Why do players think it's acceptable to have an "economy" for trading virtual gamepieces? Why don't they walk away and play game/culture that charges a flat fee or a time/usage-based subscription?
In short, because Magic is one of the best games ever designed, and this is the only sanctioned way to play the full game online. Magic online was created a long, long time ago before more modern concepts of game monetization (freemium / mtx based) were developed. It's ended up as something more akin to an online poker room than a gaming server.
I get why people think it's silly and so forth, but I can't agree more with "one of the best games ever designed." Richard Garfield gave the world something really tremendous with MtG
Hearthstone is very well designed for what it is--an online-only Magic the Gathering that is accessible in a casual way.
I simply won't spend on Magic Online since I can't exit. In addition, why should I spend hundreds of dollars on something whose value can plunge drastically?
If you have actual physical cards, you can sell them. Powerful modern cards hold their value reasonably well.
You can exit from MTGO pretty easily? There are automated bots that will buy your cards for tickets, and those same companies will give you cash for those tickets (95 cents per ticket right now, not a terrible rate).
Pretty much all that is necessary for an "economy" to develop is some form of scarcity, the ability to trade reasonably freely, and the ability of the traders to set prices. If you've got that, you'll get a market of one sort or another, and it's not hard to even accidentally end up meeting one of the conditions when you didn't mean to. Charging flat fees or usage-based subscription fees is not enough to guarantee that an economy will still not emerge... MMORPGs have those things and economies, too.
(There's not much guarantee about what sort of economy you'll get... it's easy to get one that pathological in some sense, either psychological or mathematical. But you'll get something.)
Basically, because Wizards of the Coast came up with the core concepts of the pay-to-win money treadmill game 15 years before the App Store launched--low cost to start playing, psychological impetus to spend more money on a regular basis, appealing to kids and teens with lots of free time and a willingness to badger their parents for money, social enough that players will stay in the game for years because all their friends play. It's kind of breathtaking when you look at the parallels now.
They had that entire previously-untapped goldmine of a market space to themselves (or near enough, given the quality of their early competition) for long enough to get really culturally entrenched, and that meant they were able to shift the model online (and keep a much greater chunk of the profits) without as much resistance as you might expect--if you already believe that 5 cents' worth of ink and cardboard can be worth dozens or hundreds of dollars if it's got the right picture on it, it's a lot easier to believe that the same picture on your computer screen can be worth the same.
Sure, but you're not going to tournaments unless you're already a serious player, and if you're a serious player you're going to be buying new cards on the regular. The tournaments and such are really just icing, from WotC's perspective.
MTG, like many other collectible card games, is as much about the "economy" and the collecting aspect, as it is about actually 'playing' the game. This has unsurprisingly carried onto the official online version as well.
Those who don't want to pay, have always been able to play for free with GccG and others.
