off if you know what you're doing and you have to understand it all to even play against these combos.

magic has a new 13+ rating world wide i believe also, so they're definetly aiming at adults now and young teenagers who will hopefully play magic thru all their teen years and continue on to the pro circuit.

I'd love to break into the pro circuit but the truth of the matter is that my uni studies along with work and other commitments wont allow me to become a serious player. perhaps one day when my life is more routine, like when i finish my degree.

anyhow, thanks for the words of wisdom, let me know how you go with the warcraft ccg and you should do a full report on "generic collectible card game" so that we all know more about it.

cheers,

GoT

[GoT]

Due out VERY soon on magic online (already available for Workstation) is the unbelievably good new set called TIME SPIRAL or TS for short. LOTS of old players have returned from the depths of WoW and other games they've sunk into to play magic again due to this set which is said to be the "best set since Onslaught" which is a pretty big call because theres been quite a few sets since then. But im one of the people saying that. i've played my first real magic tournaments in more than a year recently due to TS and im looking foward to 2 big TS constructed events this weekend, one of which is STATES (the state championships, currently being held all around the world).

If you've ever played MODO then now is the time to start again, TS will be online soon and its set to be VERY VERY draftable

GoT

[BuGz]

Played the Microprose game 10 years ago?! it was fun for a while...

[GoT]

yeah i definetly played that game. Was it the one where you could walk around a landscape as a small dude and then walk up to people and challenge them with a deck you'd made? it was a single player game but u could dial-in to someone else with a modem and play against them which hardly anyone would have done back then.

there was also magic battlegrounds more recently, a mortal combat style game designed in a "magic" way. It was really well planned and designed, contained all real creatures from the cards game and was extrememly difficult. I had hours of fun playing that but quit when i got into the higher levels as it got really really really fkn hard.

MORE recently, Timespiral has been released on magic online and magic workstation and its giong absolutely NUTS on magic online right now. Its the most popular set EVER on magic online and probably one of the most popular ever (at least since the urzas block) in real life.

Anyway, thanks for the comment, you bought back some old memories.

GoT

[GoT]

Just a memo here; the next version of magic online will be coming out fairly soon, its been delayed for a long time but the release looks imminent... once its out i'll do another review to give everyone the heads up on what the new version is like