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There are two questions tagged ; however, the name of the game is Magic Online, not Magic: The Gathering Online (the "The Gathering" part is just part of the logo in this case: it is not referred to as such in copy).

This should be renamed to . It probably makes sense, after the rename, to add a synonym to it for and (its colloquial name).

This solution would also have the side effect of matching our usage of Magic 2012/2013, standardizing Magic-related games on magic-* for the main tag and mtg-* as a synonym.

Google ranking

Rilgon Arcsinh brings up the valid concern of whether the change could adversely affect our Google ranking for those who might be searching under other forms of the game name (including, ostensibly, "MTG Online"). This change will have very little (if any) effect on this:

That is to say, Google is smart enough to understand you mean Magic Online when you try to search on "mtgo", "magic online", "mtg online", or "magic the gathering online", so it's unnecessary to explicitly mention the colloquial forms in our questions or tags. The synonyms are then just needed in case someone starts typing "mtg" instead of "magic" when they go to add tags.

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My only concern regarding this would be that most players - and, presumably, those that would be googling for questions related to it - usually refer to it as MTG Online (or MTGO). That said, if a synonym can keep that sort of symbolic link where questions can be found online through "mtg online $QUERY", then all for it.

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  • "MTGO" sure, but [citation needed] on "most players" calling it "MTG Online": it's referred to as either Magic Online or MTGO colloquially, with the former being its official name. There's no risk of Googlers getting confused, either: besides us only having two questions (so we don't rank on "mtg online" anyway), Google automatically replaces "mtg online" with "magic: the gathering online" in searches, which is then dominated results for "magic online".
    – user3389
    Jul 31, 2012 at 6:55
  • Oh I really can't cite it, it's wholly subjective, founded off of following a few MTG pros on Twitter. :P Though I did not know about Google's auto-replacement - that's a pretty strong argument in favor of the renaming (though I do not get the prompt or replacement, myself).
    – Rilgon Arcsinh
    Jul 31, 2012 at 6:58
  • It's not a prompt like "Did you mean" or "Searching instead for": unless you do a verbatim search, Google will just expand it silently. You can tell by what words are bolded in search results, and also by the results being identical to a search for "magic the gathering online". Another data point: we rank first for "mtgo effective card collection" despite "MTGO" not appearing at all in this question.
    – user3389
    Jul 31, 2012 at 7:03
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    @MarkTrapp Your edit summarily covers my only real concern to the idea - not that the concern stopped me from upvoting it to begin with. :)
    – Rilgon Arcsinh
    Jul 31, 2012 at 12:32
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Given that the tag has remained for many years and that this appears to be the official name of the game (even though WOTC itself colloquially refers to the game as 'Magic Online' in promos, updates etc), the tag was renamed to as per this meta.

However, I have added additional synonyms to the tag to address the concerns noted above. They are as follows:

If anyone has any other tag synonym suggestions or wishes to push the case for to be the primary tag further, let me know :)

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  • I had thought that the official name of the game was Magic: The Gathering Online, since that's what Wikipedia calls it. Although it does say that it was originally released as Magic Online.
    – Thunderforge
    Feb 14, 2018 at 0:57
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    @Thunderforge - Yeah, I mean "Magic The Gathering: Online" appears to be correct today, even if it was "Magic Online" in the past and still referred to as such colloquially. I did research it before the rename to make sure it was the correct option :)
    – Robotnik Mod
    Feb 14, 2018 at 1:03

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