The Shrine

So Everquest has a collectible card game called Legend of Norrath that plays like any of the hundreds of the Magic knockoffs, but you can occasionally get stuff that gives you loot in EQ/EQ2. So it's obviously some form of real money trading (RMT).

Now obviously some people think this is a bad idea so there are always posts about to boycott this or it'll be the end of the world. Fair enough. People can express their own opinion. Except half of these posts are stuff like: "This stuff is a scam because I just spent $300 on boosters and got no loot!" Well if this is a scam, it sure is working pretty well.

Personally I'm surprised it took someone to put together CCG + MMORPG = $$$. Since it's distributed digitally, you don't even need any physical distribution system. As far as I know Magic the Gathering gets a lot of its money from the online component, and it does make a lot of sense. It's a lot easier to do stuff online than lugging around 10 binders of Magic cards. One of the reason I stopped playing Magic was just trying to store those hundreds of cards that are mostly useless but not so useless you'd just throw them away.

That reminds me, what's the most you've spent, or heard someone did, on a CCG? I thought buying a box of MTG cards was a lot until I read people who buy boxes.

I played magic a lot in middle school and some in high. I bought boxes all the time, but i also was able to clean house in the local tounaments and won prize money for the boxes. I always told people magic was like a second HS job with the amounts some of these tournaments gave the winners. I dont think i ever paid an outrageous amount for a single card, however, i did sell a lot of them too in person and on ebay.

That said, i was also a little clepto in high school and would find ways to steal boxes from stores. I think thats a phase a lot of kids go through, though.

I think i could see myself pick the game up again online for fun, but its been soooo many expansions and set releases since i last played, i'm not even sure what some of the abilities do anymore.

I still have my Magic cards. Tried to sell them, but they didn't even want more than one or two of them, despite having some good cards in the deck. I love CCG, but I hate the collecting part of the game. You should be able to just have a bunch of cards with different abilities and not have to fuck with the price tag. Or make it extremely cheap.

Though I really liked the XBL Magic game, I was really disappointed that you couldn't even customize the decks from the cards you got, much less get more cards than the limit sets they offered. Other games allow you to completely customize, like Culcept Saga.

I spent a few hundred on Magic back in the day. A couple years ago, I sold what I had left over all for Catan, it's expansions, 5-6 player expansions, and Starfarers of Catan. WOrth it for me

I think the problem with CCG with a physical form is the storage and the need to interact with people. When my brother was playing the the EQ card game online he would often trade say a good rare for 50 good uncommons (a lot of people absolutely don't care about the relative value of the cards). But if this was in real life, unless you own a card shop, it's going to take you a very long time before you can find someone who wants to take those 50 assorted uncommons off you, so even though you made a good trade you might not be able to realize its value for a very long time.

Of course, online, you can easily find someone posting a trade like '1 rare for 3 uncommons' (or whatever the standard going rate is), since you can reach everyone who is playing the game immediately.

SineSwiper wrote:
Though I really liked the XBL Magic game, I was really disappointed that you couldn't even customize the decks from the cards you got, much less get more cards than the limit sets they offered. Other games allow you to completely customize, like Culcept Saga.

Then whats the point? The decks are set? Half the fun is building a deck yourself with a theme or exploiting a good ability. The real online magic game allows you to do whatever you want.

Flip wrote:Then whats the point? The decks are set? Half the fun is building a deck yourself with a theme or exploiting a good ability. The real online magic game allows you to do whatever you want.

It should be about the skill of building a deck properly, not who was lucky enough to get whatever rare or who's rich enough to spend the money.

There are multiple tournament formats that cater to many playstyles. For example Sine seems like he'd be more into some kind of tournament where you draft cards from some preset number of boosters. And there's charm in the 'who has the more money' kind of tournament too... if you have the money anyway.