Since this thread is about the commercial corruption of things, this comment is oddly appropriate. (I'll put this here for now, but I or another admin/mod will probably end up splitting the thread if it gets into a big tangent...)Chaos-Shaman wrote:it wasn't until MTG cards came out before we thought cards were worth playing again, there was mental strategy in the game, it is to me the best game ever invented beyond computers.
Magic itself is based on a really fun and infinitely extensible core mechanic. However, to be honest, I don't actually play it a lot; what I don't like is the whole metagame that seems like it has come up around the arms race of bigger, better, and rarer cards that keep coming out; it's no longer just about the strategy of building your deck, but the fact that some people just can't afford certain strategies. If you just play casually with friends you can get around all this, of course-- print your own proxies, use a computer program like Apprentice or Cockatrice, etc.-- but this feels sort of like it's diluting the fun of the original game, and, of course, in the "official" sphere WotC encourages a "pay to win" game to their economic benefit.
Their own online offering, Magic Online, even has the same "booster packs" approach, so now you're paying them to buy cards that don't even actually exist. To me this is absurd, but also not surprising. Virtual items are big business as anyone who knows about MMORPGs can tell you. In the 1990s there was a computer game for Magic that just gave you a bunch of the best cards that were available at the time and just let you build your deck with whatever you want. Good luck getting anything like that now!