Great article, Joe. I really enjoy interviews with Vintage celebrities. Keep 'em coming.
It sucks that Vintage can't consistently fire. For those who are invested in MTGO, why isn't everybody playing? What's really going on causing Vintage to fail online? Is it the prize support? Is it the buggy V4? Is it lack of tournaments or the time they are scheduled? I can't answer any of these as I don't use MTG Online, but for the future of the format, we need to figure these things out so the whole community can keep growing.
First of all, thanks for reading.
I don't know exactly what the problem is with Dailies. I'm sure that the simplest explanation is that there isn't as many Vintage players as there are for other formats. Legacy events fire all the time, at least as far as I know.
Vintage is the newest format on MTGO, prior to this a format called "Classic" was as close as you could get.
When VMA first came out, there was a lot of interest in the format it seemed, and there still is a fair amount. With the other formats, "spikes" can use MTGO to practice for paper tournaments. Legacy has SCG support, as does Modern and Standard (which also have plenty of WOTC) support.
I think that might have something to do with it. Again, this is mostly guessing on my part. Obviously some folks in this thread have expressed their opinions of a lack of faith in the V4 client. I wish to again mention that I have minimal issues with the client on my computer (which is far from top-of-the-line). I've also never had an issue that didn't result in me getting reimbursed for my time.
For anyone reading this who is unaware because they haven't read all of my work, I've been interested in Vintage for a lot longer than I've been playing it. I was a kid in highschool when I started playing Magic, and I used to work my bad jobs for cash to buy cards. I traded everything I had to try to get enough for a "type one" deck. I had four of each dual land, 2 pieces of power, and some other expensive type one cards in my first collection. I never got to actually play in a type one tournament, and I sold that collection a long time ago.
For me, MTGO allowed me to play Vintage for the first time in my life. I simply couldn't afford to play it (without proxies) otherwise. I figure that if I'm interested in this, then some other people must be in my same position. So part of my mission in writing these articles is to show other people that this is a great format and worth investing in. I'm not looking to convince someone to play MTGO who is stuck on hating it. If they choose to change their mind, great. But a lot of people who play MTGO and have never played Vintage read PureMTGO, and it's mainly those folks that I'm trying to introduce Vintage to.
