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Magic Duels: The Game Wizards Wants you to Forget
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- čas přidán 11. 01. 2023
- This video explores the life and death of Magic: Duels, evaluating the aftermath from it's community.
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Correction: Each year wasn't free until the last titled Magic: Duels. Yes, Wizards and Stainless charged for a bunch of stuff even after you paid like £10ish/$15ish.
By the time Duels had its support closed down, Stainless had released a new game in 2018 (Shockrods - An arena car combat game which I had worked on) and had basically seen that game crumble to dust by 2019.
Thank you! Information on these games were so hard to find.
@@HarryMTG No worries mate, they were all delisted as part of end of life. Some also featured hot topic niche casual formats of the time like Archenemy. I believe this might extend to planechase.
I didn't actually work at Stainless but an executive producer from Stainless left and became a general manager where I used to work in outsource QA
Correction on this.
Stainless were working on Shockrods still in 2018.
However it released late in 2019 on Steam and Apple Arcade to very little applause so it crumbled and died very soon after.
7:55 you just described commander with this line lol
Hands down the most rigged card game on console. Almost as bad as online poker. Crazy to think how much money ppl gave to have a better deck and it meant absolutely nothing 🤪 between the game engine and the online match maker you lose whenever it's necessary. If someone lost like 15 consecutive matches they'd uninstall and never play again.
I'm really glad that someone made this video, I've been playing Magic Duels for many years, and still play it to this day.
It's a shame that new players can't experience it though, because IMO it's the best version of playing MTG online.
Man duels of the planeswalkers was sooooo awesome. You earned cards and the limiting card selection was pretty cool. The first version you could play 4 player too and it was awesome I taught so many people how to play magic with that game
Yea that's the main reason I couldn't get into MTGA was the lack of two headed giant. It seemed like such a simple thing, heck they've done it in the past.
the 2014 version was way to unbalanaced (Eldrazi vs Samurai lol, or faries) and 2015 was just slow and boring but 2013 was the shit. i play it still today. there is also a mod for all 2012 deck included in 2013
My favourite part was the puzzles - not sure if they were in any other versions but the 2012 version had some insane ones
@@aidandimitriou5925 I forgot about those. Those were cool they were like puzzles from the duelist back in the day but you could play them.
The best part about it was it managed the stack and ordering of playing cards for players. It was so much easier to teach people with the training wheels that it offered, and the group aspect meant new players didn't have to be pummeled until they won a game.
One thing you didn't mention is that the DOTP games had extensive modding communities. This was the main reason I enjoyed the games so much. The best game for modding though was 2013. There were so many custom decks, card packs, skins, added mechanics, etc. And the files for the game were all in readable formats, so pretty much anyone could learn to add their own cards and decks with a little bit of experience.
I'd be surprised if a sizeable portion of MTG Arena players weren't also players that were only introduced to the game through Arena. The entry cost to play magic the gathering through arena, with its tutorial, starter decks and (admittedly very grindy) free-to-play economy is decidedly lower than it has ever been.
I've been playing since Invasion block and I have friends that are just NOW getting into the game due to Arena's accessibility. The economy is definitely not kind if you want to climb to high ranks, but for casual players it seems to be mostly well received amongst my group.
@@Rasokar I've been playing since Capenna and only spent $20. I spend around 50k gold on quick drafts, and am currently at a point where I have several good decks and lots of fun jank brews. I played Hearthstone for 5 years (f2p) and I NEVER felt so comfortable with my collection. Despite what many say- Arena rewards you for your time much more than Hearthstone does.
As a long time "whale" on arena (not anymore thankfully) it really saddens me to learn about what arena could have been
Mfker Arena isn't dead and it's still being worked on are you ok
@@DerronOfCairon I got out. Playing any format got too expensive and I was ignoring other people in my life so I stopped cold turkey
@@gdfghd Cold turkey? Geez. I've heard the withdrawal symptoms are brutal.
@@keithbarlow9701 they were for about 2 weeks and then things started getting way easier
magic duels was awesome.
i loved the history mode
What makes me more sad about these is the "what could have been". Wizards doesn't care about the community and trying to offer the best game possible. They try to invest as little as possible and to exctract as much money as possible. The fact that they still have success just because they're being carried by a great game with a very loyal community is crazy to me. Just imagine if they actually thought on the long term and tried to actually listen/communicate with the community and tried to make the best games possible. They would be way more successful. Yes, maybe the profit margin would be lower on the short term, but the game would become so huge that the profit will be better anyway. The basic of business is to solve a problem, give people what they want. The community is going out of their way to give that feedback because of the their love for the game. That's gold for a company. I study in business and it's crazy to me how badly Wizards is managed. People have been wanting for decade a new Shandalar type game. Wizards could hire a good studio with experience and make one and sell it for 40$ for example. It would be extremely successful. They don't need to put ressources themselves. It's basically free profit. But no. Fuck the community. This game has so much potential and the only thing I wish for each year is for a complete change of the heads and vision of both Wizards and Hasbro.
I was there Gandalf, 3000 years ago...
There are a few things that weren't mentioned.
First, the info about abandoning was a surprise for everyone from out of the blue. Just in the middle of nowhere. And they've just shut it down like "no more updates, cheers". And there were no replacement either! I think first bata of MtGA was released only after a year or two, leaving us hanging. No explanation about why not releasing new sets in Magic Duels while MtGA is not out there.
The rarity system was pretty unique and quite cool. I wonder why there is still no format like this. The gameplay was different from MtGA experience.
The 2HG was THE BOMB!!! My favourite format ever! Miss you so much, my dear 2HG.
Duels used to have a working Chat. You could actually speak with your opponent! With words, not emotes. Not always nice, but in general it was lovely.
It wasn't money grabbing machine like MtGA. No "card style" sales, no entry fees, no premium accounts.
No rigged shufflers. You did copete with skill, not with the algorithm.
Magic Duels was really good game. MtGA is an inch-away from being pay-to-win donate garbage that is feeding from an army addicts, making them wasting their life on getting higher in ladder.
Thankfully I got an overdoze during 2020 isolation and got off that needle before it was too late.
The older MTG games (Magic 2014/2015) and Duels had some amazing soundtracks... I was hoping to get those in Arena... alas...
I loved duals. It was its own unique game. Using the limited deck building structure was an adjustment but I almost preferred it over the 4x of every card. It allowed different strategies and made deck building and playing more important when you knew you had a lower chance to get your best cards. Two Headed Giant was a great include and is what got a lot of my friends into MTG as well. They even introduced Archenemy into the game. I tried Arena more then once and I can't get into it in the same way I did Duels. With everything happening it is harder then ever to be a MTG player. I just hope that this isn't the end of the game I love so much. I exclusively play EDH now but I will never forget the days of FNM, and Local Standard that got me started.
Duels
This game made sooooo many new players in my highschool. By the time i graduated, my highschool of like 300 had around 50 regular MTG players. It was a wild time.
One thing I liked about Duels was the priority system. I know it's controversial, but I found that it made the ability to bluff and conceal instant speed interaction much easier. With arena you are messing around with ctrl and enter and all this sort of thing and it's usually obvious when your opponent has instants as very few people auto pass (in fear of missing when they want to pause) so it makes certain strategies more annoying and difficult.
This is how I got introduced into Magic and I loved Jace and his illusions.
The thing I liked the most about Magic Duels were the puzzles.
YES. The lethal puzzles were so cool!
I love your "Summoning Salt"-esq music and editing choices; it's great!
If I remember correctly, I was given a little earlier access to Arena beta for having the Duels account. Which meant like, a week or two of playtesting, then shut down and reset of the collection regardless. Didn't even get to keep those Kaladesh Chandras.
At least it worked for you, despite registering I never received my invitation, and support was completely unhelpful.
(But you could also get early access by going to a prerelease... and IIRC there was some 3rd other option ?)
Magic Duels was the reason I got into magic. I know the game before, even bought stuff in mtgo, but I had no idea how I should play the game and when I found out how expensive it is, I gave up. Duels was the reason I get back into and while I never put money into Duels, I done 4 draft in MTGO in the period Duels was existed.
At least we could play two headed giants with these games with mics!... arena is soulless in this area
played arena until I hit the paywall, and went back to duels. I played the hell out of every duels and enjoyed every moment of it. As someone who lost all hope in the paper version of MTG in 2015 I cannot express how much this system was goated. It's so sad to see how such great franchises from WotC be destroyed.
i trained playing the game on Duels 2014 on my PS3 when i was 14 in preparation for my first event in person: the midnight prerelease of Journey into Nyx. God, do i miss those days.
I got Steam because the first duels of the planeswalkere was released on it.
That also got delisted before the whole franchise of Magic duels got delisted.
The first few versions were pretty rough, with at least the first one forcing you to run all of your extra cards that you unlocked.
Also, I think only Magic Duels had proper deck building.
The other games in the series mostly just gave you decks and unlocks.
The first game they released in 2011 on Xbox is what got me into Magic
This was one of my favourite Magic formats, if only for the fact that Perilous Myr was so good in it that it ended up being removed from the game.
I feel insulted that you think i'd forget magic duels
I loved the 2014 version of this game so much, I wish there was a way to play it again.
Me and my friend used to do a lot of nonsense in the 2 headed giant game mode. I used the UR deck and just played removal draw and counter spells to control the board and my friends deck had no removal but it was all ramp and top end. It was way better than it had any business being.
2014 was the greatest, good deck variety, 2HG which is just a fun mode and people even managed to mod the game and implement hundreds of cards into the game (but ofc you could only play vs people that modded as well).
Same. I play elvish deck, not the strongest of the bunch but it was fun and nurtured the mana dork in me
What makes you think that you can't ? It took me less than 5 minutes from the reading of this comment to playing it again, the time to download and install it... (Steam playercount is ~20 player though these days, so you'll have to do the matchmaking yourself.)
Main menu music is still awesome ! :D
I've just found this little gem of a video...nice job.
I played DotP since it was fist released, had an amazing time on it. Found a little website of like-minded player (nogoblinsallowed) and even ran tournaments for both the xbox and computer communities for a few years and was able to get some prize support from WotC. An absolutely awesome time to be playing, imo.
Problem i found was i don't think WotC knew what to do with this product, and Stainless (which was widely criticized as"brainless") translated a host of buggy features.
The format for Duels was different and made for slightly less consistent decks, but it also made it fun and different yhan paper. Rarely did any card get to be overly powerful or ubiquious (Mwolvoni Acid-Moss not withstanding). There were some stategies that were underpowered or under represented, but it made for a fun experience.
I miss this game and come back to it a few times a year. I look forward to seeing my next victim...i mean opponent!
God I played so much Duel Origins. Yes, it was riddled with bugs that they took forever to fix, but it was overall a very fun game. The fact that the card pool was always just a fraction of actual sets, and that you had the rarity restrictions, made it super easy to have every card. I remember putting money into the game only when it launched, then, if you played constantly and did your daily missions, by the time a next set came out you would have enough coins to buy the entire set, and it had perfect duplicate protection, so it was amazing in this sense. And I actualy love the idea of the rarity restriction, I'd honestly play entire formats with that rule since it makes deck building so interesting and refreshing.
The arena economy is really bad too, and I hated when they wiped accounts after the beta and removed everything prior to ixalan from the platform. I can understand why they’d wipe the accounts for the official release but why remove cards that were already implemented into the game? And the remastered sets didn’t bring back every card from the set, I had an abzan tokens deck from amonkhet block that I really enjoyed playing but half those cards don’t exist on arena for me to even mess around with on historic…
The only reason I don't invest in MTGA (Besides being a F2P grinder that can afford most decks) is that once they close the client (and they will) my collection will go puff in the sky, if they assured that collections would migrate from MTGO/MTGA to any future clients it would be benefitial to assure customer satisfaction.
That sort of logic can be applied to anything. Anything you invest in will eventually go poof. Of course they can try to accommodate for purchases and there's no guarantee that they will if and when MTGA comes to an end, but I don't think that's a particularly great argument for not investing in MTGA.
@@kodyholiday7685 Then I won't invest in a digital collection I do not own. Simple as that.
DotP2013 was my favorite format.
Magic duels series on xbox was my introduction to magic. I miss those times.
Great video, these games were the reason I got into magic, but I was wondering if you knew that all the games are backwards compatible on xbox right now? I have them all download and when I'm really bored I'll turn one on, my favorite was 2013 because it had a 4 player free for all planechase mode. Another good one was 2012 because it had 3V1 archenemy
This game actually brought me to play Magic. And I’m still playing it in paper and on Arena to this day. Arena really needs a 4 player mode.
This was my proper introduction to magic
Duel of the Planeswalkers on XBox is what got me into MTG
I miss Duels. I was so hyped when it was first premiered and I really liked playing it. I wish arena was a paid game that actually had a decent campaign/single player mode
If there was one thing that Duels had that made it better than Arena in my eyes, it was the campaign. I wish Arena had a campaign.
Oh how I miss this game, even after all this years it is still yeh game in my steam library with the most hours played
my first introduction to magic before even the cards is the PS1 rts game Battlemage, at that time my middle school is all about NBA cards. With hints from video game and us going through the card shop I was able to learn mtg. To me Arena is souless, not that battlemage is a great game but i see the creativity in it, i really wish arena has more to offer. its true that video games can be a good tool to introduce magic to people, just imagine making a storybased rpg based on lore, they just need to be more creative.
You know what I really miss? Battlegrounds. Magic the Gathering: Battlegrounds. It was functionally unique -- it wasn't even a CARD game, it was live-action wizard spellslinging in real time... You could only have 10 spells at a time but you had few restrictions on when you could play them -- only limited by how many mana crystals you had collected
I'll never forget my Magic Duels 2015 Bug Stall Deck that won via Spiders into Crater or infinite turns
the M13 duels of the planeswalkers was how i got my start in mtg!
I played the very last iteration of this on Steam in 2017, and it was fun. I went back in 2020 to look for it, trying to get it to transfer over to Arena, so I didn't start playing Arena then. Then the next year, I got into arena when I came to mobile, and I'm honestly glad to have some way to play magic casually whenever I want finally
I played the original magic duels when I was younger, and I loved it. Arena never really caught my attention, because it was so hard to build any functional deck as a free to play player
I played Magic Duels a lot and really liked it. It would have been nice to have some sort of wildcard or dust system, but it was still a pretty reasonable task to unlock new sets as they came out. I also really liked the restrictions on how many of a card you could run based on its rarity. I dont think thats a popular opinion, but it was a simple mechanic that prevented people from just stuffing decks with 4 of each mythic that was busted and added a little more depth to deckbuilding and card evaluation.
All I remember about the OG pc magic the gathering release was the purple bunny man with chainsaw DNA and outrageous 90's era live action cutscenes like it was made by Westwood Studio's. But that's probably before Duels since plainswalkers weren't really a thing back then. That was back when Leviathan was godly and Kavu's were everywhere.
Made by Sid Meier, released in 1997, confusingly *also* called "Duels of the Planeswalkers" (the card type didn't exist yet, but the backstory was already there by 1994 or so), people typically call it "Shandalar" now, because its adventure mode was on the plane of Shandalar.
I loved Magic duels, I always thought that the way the format was made, it could EASILY be a new format, you using 1 copy of each mythic and 2 copies of a rare etc etc. The games were usually balanced and super fun and they were not snowballing like current games are, one day the might do it.
I only played the last incarnation of magic duels and honesly I liked it way more than Arena.
Playing through the plot of the various sets was a very nice exoerience.
The deck restictions allowed for a variety of low powered decks, much different from the cookie cutter netdecks from Standard and I played enough to unlock the full new set on day 1 for free. The only thing I didn't like was that after a new set came out all the old AI decks were removed from the roster, making the game a little repetitive.
I played multiplayer yesterday and there was 3 other active players which surprised me while I was expecting nobody, thinking the game was dead and only AI games possible.
Duels.had good.music.and planechase too. And was where I first played magic
I still like to open up Duels 2015 because you had the option of setting up 4 player bot games and give the bots decks you had made or let them play with random decks among some in game decks and your decks. The AI is pretty terrible and it's fun to see them try to figure out your deck strategies, but 4 player games would really improve Arena. I've been playing mtgo instead since it has 4 player commander support that Arena has lacked form the beginning.
I was delighted to see that my brother had actually added Duels when he was using my computer. So in my frenzy to find some single player content MTG to play, I got a very pleasant surprise :)
Cannot wait to go home and fire it up ;)
Ah yes, Origins. Remember being really confused when Arena released and thinking, "didn't they just release this game already?"
Just something I felt, but the video came off a bit confusing when talking about Magic Duels 2015. Magic 2015 Duels of the Planeswalkers (released in 2014) and Magic Duels (released in 2015) were two separate games but the way you talk about it makes it sound like they are the same, especially when you say Magic 2015 but show Magic Duels footage. And talking about the game that would receive updates and then showing the trailer for the Duels of the Planeswalker game which doesn't make much sense. (Hopefully, this didn't sound confusing lol)
thats why rhings like cockatrice and 9nline strive in comparison to arena, tho i play arena more.
I mean, despite all the shit, Arena is freaking huge, theres no way Cockatrice is "striving in comparison"
This game was the best I love it especially the tag duel game
good thing I still have the lot of the duels games on my steam acc, so I can just download them and play at any time.
Good thing they never tried making a closed-off Magic digital card game with a predatory in-game economy again. No, don't look at Magic Spellslingers.
Man, I got into magic because my friends and I got the 2012 Duels release
Duels Origins was something I loved playing everyday a few years back. I actually liked the cardpool that they had, along with the 4, 3, 2, 1 restriction. Oh, well... dies to churn.
6:06 "WOTC turned into such a garbage company when they sold out to Hasbro"
Bruh, they bought WOTC in 1999...
You missed that Magic Duels had campaign
I still have my account for that game and every once in awhile, I play solo with an Eldrazi deck because I just love playing Eldrazi and Duels was the platform I liked using the best because it wasn't too hard to actually build the deck I wanted without Wizards trying to convince me that digital cards were more worth it than food or my kidney. It had issues of course, but it is definitely better than what we have now
Learned how to play with duels 2015, great game.
Magic Duels is where I started, on my mom's shitty laptop that was half physically broken. Duels was kinda a shitshow near the end of its time where I started, as it seemed that everyone I went up against including myself threw a hundred cards in huge decks with every color, as it was hard to get good cards quick. The deckbuilding mechanics really added to that, as it seems like it wanted you to add a bunch of random cards instead of your 4th copies. Emerge Eldrazi were the #1 threat, so you got every color to play them all and slowly grind it out. My favorite part of Duels was the Two-Headed Giant games, really hope they're added to Arena
this was the game that got me into magic
Magic Duels certainly wasn't a perfect game, but I got a lot more enjoyment out of Magic Duels than I ever have from Magic Arena.
Great video! I took a similar journey via Xbox.
I loved the OG Duels of the Planeswalkers, Playing 2HG there was a lot of fun!
Wizards of the coasting this ship into the ground.
I haven't played arena in a while but I did miss the campaign and PVE element of duels, its a shame they decided to abandon it.
always loved all the Duels mtg games, played a bit of the last one that is still on steam and it was cool, it did the things other online card games were doing at the time - daily quests and microtransactions for boosters, I think there was both casual and ranked VS play. Only played Arena during the closed beta and phased out afterwards never to look back as I had a bad feeling about it from the start.
I accidentally downloaded this on Steam when a friend told me to try out Arena. I couldn't beat the tutorial because I wouldn't draw the card that tutorial wanted you to play to beat it.
I kinda like the card copy count system. It's kinda dumb that its the only mode, but I would give this format a shot in paper.
We play Arena now, but I still have them installed on my Xbox! If there is anything WoTC could learn from Duels, it's the ability to play with friends. Arena needs more types of private matches that encourage playing with a friend instead of constantly shoving another ELO system down our throats. I understand you can play 1:1 in supported formats, but why not add a 4p FFA or Two Headed Giant?? Big margins were missed and still haven't been looked back on.
I think their excuse for the lack of two headed giant is they simply can't support it. The way they structured the engine and coded MTGA they would have to redo too much to accommodate for a 4 player format. Sounds like a load of laziness to me when there is substantial support from the community for the inclusion of the notorious format.
I'm a Yu-Gi-Oh player but I loved Duels. I'm not interested in Arena, it doesn't look like I'm playing with actual cards, just "tiles"
I tried to play Magic Duels when I was getting into Magic, it's actually what let me get Steam on that computer since my Mom needed to give account permission to install it and she wanted to play Magic too. I fell out of Duels simply because it felt so damn slow to play.
I still have all the Duels with their DLC on my 360 (games do not work on One). I had already started going through them to fully unlock every deck, and I am having fun. I had fully completed the game and 100% achievements within its first release week. I miss playing the game and I dislike Arena (gotta spend money and everyone has the same quick-win deck).
I played all of this games. The planechase and two headed giant modes were fun. I remember installing a mod that added vintage cards and playing vs a friend with vintage decks.
Summoning Salt should be proud:)
You couldn’t earn coins in 2014. It also wasn’t free, it was $10. Why are you showing Magic Duels gameplay while talking about Magic Duels of the Planeswalkers 2015? Magic Duels expansions were released alongside their paper release, they didn’t wait to see what was good in paper for balancing. Stainless never cared about balance, that’s why you could play copter, not because they “weren’t perfect.” They just didn’t include all the cards in each expansion and Felidar Guardian happened to be one of these cards. Honestly it sounds like you just made up that part trying to find a reason for why the cat wasn’t in your collection. This video was poorly researched and frustrating to listen to with all of its glaring misinformation. If you can’t find information on the series then maybe don’t make a research video on it.
I hated that they pulled Magic 2013 off of Steam/Xbox Live. I still play them, but I can't even download all my purchased content (which was ALL DLC they released) anymore.
Yeah after buying every Duels of the Planeswalker games, I just never fully got into Arena knowing that WotC could just pack up and leave at any time.
This boutta be a banger
I tried some of these game when I was not familliar with Magic, and... it was a complete mess for beginners, nothing was clear, even the phases was not clear, this disgust me from Magic. I really learnt with MTGA.
shoutout to shandalar yo
I like the video, I do feel the wrap up should have had a few more points and comparisons for a video essay style vidoe
I've been playing Historic Brawl since it changed to 100 cards and I've been free-to-play ever since. 50+ rare wildcards just rotting away. Ain't no problems over here. 🤷♂️
Duels was pretty sweet. I played all of them.
MTG Battlegrounds needs a comeback. Let me collect mana orbs and whack players with a stick
I actually still play Duels on Xbox. A B/G midrange deck that gets me good win rates.
7:29 ha - @gamesschooldad sighting 😂
I have played Duels of the Planeswalkers2012 but I was terrible at Magic and therefore terrible at the game. Ohohoh. The memories
Literally the game that got me into Magic
🔥 Video
amazing video i think you should make more content like this
Mannnn I put like $20 into Duels right before they announced they were killing it, still feels bad
You did!! Thank you!!
Wizard has this behaviour of deleting pages for multiple things. If you try to follow the lore via wiki and try to click on notes to read something official, 3 out of 4 links are dead. For some reason they want players to be mindlessy focused on new stuff that comes out, not looking back at what they can't make money off anymore.
While I have heard of this game, I never actually knew wat it was until now