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tegyriusFirst impression: Magic: The Gathering Online has potential. I don't think the social aspect of face-to-face CCG-and-bull sessions is available in a chat sidebar, but the deckbuilding, strategy, and collecting aspects seem to be replicated pretty well.
Orientation
I did a fair amount of poking at the WotC forums before I decided to buy in (yesterday's post actually was composed on Saturday and simmered for a while, so this wasn't as much of a two-hour impulse action as it may appear). Like any online fan community, it's full of people bitching about corporate strategy and priorities and game minutiae. Ignore that if you can. The New Player FAQ and General FAQ provide fairly good orientation, though some intuiting of context is necessary.
Tech
As I noted in my last post, MtGO uses a Windows-only client. The system requirements are quite low for 2011: Windows 2k, a 700 MHz Pentium III, 256 MB RAM, and 1024x768 resolution. I'm playing it on my MacBook, so I'm running it in a VMWare Fusion/Windows XP virtual machine that far exceeds those. I suspect more screen real estate would be good, as I'm feeling a little cramped in 1280x800.
Having said this, the result of being able to run it on low-end machines is that MtGO is a card game on the screen. There's not a lot of animation, I'm not moving and stabbing and fireballing in three dimensions, and play moves at the speed of clicks and selections. The effect might be better if I was running the client natively with a blazing fast graphics accelerator, so take this with a grain of salt.
One tech gripe so far: you have to be connected to the servers to do anything. That includes viewing your cards or running the deck builder - although your decks are stored locally, you can't do anything with them while you're offline.
Also, be warned that the client does not appear to be well-documented. If you're like me and enjoy tinkering with a new user interface, you'll probably be okay. If you're the kind of user who needs a step-by-step guide to new systems, particularly if you haven't played "paper" Magic, you may want to seek out a fan-created tutorial or three. There are a lot of somewhat-hidden controls and keyboard shortcuts, such as Control-Shift to get a zoomed-in view of the card that's currently under your mouse pointer.
What You Get
The initial buy-in to MtGO is $10 (there apparently is a limited-function free trial, but I skipped that... hey, ten bucks). There are no subscription fees, as WotC seems intent on making money through selling virtual cards and event tickets (more on that in a bit). For that medium pizza equivalence, you get several hundred online cards. These break down as:
• 300+ from the most recent edition of the core game (currently "Magic 2011," roughly the 11th editon)
• 1 unopened 15-card booster pack from the most recent edition
• 5 "Vanguard" cards that serve as your default set of player avatars and, in Vanguard-type games, can be played to slightly alter the game's core mechanics
• 490 from the Planeswalker set
The client includes a fairly robust trading system, and several vendors run trading bots that offer free common cards (presumably as advertising), so it is possible to increase your stake immediately.
I'm still fiddling with the deckbuilding system and, of course, actual gameplay. I'll try to cover those in the next day or two.
Orientation
I did a fair amount of poking at the WotC forums before I decided to buy in (yesterday's post actually was composed on Saturday and simmered for a while, so this wasn't as much of a two-hour impulse action as it may appear). Like any online fan community, it's full of people bitching about corporate strategy and priorities and game minutiae. Ignore that if you can. The New Player FAQ and General FAQ provide fairly good orientation, though some intuiting of context is necessary.
Tech
As I noted in my last post, MtGO uses a Windows-only client. The system requirements are quite low for 2011: Windows 2k, a 700 MHz Pentium III, 256 MB RAM, and 1024x768 resolution. I'm playing it on my MacBook, so I'm running it in a VMWare Fusion/Windows XP virtual machine that far exceeds those. I suspect more screen real estate would be good, as I'm feeling a little cramped in 1280x800.
Having said this, the result of being able to run it on low-end machines is that MtGO is a card game on the screen. There's not a lot of animation, I'm not moving and stabbing and fireballing in three dimensions, and play moves at the speed of clicks and selections. The effect might be better if I was running the client natively with a blazing fast graphics accelerator, so take this with a grain of salt.
One tech gripe so far: you have to be connected to the servers to do anything. That includes viewing your cards or running the deck builder - although your decks are stored locally, you can't do anything with them while you're offline.
Also, be warned that the client does not appear to be well-documented. If you're like me and enjoy tinkering with a new user interface, you'll probably be okay. If you're the kind of user who needs a step-by-step guide to new systems, particularly if you haven't played "paper" Magic, you may want to seek out a fan-created tutorial or three. There are a lot of somewhat-hidden controls and keyboard shortcuts, such as Control-Shift to get a zoomed-in view of the card that's currently under your mouse pointer.
What You Get
The initial buy-in to MtGO is $10 (there apparently is a limited-function free trial, but I skipped that... hey, ten bucks). There are no subscription fees, as WotC seems intent on making money through selling virtual cards and event tickets (more on that in a bit). For that medium pizza equivalence, you get several hundred online cards. These break down as:
• 300+ from the most recent edition of the core game (currently "Magic 2011," roughly the 11th editon)
• 1 unopened 15-card booster pack from the most recent edition
• 5 "Vanguard" cards that serve as your default set of player avatars and, in Vanguard-type games, can be played to slightly alter the game's core mechanics
• 490 from the Planeswalker set
The client includes a fairly robust trading system, and several vendors run trading bots that offer free common cards (presumably as advertising), so it is possible to increase your stake immediately.
I'm still fiddling with the deckbuilding system and, of course, actual gameplay. I'll try to cover those in the next day or two.
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no subject
Date: 2011-02-18 07:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-18 10:28 pm (UTC)