A common trope in the Magic community these days is that of players quitting (or threatening to quit) Magic Online in favor of Hearthstone. There seems to be universal recognition that Hearthstone is an inferior game, and although the client for HS is better than MTGO, it’s not perfect by any means, as anyone who has played Blizzard’s game a fair amount can tell you.
What, then, is causing this constant stream of players threatening to quit Magic Online in favor of a lesser game? Anyone who has played Magic Online for an extended period can answer this one: convenience and time commitment. Hearthstone allows players to jump in, get playing within minutes, and spend as little or as much time as they want on the game. Magic Online, on the other hand, requires a minimum time commitment of at least two hours for anything other than two-player queues, which have been historically poor value—and you’ll probably have to sell some cards to get some tickets to buy some packs in order to get the best price on your entry fee.
People love convenience. They’ll always take the path of least resistance, even if it means moving to a lower-tier product. Adapting to this knowledge can help you better serve your customers and better attract players to sell you cards. You can also takes steps to save Future You™ time, making your life more convenient.
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I have found that TCGplayer is an excellent platform to sell single cards on, I posted about 100 cards last night in just over an hour. But when I have multiple playsets i like eBay. You can build one listing, list one playset at one price and have an additional stocks saved or just have them all available until you sell out. When you list multiple sets, everytime you sell one it moves you up on the best match list.
Thanks for the tips about eBay and organization. I always like tips about convenience and how to save time when listing/selling/packaging cards.
But… If I may… Your entire intro about Hearthstone and bla bla bla Magic Online and bla bla bla… WTF Kind of an into is that to convenience and organization? You realize that non Pro Traders ONLY see your intro paragraphs. You really could have done better introducing this by simply saying what you were going to talk about.
In fact… Many of the Pro Trader articles might be more attractive to non-subscribers if they had better intros. I know its hard to take a critique sometimes but I felt I had to say something here. I almost (almost!) didn’t log into my Pro Trader account to read the rest of this article because the intro about Hearthstone was so weak and off topic. After reading through I found a ton of valuable information, so I’m glad I did read through.
Sorry I ripped your intro but the only reason I had to is because I liked the article. You could have just as easily put your Hearthstone/MTGO rant in the middle somewhere right? I think your article would have been a lot more attractive If you simply started with your third paragraph. That is a good intro but you really buried it.