Magic: The Gathering Online is a video game adaptation of Magic: The Gathering, utilizing the concept of a virtual economy to preserve the collectible aspect of the card game. It is played through an Internet service operated by Wizards of the Coast, which went live on June 24, 2002. The game does not run on mobile (iOS or Android) as Magic: the Gathering Arena does, since it is only available for Microsoft Windows. Users can play the game or trade cards with other users.
As of February 2007, Magic Online has over 300,000 registered accounts; this does not represent the true number of players since people are allowed to register multiple accounts. According to Worth Wollpert in 2007, Magic Online was "somewhere between 30% to 50% of the total Magic business." In December 2021, Wizards of the Coast entered into a "long-term" licensing agreement to transfer development, operations, and publishing of Magic Online to Daybreak Games.
Gameplay
Magic Online is played as an electronic analogue to the physical card game. Digital artwork reproduces the look of the paper card game, and users interact with their cards to play with them on a virtual tabletop. Each game is hosted by the Magic Online servers, which apply a rules engine to enforce proper play. Though the rules set as a whole is largely accurate and works well, it occasionally suffers from bugs.
Players can set up or join casual games of their choice for free in several rooms within the Constructed Open Play area. Currently, the casual game rooms are as follows: Just Starting Out, a room for players who are new to the game and are not looking for a tough duel. Games in this room are limited to the Standard format to restrict the power of the cards being used. Just For Fun, a room designed for players to play fun, casual decks against one another. This is the most populated room and has no restrictions on what format a player can host a game in. Getting Serious, this room is provided as a step up from the Just For Fun room, but it is usually unoccupied. Tournament Practice is the most competitive room in the Constructed Open Play area, it is where the most serious players go to test their best decks before entering them into a Constructed event.
In addition to free casual play, official competitive tournaments take place around the clock. Tournament play includes 8-person constructed events (in a variety of formats), limited sealed deck and drafts (generally using the most recently released expansions), as well as larger tournaments that take place according to a regular schedule. Entering events requires an investment of sealed packs and/or event tickets, with winners being rewarded with additional product.MTGO Events & Formats. (n.d.). Retrieved June 20, 2020, from [https://web.archive.org/web/20190721213850/https://magic.wizards.com/en/mtgo/events Wizards.com]
Up until Version 3, League play was another method of competitive play. These month-long events were sealed deck tournaments of 256 players that allowed for intermittent play over a period of 4 weeks at the pace the player desired. After 6 years, leagues returned in February 2016. Initially they were only available for the sealed limited format. Leagues last two months, and in that time window a player can usually play between 5 and 9 matches. Once a player finishes playing their league matches, prizes are awarded and they can rejoin the league if they want. Currently, leagues are available in a variety of formats, including Standard, Modern, Legacy and Limited Sealed. Sealed leagues also offer "Friendly" and "Competitive" alternatives with different prize structures. The Competitive Sealed League lasts for 5 matches and typically features higher skilled players due to the top-heavy prize structure - winning all or most of your rounds provides a lucrative prize, with the downside of no prizes being offered to those who win less than 60% of their matches. The Friendly Sealed League lasts for a total of 9 matches and caters to a larger portion of the player base and offers prizes regardless of number of matches won. In addition, after each "stage" of 3 matches, the player has the option to add a booster pack to their deck to make it stronger for the next stage (either by using one from their inventory or purchasing one within the sealed tournament window).
Development
Leaping Lizard Software (LLS) had just completed a software product Magic Interactive Encyclopedia designed to allow Magic players to track which cards they owned and other cards that had been printed to help with online play. LLS initially approached Wizards of the Coast with an offer to create an online version of Magic: The Gathering. WotC was skeptical about whether such a system could be implemented. LLS then created a tech demo to prove to WotC that an online collectible card game could work. WotC was sufficiently convinced and contracted LLS to develop the service, which was then known as Magic Online with Digital Objects (MODO). Initially, the idea of charging for virtual goods, as opposed to a subscription model with unlimited access, was greeted with skepticism. Additionally, concerns were floated over how solid the server and trading code would be. After a period of beta-testing, the game became available to the general public on June 24, 2002. The name was changed from MODO to its final commercial title: Magic: The Gathering Online. At the time of launch, Magic Online supported Magic cards from the 7th Edition onwards.
In 2003, the Magic: The Gathering Invitational was held online for the first time. It was played on Magic Online each year from then on until 2007 when the Invitational was moved back offline.
Version 2.0 Knowing that it was possible to translate Magic gameplay online through the work LLS had done, WotC started to work at redesigning the Magic Online client in 2003. Though they praised the "groundbreaking" work LLS had done, they opted to terminate their contract with them and bring the development in-house to be able to focus on the direction needed to improve the client for a global audience.
The first showing of the new team was to be the online release of 8th Edition in July 2003, which was ambitiously scheduled to coincide with the paper release. The goal was to release Version 2 of the software with new functionality and implement the changes in rules that the 8th Edition had brought. However, with the change from LLS to the internal developers along with the fixed deadline, a number of development issues arose that were not resolved by launch. Version 2 was released on schedule, but the servers constantly crashed, and rules mistakes and other bugs were numerous. The game went into no-pay mode while temporary beta servers were opened to allow players to practice playing in for-pay formats.
As a concession for these issues, Wizards planned to throw "Chuck's Virtual Party," a weekend of free tournaments after the problems settled down. Unfortunately, it turned out that each user took up more memory in version 2 than the lightweight design of version 1. The result was that the servers crashed again under the strain.
In retrospect, some have merely chalked the decision to remove Leaping Lizard up to hubris. Others, however, point to certain intractabilities in later maintenance that suggest that Leaping Lizard had not delivered a very extensible program that, by nature, was too monolithic and hard to improve. Wizards of the Coast has said that "Leaping Lizard's 2.5 interface and backend are not scalable like we need it to be. It wasn't written with the goal of ten thousand users in mind, it was written thinking a couple thousand." According to the developers, there was a hard limit of 4,400 players in version 2.5. Regardless, Wizards decided that version 2.0 was not worth supporting indefinitely. They decided to maintain version 2.0 in the background but to start a new development team to rebuild Magic Online from the ground up. The labors of this new project would be called Magic Online version 3, which was first announced in February 2004.
The version 2 platform was shut down on April 9, 2008, in preparation for the version 3 launch.
Version 3.0 Magic Online version 3, in addition to supporting a much larger player base through multiple servers, was also to feature an updated interface and expanded in-game guidance. The release date, originally planned in late 2006, slipped several times, but eventually passed through beta testing and was released to the public on April 22, 2008. Initial reactions to the Version 3 were critical of the new user interface layout, and players found the server structure was not as stable as expected.
A notable incident called "Kiblergate" took place in 2013 as WotC were preparing Version 4 of the client. As part of a Magic Online Championship Series played via the client, which came with a prize and invitation to the Magic: The Gathering World Championship, Brian Kibler had won enough games to advance into the final rounds of play regardless of whether he won or lost. However, before his last two games, he had lost connection to the Magic Online servers, and could not log back on in time. Because he was not present for these games, he was considered to have forfeit his spot and was disqualified. Kibler took to social media to complain and suggest other players delete Magic Online from their computers, which caused the average cost of Magic Online digital cards to fall 11% in one day and prompted WotC to move quicker with the transition to Version 4.
Version 4.0 Magic Online version 4 opened to the public in wide beta on September 4, 2012. Both version 3 and version 4 ran simultaneously, with players having an option to play on either platform, until June 26, 2014, when Version 3 was shuttered. On July 16, 2014, version 4 became the sole client for Magic: the Gathering Online.
Card sets available As of March 2014 with the release of Vintage Masters, almost all Cards that are tournament legal for at least one supported format are available. Most of the remaining tournament legal cards that are not printed are basically considered as tournament unworthy (such as cards that only trigger their ability during drafts). The earliest set available upon release was Invasion, which had been released in printed form in October 2000; all sets moving forward were made available online as well, with the exception of some self-parody expansions (Un-sets) and multiplayer sets (like Conspiracy). For the first 10 years of "Magic Online" sets released online three or four weeks after they released in paper in an effort to appease "brick & mortar" retailers. However, a policy of shortening this delay (to about two weeks) was instituted to allow professional players (who often use "Magic Online" for testing) to prepare for Pro Tour events (which usually happen two weeks after the release of a new set) and to "increase cohesion" between paper and online Magic. Wizards of the Coast has since released more pre-Invasion cards online. In autumn of 2005, Mirage was released online, nine years after its 1996 print release. This set was chosen as the earliest set usable on Magic Online because it was the first to be designed with both Limited and Constructed play in mind and the first to be intended as part of a three-set block. Additionally, Wizards unambiguously owns the rights to the artwork in Mirage block, and Mirage block contains no ante cards (unlike Ice Age and Homelands). It has been confirmed that the eventual goal of the developers was to have every expansion set from Mirage onward available online.Chat with Justin Ziran