Is MTGO worth it?

[Ascension]

I want to step my game up this season and I have a few questions to ask before I make the investment.

Is the level of competition worth paying for if you're planning on playing seriously?
Do you think it gives you much of an edge versus other paper players?
How expensive does juggling a MTGO and paper magic get?

Would really appreciate any reply's. Thanks.

[Alex]

Depends on how good you already are at Magic. I juggle both pretty easily, but I've been freerolling paper Magic for a long time now. MTGO has steeper competition at most hours of the day, so it does help improve your game quite a bit very quickly, but it comes at the price of likely getting your dreams crushed repeatedly until you improve.

I don't think I'd try and juggle both if I weren't already so far into paper Magic, but since I can show up to basically any event and at least break even it doesn't bother me as much that I pour my excess funds into MTGO.

[Kaitscralt]

The skill level on MTGO is astronomically higher than an FNM, unless you do 3-pack Swiss events in which case it's about the same.

[Alex]

The skill level on MTGO is astronomically higher than an FNM, unless you do 3-pack Swiss events in which case it's about the same.

I don't know, I've seen some pretty dumb shit in 8-4s, lol.

[Kaitscralt]

Well yeah, but for the most part an 8-4 or Daily is high quality competition

[Ascension]

I feel like I'm not getting any better because I can only play paper magic on the weekends, and the people on cockatrice besides the two friends I test with are either bad or just testing out crazy brews... Which is fine, I have no problem with brews or anything but you just don't get accurate results for real tournaments.

[imopen2]

the players online are a lot better than the players on cockatrice or mws. they are also better on average than irl paper magic players so you will definitely get more accurate play test results and improve many of your skills.

HOWEVER:
1. the online metagame and the paper meta are often different
and
2. unless you continue to play paper magic somewhat consistently, your irl skills (reading your opponent, triggering your abilities etc) can get rusty and you may miss a trigger because the computer is no longer remembering them for you.

I play almost exclusively online these days (excluding the occasional PTQ, GP, and/or casual cubing). Magic online can get expensive if you get on a cold streak but if you are playing constructed and are good then there is much less cost. I play limited so I need to be good but also smart about card values and putting together complete sets that I can later redeem (I have 4 complete
sets of RtR and 2 sets of each GTC and DGM for example).

Hope this helps a little

[Thrillho]

if you take magic seriously at all/you're only having fun when you're actually competing instead of just beating people much worse than you are, magic online is probably the best thing you can do.
playing in simulators is ok if you need to test decks with people in your play group, particularly if you don't have the cards on MODO or those cards aren't released yet, but using them as your primary non-RL play vehicle is not doing you any favors.

the only thing that i've found simulators good for are drafting, because it lets you know what a good versus bad deck looks like and the pooled data helps with pick orders/lets you know when something's awry in a draft, although this is mostly because i don't have an internet connection or time that i can dedicate enough to consistently playing MODO and i travel too much with a mac to actually have the opportunity to play.