Comments on: Promo Cards on MTGO: What Are They Good For?

By: Taste of Blood

Taste of Blood — Thu, 26 Feb 2015 00:01:08 +0000

I also liked a lot that promo Ugin that they gave to me =),

By: Taste of Blood

Taste of Blood — Wed, 25 Feb 2015 09:23:43 +0000

Not counting mocs promos right? I liked stoke the flames a lot!! Very welcome as i could sell the regular ones and have those to play. Same for rabblemaster mocs now.

By: Melvin Schroeder

Melvin Schroeder — Wed, 25 Feb 2015 00:19:27 +0000

Giving out promos is kind of cool MOST of the time but I’m actually not too happy that they gave away Nekusar or previously Ghave, Guru of Spores. The reason is simply that those were supposed to be exclusive to the Commander decks and it made me feel pretty dumb for buying them previously. Online prices are pretty low to begin with and simply giving away mythics as promos ruins the value of the regular versions most of the time. Nekusar went from about 3 tix (not much I admit but that’s not the point) to worthless over night and Ghave had a similar price drop although it’s been long enough that I couldn’t say how much of one. Other mythics are pretty much the same. Want a foil Sheoldred? 6 cents. Survival of the Fittest? I couldn’t even get a bot to make me an offer.

By: trapspringer

trapspringer — Tue, 24 Feb 2015 20:53:39 +0000

You sound like a player complaining because your opponent deviated from the line of play that would have allowed you to win. Your understanding of promotional items seems predicated on an utterly low-level theory of mind and it’s keeping you from seeing alternative explanations.

Let me reframe this for you: Why should I give out promos?

Maybe the goal is to induce players to participate more with the appeal of the card on offer. Like a parent offering too strong an incentive for a kid to study, players who participate because the promo is crazy-good won’t internalize the behavior (meaning they’ll _only_ play if the promo is exactly what they want), and that ties your hands when it comes to managing your virtual economy and unnecessarily constrains the breadth of appeal of your future promotions. Such a bribe should be appealing without being so good that it is a reason to play unto itself.

Alternatively, maybe I want to encourage players to participate in _future_ events based on the promotional card. This seems more likely, since MTGO is less vocal about these promos than they would be if they were bribing players to play. In that case, offering promos for under-played formats like commander makes a whole lot of sense. Handing out one-ofs of important cards might be intended to get players excited about drafting to finish out the set, or even induce them to buy tickets to purchase what they need to build a deck to show off that card (and a player dropping 13 bucks to finish the play set of a durdly four-mana burn spell would be pretty sweet, huh?).

Or maybe some third thing, a combination of both, or one and the other alternativingly. I don’t know. But I’m pretty sure the end that [marketing dude] is trying to achieve isn’t “give the players a warm fuzzy feeling,” even if that is often the means.

By: Douglas Johnson

Douglas Johnson — Tue, 24 Feb 2015 17:20:28 +0000

In reply to beaneau.

I don’t think the issue was with there being a lack of alternate art Ugins, so much as it was an issue of Wizards not mentioning it until AFTER the fact.

Instead of “Guys, just so you know, there won’t be Alt art Ugins”, it was “Fuck, we forgot to mention. There weren’t any Alt art Ugins, Lol got ya.”

By: beaneau

beaneau — Tue, 24 Feb 2015 12:47:01 +0000

A lot of people were up in arms about the lack of alt. art Ugin online. So it would seem that they want online what WOTC is giving out in real life. These promos imitate FNM, game-day, or buy a box promos most of the time. If I am playing with these cards in standard, I like to use the promo when I can.

But I agree, they are worthless. Nekusar is so worthless that I think it generates negative value for Wizards. Stoke the flames is pretty cool. Hordeling Outburst should be cool. But in the end they are all worthless.

Give us something we can play, and something with value. Most rewards programs offer something with monetary value. Not at MTGO.