Magic Online

Magic Online

 

Prima's Official Strategy Guide

 

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Magic Online (abbreviated MOL, previously Magic: The Gathering Online, MTGO, or MODO) is an official means of playing Magic: The Gathering over the Internet. Wizards of the Coast launched it on June 24, 2002, with the release of the two-year-old Invasion set and has since added each new set to the game as well.

Description

Magic Online has slightly different formats than paper Magic. New types of formats introduced in Magic Online include the Pauper Deck Challenge.

Magic Online uses digital cards. They are sold in digital booster packs, just like physical packs in stores. Several Magic Online sets and cards are not available in paper Magic.

MTGO booster

Cards can also be obtained through treasure chests, which are prizes for events. While technically the amount of booster packs are infinite, the currency is not, and as such it develops an economy much like the paper card market. Only so many copies of any card are in circulation, and so singles command prices that are usually not as high as the peaks in real life but still can cost more than boosters. Supply is often done through trade bots, and naturally players can trade with each other.

Sets

All cards from core sets after Seventh Edition and expansions after Alliances are fully featured in Magic Online (This included cards in Reserved List, as the reprint policy does not apply in non-paper medium). For cards before that and some special sets after Magic Online's launch (like Conspiracy), they are featured in Magic Online exclusive sets or as a part of Treasure Chests instead.

Core sets and expansions are sold until the sets are rotated out from Standard within the game. The other sets are sold on a selected time basis (including, but not limited to, as a provided product via limited events).

Recent sets are usually released a week after the paper version's release. Starting from Amonkhet, however, released a week before the paper version's official release date (the same date of prerelease).

Online-only

The following sets are exclusive to Magic Online:

• Masters Edition
• Masters Edition II
• The “Enchantress Rubinia” and “Deathdancer Xira” Commander Theme Decks
• Masters Edition III
• The “Boltslinger” and “Exiler” decks of the short-lived Magic Online Deck Series
• Momir Basic Event Deck
• Masters Edition IV
• Vintage Masters
• Tempest Remastered
• Legendary Cube

Cards

The following cards are Magic Online-only:

• Gleemox: a promo card that was given away with the announcement of the Gleemax project. They were distributed on Magic Online by Gleemax. The card only exists on Magic Online. It doesn't show up on the Gatherer because it's not a real-world card.
• Library of Congress: a special card that R&D uses to quickly set up a game state.

Avatars

Avatars are graphical representations of the player's persona or character. Avatar cards were used in casual Vanguard format games. You would add one of them to your deck before playing, and at the start of the game, the avatar card from your deck would start in play for you and applied the modifications listed on it. Since Zendikar, rules text and starting hand size/life total modifiers for Vanguard avatars have been discontinued. However, players may continue to play the vanguard format with previously released avatars. Both old and new avatars can still be used to represent you in-game. Avatars show damage; they wear away to a skeleton as the owner loses life points.

DCI-sanctioned tournaments

Magic online holds DCI sanctioned formats. Some of these are only sanctioned on Magic Online.

• Modern: all sets and cards from Eighth Edition and Mirrodin are allowed. The format was subsequently officially codified two months after its introduction.
• Freeform: all sets and cards are allowed. Regular deckbuilding rules are relaxed.
• Classic: all sets and cards are allowed. Normal deckbuilding rules do apply. Was retired in June 2014 after the introduction of Vintage.
• Pauper: all cards that have been printed as common at least once are allowed.
• Prismatic: each deck must contain at least 250 cards, including at least 20 cards of each color. Was retired in February 2014.
• Singleton: except for basic land cards, a player's combined deck and sideboard may not contain more than one of any individual card.
• Tribal Wars: emphasizes creature combat: one-third of every deck must be of a single creature type.
• Momir Basic: based on the “Momir Vig” Vanguard avatar.
• Cube Draft: played with an especially selected pool of cards.
• Constructed Leagues.
• Duel Commander
• Brawl

Magic Online Cube booster 2014

Community Cup

The Magic Online Community Cup is a yearly invitation-only tournament, first held in 2009, in which a group of Wizards of the Coast compete against a group of eight or twelve Magic players selected via a voting system in Magic Online.

Championship Series

The Magic Online Championship Series (MOCS) is a tournament series taking place on Magic Online. Each year, 16 players earn invitations via the MOCS to the Magic Online Championship, an event with a $200,000 prize purse and a (roughly) one-year period Platinum status special promotion (in paper play) to the winner.

Prizes

In 2015, By far the largest change to Magic Online event structures was the introduction of Play Points, the conversion of most Constructed events to award Play Points as the primary prizes, and the acceptance of Play Points in most events (both Constructed and Limited). Wizards of the Coast made these changes to move away from awarding prizes entirely in boosters, which were mainly of interest to Limited players, primarily to allow Constructed players to more easily use their prizes to rejoin Constructed events.

Event tickets

Magic Online's economy's primary currency is the event ticket. Event tickets, or "tix" as they are commonly known, have only one official in-game use—paying part or all of an event's entry fee. However, trading bots (computer programs that exist to perform specific actions) typically operate on a credit system—if you buy or sell cards for fractions of an event ticket, they will save your credits for the next time you trade with a bot using that same credit system.

MOPR

MOPR Booster

The Magic: The Gathering Online Player Rewards program (MOPR, ) offers players the chance to earn digital promo cards for their monthly Magic Online activity. These include both standard non-foil versions, as well as premium foil versions.This activity includes playing in tournaments of sufficient size, as well as making purchases in the Magic Online Store. Starting August 30, 2017, instead of awarding promo cards directly, the program awards Player Rewards Packs that could be either traded or opened. They contain a single promo card. Some of these also appear in Treasure Chests, and may feature new art.

So far, more than a thousand promos have been released online.

Issues and controversies

Invasion block shortage

As Invasion block was one of the first sets released on Magic Online, cards of the block are in short supply as the user base was very small at the time.

Judgment spoiler

Due to a mistake, the entirety of Judgment was spoiled via Magic Online when the set was released on the software too early. This led to the release of sets on Magic Online to be several weeks after the release of the physical product. Since Amonkhet, sets are released and become tournament-legal on Magic Online simultaneously when the prerelease event of the physical counterpart has launched.

Instability and suspension of premier events

In November 2013, after suffering a tournament loss by experiencing technical issues on Magic Online, Hall of Fame member Brian Kibler aired his frustration in an article on Star City Games entitled "The Magic Online Championship Series should not exist". As this server instability and the inability to restore Magic Online Tournaments to certain states had been a longstanding issue, this led to the suspension of several types of high-profile types of events which have been slowly phased back in since.

As a response to the problem, the MOCS, along with Pro Tour qualifiers, and other Premier Events, was later suspended for almost half a year. During that time they dropped the older client and will use the new client which was launched in July 2014. The MOCS and Magic Online PTQs were not resumed until September before WotC set up a backup plan if similar cases happened again in the future. The suspended MOCS' seasonal make-up events during that Pro Tour season were played between October and December.

Bribery, prize splitting, and collusion

In August 2014, WotC issued bribery, prize splitting, and collusion guidelines that were included in the Magic Online User Agreement.

Magic Digital Next

Magic Digital Next (MDN) was Wizards' internal umbrella term for the entire landscape for Magic: The Gathering experiences around digital games. The WotC-designed game Magic: The Gathering Arena was developed under this new umbrella, succeeding Magic Duels. In September 2017, it was revealed that Magic Online and MTG Arena would exist independently. However, MTG Arena quickly gained in popularity, and the survival of MTG Online was brought into question. When Magic esports were introduced in 2019, it was based on MTG Arena, and Magic Online was not mentioned. Not long after, Wizards of the Coast stressed that the MTGO team was committed to providing a home for players who were looking for Magic experiences that MTG Arena couldn't provide, with a focus on Modern and the other non-rotating formats.

Daybreak Games

In December of 2021, it was announced that Daybreak Games, a global publisher and developer of multiplayer online games, would enter into a long-term license agreement with Wizards of the Coast to develop, provide live service and publish Magic: The Gathering Online.

Magic Online officially transferred from Wizards of the Coast's servers to Daybreak's servers on October 18, 2022. Henceforward, redemption sets for Standard-legal expansions are offered on a while-supplies-last basis only, and have a higher overall price.

External links

• Magic Online Official Site
• SaffronOlive (August 17, 2015). "The Complete History of Magic Online". mtggoldfish.com.
• Trick Jarrett (April 01, 2013). "Announcing MTGO Buddy!". magicthegathering.com. Wizards of the Coast. (April Fools)
• Trick Jarrett (June 12, 2013). "Magic Online Wide Beta Spotlight". magicthegathering.com. Wizards of the Coast.
• Gaby Spartz (April 6, 2016). "How to Get Started on Magic Online". magicthegathering.com. Wizards of the Coast.