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Boycott MTGO?

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After some server issues over the weekend, that's the latest idea being floated around by all those who hate Magic Online.

Pmxe196

"If you don't like it, Don't play it!" seems to be the newest rallying cry for all those who hate Magic Online.

Will this happen? Will anyone do it? Will Wizards care?

I don't know the answers to those questions, but I'm not sure boycotting is the right answer. As others have pointed out, taking more money out of the platform may not necessarily convince Hasbro/WotC to put more money into it. In reality, they may do the opposite since they don't see the money there. It's hard to say, especially when the unspoken assumption by everyone hating on the program is that the people working on it simply aren't good at what they do. The reality is that the people working on Magic Online care about the program and want to make it better. "Firing everyone" isn't the right option, and I wish that wasn't glossed over so much in these discussions.

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Corbin Hosler

Corbin Hosler is a journalist living in Norman, Oklahoma (also known as the hotbed of Magic). He started playing in Shadowmoor and chased the Pro Tour dream for a few years, culminating in a Star City Games Legacy Open finals appearance in 2011 before deciding to turn to trading and speculation full-time. He writes weekly at QuietSpeculation.com and biweekly for LegitMTG. He also cohosts Brainstorm Brewery, the only financial podcast on the net. He can best be reached @Chosler88 on Twitter.

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14 thoughts on “Boycott MTGO?

  1. …well complaining hasn’t worked…outspoken Pro’s haven’t work…the patches haven’t worked…yep its broke!

    My best estimate is WOTC/Hasbro won’t fix until they ‘have to’…which should be right around the time the MTG Movie is launched…until then I guess not much will change.

    1. This is the best answer. Putting more money into it won’t help, the client is unacceptable at the moment. WOTC has been told this by everyone from just “normal” players who spend hundreds of dollars on their game (paper and online) to hall of famers and pro players. Nothing has changed.

      So I mean, i’m not going to declare how righteous I am for not playing MTGO. But I’m not playing it because it’s a terrible product. I think that’s where most pros are at as well. They prefer not to play on it because it’s an awful experience all around. None of them are advocating a boycott, they just don’t really want to play it.

      That’s where I am.

  2. I’m not going to tell people to boycott, but I have personally decided to stop spending money on a program that doesn’t work. Bad value is bad value, and I won’t contribute to a company that refuses to respect my time and money.

  3. I dunno, I seem to be having the almost exact opposite playing experience of most of the people I’ve talked to. I haven’t had any events that I’ve paid to get in to have any issues at all, it’s the casual games that don’t seem to work right for me and crash and lag horribly. The drafts and 1 Modern event I’ve entered recently all worked perfectly, but I can’t seem to play a single game in the casual room without the program freezing repeatedly each game.

  4. I played the V4 client over a year. It was a beta, so bugs can happen. I did my best to report them. But after a year, they released it, and my personal feeling and I don’t have the feeling it’s that much better.
    I did spend a large amount of money already. I had confidence it the fact that they would make things better. They didn’t. As a customer, I made the chose to stop using this program. It’s not fun anymore.
    That’s apparently the only power I have, and I’m going to use it. I’m not going to pay for not having fun. I waited long enough to make a decent program, they didn’t.
    The reddit has lots of arguments why a boycot is not a good idea:
    1. Most have economic arguments, but if MTGO is 40% of magic income, you better do something to make/keep your customers happy.
    2. Keep playing a product that doesn’t work like it should… This can’t be the right alternative, can it?
    Certainly not if your argument is: it’s never going to be better.

  5. If this were any other type of game software and it performed so badly, no one would be paying for it.
    If it doesn’t work, don’t pay for it. The company sure as heck is not gonna fix it as long as money is pouring in. If people continue paying for it, then the product can’t be that bad from the company’s POV, and they aren’t gonna pay to fix something they don’t percieve as broken.

  6. This is because of Reddit yesterday, and let’s be honest, Reddit is a small subset of a small subset of people who play Magic. Everyone wants to have a mature discussion on the matter but it inevitably turns into people circlejerking over how bad MTGO is, the other side saying how eve though it’s bad, they’re not going to stop playing, another side who says how stupid these kinds of threads are and the doomsday speakers who say MTGO is dying.

    Every thread.

  7. I couldn’t decide to stop playing in July I was in a trade online got kicked off then I couldn’t log back on and still can not, I messaged wizards they replied with a few things to try saying it’s my fault yet I didnt do anything but try n log on after being kicked off mid trade, I was doing about 10 vintage drafts a day until this I have a legacy deck on there I spent money on I can no longer access, I’ve tried Hearthstone n can’t get into it as much I like drafting and can’t besides fnm with the same people week in and out I’d play even if it was poor cause it’s still a great tool and let’s hope the movie does fix it

  8. The horrible par
    t to me was, last time i asked for compensation, they had the nerve to call it ‘a courtesy’ because the problem was not with them !!!

  9. Wizards will never get any more of my money. They have proven inept, uncaring, and unresponsive, while brazenly greedy at every turn. Fuck MTGO and the parent toy companies which foist it on us.

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