Magicthegathering.com

Magicthegathering.com (also referred to as DailyMTG.com and by fans as the Mothership) is the official website for the game of Magic: The Gathering and a subpage of www.wizards.com, the official homepage of Wizards of the Coast. It features columns by R&D members and prominent Magic players.

History

Start

Magicthegathering.com followed up on Duelist Online. It went online in early 2000, but the first page was not Magic specific (May 30, 2000 edition). The first Magic specific page went online in early 2001 around the time of 7th Edition (April 30, 2001). The site moved to a column format (ala newspaper looking) in early 2002. When web editor Aaron Forsythe left in 2003 to become part of R&D, it was considered to merge the site with Magic Online and the Sideboard website. This was effectuated in early 2004, when Scott Johns took over.

Facelifts

Further facelifts and updates followed in August 2005, July 2006 and September 2006. A complete overhaul of the site was achieved in August 2008. After Scott Johns, Kelly Digges managed the site. Since 2012, Trick Jarrett and Mike McArtor were the content managers.

Rasmussen era

In 2014, Blake Rasmussen became copy editor-in-chief and the site was completely revamped, again. Changes included a responsive design for an improved browsing experience on any web-connected device, a rich and interconnected story section, a new calendar, improved search functionality, and a more robust experience for visitors reading in non-English languages. The revamped site wasn't functioning very well in the first weeks and met with a lot of criticism. This led to another complete redesign, only six months later. In January 2016 Rasmussen let go of the strict weekly format of the site. The roster of authors and the range of content were expanded, and the site now could be updated several times a day at irregular intervals. Rasmussen introduced the Daily Magic Update, retired Magic Arcana and rechristened Uncharted Realms to the rather bland "Official Magic Fiction" (later Magic Story). "Daily Magic Update" was expanded upon in the November 2017 update, "making use of the newest web design technology". As it turned out, this meant that the site experienced a serious decline in original content, actuality and updates.

MPL era

When the Magic Pro League was established, a new site under Magic.gg was started. Initially, the site only held the event pages for the major tournaments, but once the Rivals League was up and running much of the articles regarding competitive play, the event archives, and most of the Arena update news was migrated here as well. League play weekend information and Arena decklists also started to be published here.

Notable content

Weekly

Nowadays, only Mark Rosewater's Making Magic on Mondays is the only regular article series.

Standard Set Release Cycle

• Card Previews, by various authors, for three weeks before set release.
• Magic Story on Wednesdays, by the Magic Creative Team. Two weeks before and up to a month after.
• Prerelease Primer, by Gavin Verhey.

Annual

• State of Design, Mark Rosewater, as Head Designer, examines the current state of Magic design by looking back at the previous year to appraise what went right and wrong with Magic design (August).
• Announcement Day. Originally planned as a biannual mass product announcement — one in the spring and one in the fall. As of November 2018, WotC was rethinking how and when they announced products. Announcements were more spread out. For 2020, the most important upcoming sets were announced on September 4, 2019.

Irregular

• Magic Digital
• Top Decks by Mike Flores and later Luis Scott-Vargas.
• Magic Online Weekly Announcements Blog.
• Magic Online Bug Blog.
• How to Play....
• Ways to Play.
• Magic Lifestyle.
• Magic Podcast.
• Walking the Planes. Video series hosted by Nathan Holt, Walking the Planes documents various large tournaments (such as Grand Prix or Pro Tour) and the overall Magic scene in a light-hearted fashion. It often includes interviews with pro players. The series also features small sketches about the misadventures of an unnamed necromancer planeswalker (played by Holt).
• Friday Nights. Video series produced by the Canadian sketch comedy group LoadingReadyRun, the series documents the group's own experience in playing Magic and its contact with the culture surrounding the game (e.g. a road trip to Grand Prix Calgary 2013), exaggerated for humorous effect.
• Beyond the Basics by Gavin Verhey.
• Play Design on Fridays, by Melissa DeTora and others.

Retired content

Magic Arcana

Magic Arcana was a section of the magicthegathering.com site that provided readers with sneak peeks of future products and revelations of little-known factoids about the game's past. It used to be updated daily, but after 2014 it wasn't updated on Fridays anymore. In 2016 it was incorporated in the Daily Magic Update.

Magic Arcana made its debut on January 2, 2002. Mark Rosewater wrote:

“

Each day we will tell you or show you something you’ve never heard or seen before. News of an upcoming set, original sketches, alternative packaging, playtest cards, uncropped artwork, style guide images, etc. "Magic Arcana" will go where no Magic site has gone before.

”

Every Friday until 2014, Magic Arcana had a "Wallpaper of the Week", which is a card artwork that is downloadable at 1280 x 960 pixels, 1280 x 1024 pixels, 1024 x 768 pixels, and 800 x 600 pixels. Magic Arcana kept an archive of Wallpapers of the Week.

The Lexicon was another regular part of Magic Arcana. The Lexicons were articles that defined words used in card titles. For instance, the last entry lists a caldera noun as "A large crater formed by volcanic explosion or by the collapse of a volcanic cone."

The 1000th Magic Arcana was updated on January 25, 2006.

Ask Wizards

Ask Wizards is a section of the magicthegathering.com site that answers sent-in questions of the public. It changed from daily, to weekly (allowing for staff holidays.) In 2014 it became a monthly feature. Later it disappeared altogether.

Card of the Day

Every weekday day, Card of the Day was updated with a Magic card with an interesting factoid or two; this feature provided readers with "inside" scoops and Easter Eggs. The chosen card often related to the theme of the week, if there was one, or the other cards that are chosen during that week.

FlavOracle

The FlavOracle was a pendant of the Oracle, a document that housed the official flavor text for every Magic card (basic sets, expansion sets, and promotional cards). In addition, MagicTheGathering.com ran an ongoing feature that allowed readers to submit flavor text for older cards. After a screening process, a popular vote would determine the eventual winner for each card, and the winning text would be added into the FlavOracle. The FlavOracle was introduced in March, 2002. and used to provide flavor text for six cards in Eighth Edition. It was already retired by December 2004, because of lack of interest.

Orb of Insight

The Orb of Insight was a recurrent feature that was available prior to a set's release. It was a JavaScript-based object that, when available, one could type in a term, word, or number, and the Orb would return with the number of mentions of such term in the forthcoming expansion. Although it did not take flavor text into consideration, it did consider card names and rules text.

Mark Rosewater wrote of the Orb of Insight:

“

You enter any word, and the Orb will tell you how many times that word appears in [a given set]. It counts all text on the cards with the exception of flavor text. What can you figure out with this little tool? To be honest, I’m not sure. But I plan to have fun watching all of you learn what you can.

”

As it turned out, players could find out an extremely large amount of information. Through data-mining key word frequencies to figure out set structure with preview set data, like nonbasic lands, multicolored cards, proper terms (Legendaries and named references) and mechanical relevance. Methods used in preview season were successful enough to retire the Orb.

Mistform Ultimus Watch

The Mistform Ultimus Watch was a recurring sub-feature that kept track of what creature types Mistform Ultimus had become, and in effect, what new creature types recently had been added to Magic.

Theme weeks

In the early days, the site would have theme weeks to fill the gaps between the releases of new products.

Columns

Regular columns used to be:

• Limited Information by Steve Sadin
• Serious Fun by Adam Styborski
• Building on a Budget by Jacob Van Lunen
• From the Lab by Noel deCordova
• The Week That Was by Brian David-Marshall
• Uncommon Knowledge was a history column that ran from January 2, 2002, to August 15, 2003, with a single column on November 29, 2006, during the Time Spiral nostalgia period. It was authored by Ben Bleiweiss with one guest article by Aaron Forsythe on November 6, 2002.
• Saturday School was a question and answer column that ran from October 2002 to July 2006. It was first authored by Norwegian Rune Horvik, then John Carter.
• Magic Academy was a rules introduction column that ran from July 2006 to August 2007. It was initially authored by Ted Knutson, then Jeff Cunningham. Guest lecturers included Scott Johns, Ben Rubin, and Shuhei Nakamura.
• Taste the Magic by Matt Cavotta, dedicated to flavor
• Savor the Flavor by Doug Beyer, its successor
• Uncharted Realms by various authors
• Level One by Reid Duke, a full course (August 2014 - October 2015) for anyone looking to improve their play or learn more about Magic.
• Latest Developments on Fridays, by Aaron Forsythe, Tom LaPille and later by Sam Stoddard.
• Daily Magic Update by Blake Rasmussen.

Gallery

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  MTG.com banner for the week from October 1, 2007, to October 8, 2007.