World Magic Cup Qualifiers

[Dark Sphere]

As some of you are already aware we will be hosting one of the World Magic Cup Qualifiers on Saturday 14th April. The format is standard constructed and full information can be found at http://www.darksphere.co.uk/events/WMCQ.php

Best wishes,

The Dark Sphere Team

[Glenn Goldsworthy]

The strange thing is just recently they have decided on a lets save/make lots of money, I'm not sure they look at other games that way, other games steal a lot from magic but I don't think magic has ever looked at another game and gone "thats a sweet idea"

You are definately right though, promos and loot would definately work in magic and cost next to nothing

As an example my wow sealed deck at the weekend cost £25, I got 2 loots (only the cheap ones worth £5), winning I only got 5 boosters but I got 2 promos worth £80.  I wasn't that interested in getting loads of boosters as the promo's fill that gap nicely 

[Josh Tovell]

Hmmmmmm, if only there were some sort of system where you received promos based on the frequency of your play. Maybe you could even receive said promos in the post!

Dan Barrett said:

Perhaps they could give them away to players who play in many events?

(Yea, removing of a lot of promos they used to print is DEFINITELY stupid)

Also, why haven't they made WoW-esque "loot" cards with scratch-off panels giving you MODO product/surprises yet?

[Glenn Goldsworthy]

nice spot man, obv that cost far to much money, why reward people for playing the game when you clearly don't have to

Josh Tovell said:

Hmmmmmm, if only there were some sort of system where you received promos based on the frequency of your play. Maybe you could even receive said promos in the post!

Dan Barrett said:

Perhaps they could give them away to players who play in many events?

(Yea, removing of a lot of promos they used to print is DEFINITELY stupid)

Also, why haven't they made WoW-esque "loot" cards with scratch-off panels giving you MODO product/surprises yet?

[Dan Barrett]

Yea, imagine opening a loot card in a booster pack that gave you a free MODO draft, how sick would that be?!

(This would also encourage people who've never played the online game to try it out, so gain for WotC there)

[Josh Tovell]

Does Cryptozoic 'have' to give the winner of -whatever tournament you won- £80 of promos? Probably not, but it makes the player-base happy at a relatively low cost. While talking about EV in children's card games is generally -EV, it'd be pretty sweet if Wizards made most tournaments +EV to play in, and promos seems like an easy way to accomplish that. I think making tournaments profitable for the top-finishing 20-33% would incentivise a lot more people, myself included, to play more Magic (or at least not make it feel like such a monetary abyss). 

No argument that mailing promos was expensive, not to mention arduous for Wizards; satire and all that.

Also, stop giving boosters to 1-Xs. Seriously.

[Daniel Royde]

MPR was nice but did anybody really spend more on Magic as a result of it?
It's weird that they don't use promos more, they must have thought about it though, so I wonder what their reason is.

@Glen- I still take issue with your idea that you expect to play the game and make a profit. Do you have that expectation of any other leisure activity?

[Philip Dickinson]

i don't think glenn has an expectation of making a profit - i think he is trying to illustrate that the potential ROI of magic is very low right now. when the financial cost of playing increases and the possible financial return decreases you can understand why that would be considered a bad thing. 

as an aside i don't think that the comparison to other [noncompetitive] leisure activities is really an especially appropriate one - cinema tickets have increased in price over the last few years but the films themselves haven't got shorter etc

Daniel Royde said:

MPR was nice but did anybody really spend more on Magic as a result of it?
It's weird that they don't use promos more, they must have thought about it though, so I wonder what their reason is.

@Glen- I still take issue with your idea that you expect to play the game and make a profit. Do you have that expectation of any other leisure activity?

[Josh Tovell]

Agreedo. No one is realistically trying to grind a living from playing FNMs and PTQs, or claim to be profitable on Magic: the Gathering lifetime. However, knowing that your efforts are going to be particularly fruitful at times is a good feeling. Whereas very low ROI tournaments can make the game seem more like a huge time/money-sink. Obviously if the amount of fun and enjoyment you experienced whilst playing outweighed your time and monetary investment then great, but many people, myself and Glenn included, do not feel this way anymore.

[Dan Barrett]

Why are you talking ROI then? Nobody comes home with something they can sell on from a round of golf, day playing paintball/bowling, or a trip to the cinema, and if you use the cards enough you get a much better hourly rate - a draft compares very favourably with the cinema, at a similar cost for twice the length of time.

[Crispin Bateman]

If you don't fully enjoy the experience of PLAYING Magic, then you shouldn't be doing it. As Dan says, it is a leisure activity that you pay for, not that you expect ROI on. To EXPECT a return on your leisure activity is insane and something that Magic players somehow see as their right.

Magic is fun to play. It's a GAME. You pay to play in a tournament because a lot of people do a lot of work behind the scenes organising an event, sorting venues etc. and your money goes some small way to making it worth their time. You pay a bit more so that some of your money goes into a prize pool to make it have a bit of an edge, but that's all it should be; an edge. It isn't the reason you turn up, because the reason you turn up should always be that you want to play the game. If you don't turn up purely to play the game, then you shouldn't turn up. End of.

[Philip Dickinson]

get real dudes - if all prizes of every kind were removed but the game still cost hundreds of pounds just to play, would you still have the same enthusiasm? would you drop a couple hundred quid on a deck and another fifty on travel/entry to a PTQ if even coming 1st place won you literally nothing? would you do that multiple times a season "for funsies"?

you guys are misunderstanding "i do not feel that i get as much out of magic as what i put in anymore" as some kind of entitlement to a financial return. i do not have an expectation of "making money" or "breaking even" from magic because, as you say, magic is ultimately not about money for me. the position of people like me, josh and glenn is "the cost of playing this game has dramatically increased but my enjoyment of it has not"

[Philip Dickinson]

i really enjoy late romantic russian music, but if every concert hall in london decided to double their prices whilst making the programmes more limited, i would understandably go to these sorts of events much less.