Why Magic: the Gathering Guru's make GW All Stars

If you are not familiar with Magic: the Gathering CCG (collectible card game) then there are aspects of this post you may not understand.

My friends and I have been fairly serious gamers since a young age, Magic the Gathering was a game some of us were able to get very good at, to the point of being among the highest rated Magic online players in the world.

I quit Magic a year ago due to the cost - Playing Limited (Magic's purest form) is too pricey even winning 80% or more of your matches (you must buy digital cards to play in limited events).

Now that many of us have started playing guildwars were shocked by the similarities between the two games.

Skill in Magic the Gathering: putting together powerful combination-based decks based on the cards (spells) available to you, and based on the situation your facing. Then look for further ways to exploit your combo's or react to what your opponent is doing with some kind of counter, until one of you is reduced to zero life.

Skill in Guild Wars: Eerily similar. While Guild Wars adds alot more than any card game could, the core of the game requires the same set of gaming skills... A wide variety of situational spells, of which you can only select a limited amount for each encounter, coupled with real-time reactions to what your opponent (s) are doing.

Any other Magic players feel like their taking knowledge acquired from that game and applying it to dominate the PVP aspect of this one?

I see that this game is very similar to magic, but that is because it is influenced by magic, the devs mentioned that in an interview.

I am pretty sure this game was a merger of RP and Magic... the simularity is too obvious. I wouldn't even be suprised if Peter was lurking in the background whispering in the devs ears.

Thats pretty interesting, I was not aware. If anyone happens to have a link for this interview that would be just Uber. =)

Geez I hope not, as MTG was a hockey-card collecting thing, based on the idea that you were supposed to buy ever more expansion packs to get rares and uniques (with fictional fantasy "values").

You're correct, M:TG was the bassis for the game mechanics(basis only), not only pointed out by devs, but by Jeff Strain himself(I'm to lazy to research the news archives on the GW site, but it has been stated more than once).

That was how MTG started...but its grown from being grouped with hockey cards to being grouped with poker cards.

Theres serious money to be won on the MTG Pro Tour, as like Poker its a combination of math skills and being able to read other players.

I'l start poking around for that article, many thanks.

MTG is a card game that takes an incredible amount of skill. There's a reason why top players like Kibler and Kai(spelling?) dominate the tournaments despite the fact that many other players run very similar decks or even nearly identical decks.

Yep, as an ex-MTG tourney player that's definitely something that I have noticed. Even the tourney scene is suprisingly similar. In order to be competitive, you need to study the meta game and be ready to beat the popular builds. And you have people with suprise builds that take the scene by storm. It's quite fun.

Instead of having 60 cards (+15 cards sideboard), you have 64 skills, spreaded among 8 people and using them in a real time manner. It's really very cool.

Mesmers = Blue
Rangers = Green
Monks = White
Necromancers = Black
Elementalists = Red
Warriors = multi color

*sigh* I used to love GW. Now you guys are making me see it as yet something else that Wizards of the Coast has dug their greedy little fingers into.

At least they didn't ruin GW like they did every other PnP RPG they got ahold of. On the other hand, I suppose they didn't have any direct influence on GW anyway, so nevermind. Hehe.

--edit as I put magic in the next par originally when I meant Wizards of the Coast, who made Magic--

Sorry, I'm a PnP'er as well, who is jaded that Wizards of the Coast. took all of my favorite RPG's and turned them into the exact same game with different settings.

What?

mtg is a fun game...

No offense, but you have gone MAD.

Guild Wars is a lot more healthy than M:tG. There is no netdecking and there is more balance in GW (remember the huge hit to Blue that WotC and RnD decided to do?)

If GW were literally M:tG the RPG, then any Blue profession could simply say "No!" and all other PvP'ers would drop dead.

if only peter jackson had his hand in GW. Who knows what would happen when Munchkin and GW collide



chainsaw of bloody dismemberment anyone?

Sorry guys, didn't mean to confuse anyone. I have nothing against M:tG (except for the 8 billion expansions that made me quit as I couldn't keep up). I was referring to Pen and Paper RPG's and how they bought out TSR as well as every other game they could get their hands on and changed them into D20 system. Half the reason I played pnp rpg's was for the diverse systems, and now it's gone. LOL. Sorry to rant.

And no I have NOT gone mad, thank you very much. Merely slightly loony.

For those of you who seem to have missed the main point, GW is like M:TG in terms of the skill system, not in terms of the behaviors of the companies behind the games or the economics of the games (it's actually opposite in this respect; GW has no monthly fee, compared to other online RPGs).

i take my post back, it' actually

ranger = multi color
warriors = green

since multi colors have a lot of "utilities" just like the ranger.

its mentioned in the GuildWars FAQ

http://www.guildwars.com/faq/default.html#release

from an interview
http://www.happypuppy.com/viewFrame....orial_id=24325

Sorry, a self-mocking silly post turned into more than I bargained for, lol. I knew the comparison that was being made. This thread just popped a side-thought into my head about Wizards of the Coast being everywhere. I'll be quiet now. :P

I played M:TG ranked tours and can say that GW has only the smallest bit of comparability with MTG. Very Basic. M:TG is so... expansive, the combos and counters are near endless. GW seems very limited to me in comparison of skill setup/deck building. If anything, all the skills in GW combined make up 1 block of MTG and there are about 20 different blocks now (I have not played in a few years now, not sure what block/expansion they are up to). But yes, the comparison is there, be it very little.

Not quite sure I see the relation between this and Magic. Then again, I play Magic the old fashion way of actually using the cards and not the virtual version. Ditto for PnP games like DnD.

But I mean, in Magic you rely on your ability and your ability only. There is an endless number of different strategies that work in magic. In GW, get monks. Get several monks, spellcasters, maybe a warrior. I haven't played in the HoH for very long, but that is all the strategy I see being used.

Monks are a lot like lands/mana in Magic. If you don't have any, you will lose.

I was a good ranked player of magic the gatering (in italy), and i think that this game is a MTG with 1 people intead of 1 deck...

The build of the pg is like a build of a deck, with many skills (card) and u have to choose 8 (60).
And u have to be skilled playing your character (deck), or u will lose against a more skilled player.

The major difference is that magic is 1v1 based, gw is 8v8 based.

A big difference between the 2 is that GW isnt turn-based. This is a feature that increases strategy bigtime. Just look at the biggest strategy game alltimes, chess which is turn-based.
MTG also beats GW becaus its just a fun social card-game(I hate the capitalistic trade system however) Somehow fun games are ruined by comercial thinking. And that is what MTG and GW have in common.

This is only the start of GW. Each expansion will bring new classes, new skills, new mechanics. Similar to MTG

So much to respond to...

first off, i've played over 8 years of Magic, and know the game pretty well imho. but probably a lot of posters in this thread also. just sketching my background.

absolutely! the similarities are more then i could first imagine.
- a metagame that is constantly evolving, probably even more then magics one
- expansion driven
- energycurve (manacurve) and energymanagement are well known concepts
- selecting skills & selecting your cards
- elite skills & restricted cards

incorrect. the cards have real world value. One can sell cards at marketprice that is influenced by popularity, playability & legality and metagame. this is contrast with the skills in GW.

absolutely correct. Give two players the same set up, and they will perform differently. bad players blame it on 'bad shuffles'. GW bad players blame it on 'n00bs' while have chosen bad tactics themselves. The players you are referring to are Brian Kibler and Kai Budde.

you simply can NOT make this generalisation, altough i see what you are pointing at. Its a bit to shallow of a comparison. (I.e.: Elementist: the earth-line with its armor boosts would be more white flavored in magic.)

WotC has nothing to do with GW. that simple. the concept is losely based on magic, nothing more.

i'm going to do a wild guess: its been a while since you played mtg, is it?
while blue certainly was the leading powerhouse in magic, its days as a ruler in t2 are defenitively over. And it still is a strong color in t1, but others are catching up now WotC is watching the colorwheel more closely.
No netdecking in GW? you must be joking me. what do you call the buildsdirectory on this site then, and the countless builddiscussion topics here?
As for the healthy part:
ANet is more flexible, I can agree to taht. they are faster to patch issues. In magic, only once every 3 months fixes are applied. in GW, its weekly. So yes, i agree there.

and for this reason, a lot of players have fled to online play, where they are not forced to collect all cards before being able to play, but dl a patch and just go. This is my greatest fear for GW: having finally got most skills, a new sets comes out, and the grind starts over again. thus slowing the PvP metagame. The PvP crowd is complaining alot, but after some carefull observating, i must say they are absolutely right on most points. they are a bit forgotten in comparison to the PvE crowd.

and this is bullshit offcourse. what do you thing 'more strategic options' will do for a competitive player? Will keep them at the same level as whitout the extra skills? offcourse one needs the skills in order to stay competitive, altough one can say that the more skills one has, the less impact the release of more skills has.

You must take in comparison that magic is over 10 years old, and GW is only about a month. Magic in its early days didn’t have that much cards either.

interesting comparison… Well then you can attest another comparison: how many monks does one need? A defensive build will use many to slowly build some advantage over the other team, much like defensive decks in magic try to slow the opponent down so that they can perform their winning trick.

magic can also be multiplayer 3v3 or more. but granted, magic primary design is probably 1v1. Altough the multiplayer side is slowly getting the attention that it deservers, as its official rules are close to release.

yes, that is the main difference: GW is real time.
As for commercial thinking:
1) there is nothing wrong with it
2) GW is a one time buy, no fees for online gaming. Hardly comparable to the buying of booster packs, unless you mean the trade in unidentified armor.

the major diffrence is that magic is roundbased and this one is in realtime ^^
i still got my old magic-cards and sometimes my friends and i meet to play some matches - blue|white 4 all eternity...

if you need to transform gw into sth magical: maybe this...
8 independent but still dependent decks of 8 cards, chosen from a dualcolour deck - i love it

<-addicted since wpv

Wrath of God and Rout! (too bad monks don't have these elites, or Plague Wind if anyone remember this giant!)
Guild Wars is definitely better than MTG, at least that's what I think; at least I won't run into land shortage again !
I am building my char based off my most powerful deck: black and white for creature wiping and resurrecting (aka necro/monk). Worked for me in MTG, worked for me in gw. (In MTG Wrath of Gods and Terror work like charm, but in Guild Wars it takes a lot more skills to kill off massive mobs)

Agreed. There are similarities, but very very basic. There is no real card drawing mechanism (very important in M: TG), there is no alternate winning conditions (grinding deck in M:TG), can only have 1 rare at a time (as many rares as u can have in M:TG), no multiple copies of same skills (max 4 copies of same card in M:TG), no real color of mana management, no deck only hand (8 skills), no sideboard oppotunity given after each match unless you lose.

So in my opinion, even though Guild war might be a very innovative game among mmorpgs, M: TG is much more interesting game at the moment because of all the things you can do. If you are looking for a game that very closely simulate a card game, you should check out 'Phantom Dust' for Xbox, two thumbs up for it.

Ok, this is gonna be my last post in this thread. I've seemed to confuse people to the point where they think I think WotC had anything at all to do with GW. I don't. Reading this thread about Magic influencing GW reminded me of WotC, and that's all, so I decided to post a silly rant. The end.

You could go on for ages listing the differences, all of which should be fairly obvious anyhow, since we're comparing a real-time computer game to a card game. Obviously there are huge differences.

What's more interesting are the similarities. Certain the similarities between GW and M:tG are huge compared to the similarities between Half-Life 2 and Poker, or StarCraft and Cribbage. Saying "they're not really that alike" and pointing out all the differences between card games and real-time computer games is a major, "Well duh."

Given that we are comparing a card game to a real-time computer game, the similarities between the two are relatively huge.

Personally, I've always thought of GW as the bastard love-child of Diablo II and Magic: the Gathering. It's like someone sat down and said, "We're going to make another real-time action RPG, ala Diablo, but we want to pull as many good ideas as we can out of M:tG, at least that would fit into an action RPG format."

You're comparing M:tG after a gazillion expansions to GW before its first expansion. I believe GW at present has more skills and potential combos than M:tG did before its first expansion.

Well take a look at the Savage Worlds and BESM systems.
You could make a Guild Wars PnP game from Savage Worlds with very little effort.

Back on topic:
With the time that M:tG has been around, it bodes well for GW to follow the concept.

Incidentally, although it's likely that GW incorporates some ideas from M:tG, Magic is by no means the only place where this kind of idea can be found. (I'm sure we all know that, but...)

For those who also like console RPGs, you might be interested in checking out "Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne" and "Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga" on the PS2, a series of really excellent console RPGs. (They have been translated to english, and are available in the U.S.)

There are a lot of interesting gameplay features in these games, but I mention it because it too has a large skill set, and you have to carefully choose a small number of skills to equip on your characters, and try to make choices that work together etc.

lol, i hadn't really played MTG since the last Junior Nationals (3 years ago) down in Orlando... i think it was Tempest-Urzas Saga but im not 100% sure. Either way suicide black managed to get me in the top 20 vs a shitload of energy field+sly decks(i managed to forget the necro/yawgmoths*spelling* will decks).

I definately see the familiarities between GW and MTG, i tried to classify all the classes with a color like.. elem=red, ranger=green, monk=white, necro=black, mes=blue, then they just had to throw in warr IMO b/c its a staple to this genre of games. Artifacts, i'm not sure about though. I love competition though and the pvp in this game isnt exactly the normal 1v1 style of MTG but I certainly get my fix playin it .

Anyhow, im kind of looking forward to the upcoming regionals so i can try and win some more $$ to get my ass through college lol.

Savage Worlds is a great game system, much, much easier than d20, but very customizable. You City of Heroes players should check out Necessary Evil, the super villain RPG, that looks like a hoot.... BUT!!! I'm very biased since I did a bunch of artwork for it.

I was going to stat up the Chaar soon for my SW campaign pretty soon here.

Visual Storytelling
http://www.stornc.rpggallery.com/

A bad luck based mechanism removed Kudos to GW! Yes I know you can minimize the luck factor but it will only go so far. If you don't draw lands then you are hosed.

There are only two winning conditions in MTG, failure to draw or health reaches 0. But from a different perspective I can say the various different types of tournaments are the alternate winning conditions in GW.

You are thinking from a single person point of view, you need to combine the 8 skills of each of the team member. That gives you 64 skills and potential of copies and multiple rares. The elite skill for each person can simply be think of as the restricted cards in MTG.

Can't argue with that, there's no concept of "colors" in GW.

Think of it this way, the deck are the skills that all of the team members possess, the hand is simply all the skills that are available to each member at a particular moment, i.e. the ones that are not recharging.

That's correct, because the tournaments are single match right now. If in the future some tournaments become multiple match based, it's very likely they can allow skill swapping between matches. It's simply a game feature though, not a design/concept difference.

There are of course many differences and we can list countless of them, but it's heavily influenced by MTG from my point of view. As more and more expansion packs are released for GW, more tournament styles are designed/implemented, the simililarity will only increase.

Yeah, sure, whatever.

Even poker is about 2/3'rds luck, In MTG it's probably over 80% luck. What's the luck-to-skill ratio in GW?

If someone prior to buying GW had even hinted there was a link between GW and a hockey-card collecting "game" like MTG, I would never, ever, have bought GW.

Thank god noone did.

I remember this game, a friend once was telling me how good this online game was (very long time ago) and that its like yu-gi-oh care duelling but much better. He wanted to introduce me to this game quite badly that he let me use his account to play (very good friend since his someone I only knew from online and he lives in america and not someone I met personally and he still let me use his account :P).

Well I only had an attempt at the tutorial and after things started coming up, didn't get time and then just didn't bother playing. I think I still have those login details somewhere...but it makes me wish I should have tried the game a bit then, heard alot about it and at that time I got fascinated by yu-gi-oh and its card game (nothing to laugh about its a good game).