A number of news items have surfaced today regarding Magic: The Gathering Online, Wizards of the Coast's digital client for their hit trading card game, Magic: The Gathering. These news items range from the new "Treasure Chest" prize, to set redemption for Magic: The Gathering Online product, to changes for entry in Kaladesh events.
Chests and other kinds of "box" reward items have been commonplace in free-to-play games for many years. Now, it seems like Wizards of the Coast is getting in on the craze; earlier today, Wizards of the Coast employee Lee Sharpe posted this article to the Wizards of the Coast homepage as well as the below video to the Magic: The Gathering YouTube channel. These two pieces of media introduce the new "Treasure Chests" that will be replacing Booster Packs as rewards for winning Friendly Constructed Leagues and are a part of the prize structure for Competitive Constructed Leagues and Vintage Daily Events.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAVwgm7H7P0
These Treasure Chests will contain one of the following: a "Curated Card", which is selected from a list maintained by Research and Development; a Modern-legal Rare or Mythic Rare card; or a number of Play Points. Most of the time, Treasure Chests will also contain two Standard-legal Commons or Uncommons, but these may be replaced by a Curated Card or Modern-legal Rare or Mythic Rare card.
Prize support will overall be changing as well for these events. Currently, Friendly Constructed Leagues offer a payout of 150 Player Points, one Eldritch Moon Booster Pack, and one Shadows Over Innistrad Booster Pack for the player that has a 5-0 win/loss record. Once the new changes go into effect, that player will instead receive 80 Player Points, and eight Treasure Chests. Booster Pack payout for Competitive Constructed Leagues and Vintage Dailies were also significantly reduced.
Alongside this, the biggest change to the prize structure for these events is that Treasure Chests are untradeable, unlike Booster Packs. As a result, many Magic: The Gathering Online players are expressing discontent with this new prize structuring, stating that Wizards of the Coast changing it removes incentive to take part in Constructed Leagues or Vintage Dailes, or to even play at a casual level on Magic: The Gathering Online.
The second piece of news concerning Magic: The Gathering Online has to do with set redemption. Players who amass a complete collection of regular, non-foil cards (or an all-foil collection) of a Magic: The Gathering Online set can redeem it for the paper equivalent. This was done so that players could have the opportunity to "cash out" of the digital client whenever they wished. As of Kaladesh, the time players have to redeem their digital sets will be shortened; both Kaladesh and Aether Revolt will be redeemable until the release of Amonkhet, or six and three months respectively.
Finally, a number of changes have been made regarding the Limited format Kaladesh Pre-release events. Wizards of the Coast has reduced the price of entry into the Kaladesh Pre-release events. These entry fee changes will also affect both Friendly and Competitive Sealed Leagues. Wizards of the Coast has also announced that they will be ending support for the Pack/Win Swiss Draft League, and will be consolidating it into the 6-2-2-2 Swiss Draft League.
All of these changes are scheduled to take effect next week on Wednesday, October 05, 2016.
Stay tuned to TechRaptor for continuing news and coverage of all things Magic: The Gathering.
What are your thoughts on these changes to Magic: The Gathering Online? Do you think adding Treasure Chests is a bad move on Wizards of the Coast's part? Let us know in the comment section below.
