I'm not sure if I should have made a new thread for this or not, since it's sorta a new game and sorta not, but whatever. I've never really played magic before. Mostly because it's always seemed to expensive to me. However, tomorrow Magic Duels Origins. Magics answer to hearthstones wild success in the digital market. (Although I couldn't find any actual numbers to compare to, the general consensus is that magics clients thus far have sucked.) A slick new client that they intend to replace their yearly game, a living platform to be updated for the next 39 thousand years. And it's free to play!
So, even though it's already released on the idevices I don't have that concrete information as of yet, but from what I've heard, I'm getting a bit hype. It seems to have a quick and proper interface, which is a pretty big deal, although I'm not sure how they are going to handle instants and a turn timer yet. Ether way, it's going to be A LOT better then the old 20XX games. The business model is based around gold coins, you earn them from playing the game and going though their little story mode, and thus far you can spend them on packs (possibly other things to come? Maybe!). You can't buy custom numbers of packs, but you do get a discount for buying them in larger bundles. Even though they do the incredibly cheesy thing where they sell gold coins and packs at odd numbers so you end up with like $40 worth of coins when you want to buy the $35 worth of packs, I was struck how quickly it seems you can earn packs. I don't know if there is a daily limit on gold earned, but from what I can see packs cost 150 gold, and you have daily quests ala hearthstone (I'm going to assume they have the same rewards as hearthstone, although all I can confirm right now is 40 gold quests) but then you win 20 gold with every win! Or even 15 if you're playing against the AI. That's obviously way way way more relative to pack cost then you get in hearthstone... Although the fact that you get so much gold for beating the AI makes me think that's going to be the quickest way to grind gold probably, which strikes me as odd. You also have weekly quests where everyone playing the game contributes to the overall progress. Which is prettty cool.
From what I've been able to see thus far though, this generosity with money might stem from from there being no equivalent to the card crafting system in hearthstone, which, since you obviously can't trade cards, brings up the question of what your excess copies of cards do. I've heard that possibly you can't actually pull copies of cards you're already full on... Which would be pretty amazing if true, although it'd mean for a bit you'd have no way to make the decks you need, making a complete collection seems like it'd be really easy that way... Which is sorta why I don't quite believe it yet. Ether way I've heard a number of "80" packs being roughly the number of packs you need to open to complete your collection, but I have no idea if that's true or not (if you actually can't pull duplicates that number does make sense.) but anyone who's played hearthstone knows that number of packs is just a drop in the bucket. I've been thinking, looking at all the numbers, a fairly casual FTP player might be able to make that much gold in a little over two months... Which does line up with magics "Every three months expansion"... So, if they decided that FTP players from the start should have fairly easy access to every card, these numbers actually do all seem to line up. That is sorta exciting, and also why I don't believe that they are all correct. But we'll have to see.
All in all, an exciting new entry to the digital card game space in a way that looks like it might beat hearthstone on the business model front. It'll almost certainly beat hearthstone on the like, complexity front, I don't think anyone's ever though of hearthstone as a serious or possibly even good card game next to magic (on the other hand I've not played magic, so maybe I shouldn't smack talk...). So we'll have to see how it actually works out as a game! If it's smooth and fun to play it seems like it's poised to beat hearthstone in every way. So, much excitement.