Magic the Gathering

Magic the Gathering Online

Magic Online is soft­ware pro­vided by Wiz­ards of the Coast to allow Magic play­ers to play Magic the Gath­er­ing over the inter­net against their friends or strangers. There are other options for play­ing Magic online, but none of them are able to enforce the rules of Magic as Magic online does, two exam­ples of alter­na­tives are Appren­tice and Magic Work­sta­tion.

While Magic the Gath­er­ing Online itself is free, when you go to ini­tially cre­ate an account it will cost you $20 (USD) to pay for your first dig­i­tal cards for your online col­lec­tion. You can make this pay­ment using a credit card, via Pay­pal or via gift cards.

The cards pro­vided in Magic Online are not able to be directly con­verted to phys­i­cal cards. The excep­tion is the con­ver­sion of full sets. If you col­lect a full set of cards (one of every card in that expan­sion set) then you are able to exchange them for a phys­i­cal copy of that set; there are how­ever some lim­i­ta­tions based on geo­graphic location.

FAQ for Magic the Gath­er­ing Online

Q) What is the ESRB rat­ing for this game?
A) It is rated ‘Teen’

Q) Where do I get Magic Online?
A) You can down­load it from the Wizards.com web­site by going to this loca­tion: Down­load here

Q) What does Magic the gath­er­ing Online cost?
A) The soft­ware down­load itself is free, but to cre­ate your ini­tial account with the sys­tem will cost you $20 (USD)

Q) Where can I see some videos to help famil­iar­ize myself with the soft­ware?
A) The web­site www.PureMTGO.com has a great series of videos that you can check out.

Q) What are the sys­tem require­ments for Magic the Gath­er­ing Online?
A) See below

Q) When did Magic Online start?
A) It went live in June, 2002. It has since been upgraded to ver­sion 3.0 and has added cards from numer­ous sets spread out across the his­tory of Magic.

Q) What are ‘tick­ets’ in Magic Online?
A) Tick­ets are the in-game cur­rency which are bought for cash. These allow them to cross inter­na­tional bound­aries as well as avoid pos­si­ble gam­bling issues as users are not using dol­lars to enter tour­na­ments which may be seen as tour­na­ments of chance by the local authorities.

Q) What are clans?
A) Clans are the in game groups which play­ers build, either as their cir­cle of friends or for devoted devel­op­ment and com­pe­ti­tion. There is no cost or require­ment for join­ing a guild insti­tuted by Magic the Gath­er­ing Online, though guilds may require some­thing for mem­ber­ship such as a required level of rating.

Q) How does the rat­ing of my play online work?
A) It’s cal­cu­lated the same as phys­i­cal play is, using an adap­ta­tion of com­pet­i­tive Chess’ ELO rat­ing sys­tem. You can read more about it at the Wikipedia page for the ELO Rat­ing Sys­tem.

Q) Where can I go to learn more abou Magic the Gath­er­ing Online?
A) Wiz­ards’ Offi­cial web­site or Wikipedia’s entry for ‘Magic the Gath­er­ing Online’