I thought Maro made a Tumblr post in which he said they'd decided to go back to non-optional triggers, for the sake of MTGO.

No card type? Might wanna change that.

As well as the points jmg mentions, ISTR Wizards saying the change was also to avoid the feel-bad factor of having to point out to the opponent "You gain life again." "Oh yeah, I forgot. Thanks." ... "You gain another two life." "Thanks!" ... "You forgot to gain your life AGAIN..."

­Soul's Attendant was printed for this exact reason, resigning Soul Warden in the process. The thought process has more to do with what happens in a casual game when one player realizes they were supposed to be gaining life this whole time. Soul Warden says you must gain that life, so many casual players will stop the game and try to figure out how much life they should have gained. Oh, were there three token creatures? Did Jimmy shuffle his graveyard into his library, or was that last game?

That's a bit of a mess. When the card says "you may" however, many casual players respond by saying "Yeah, you chose not to.", and often that player shrugs it off. "My bad." And the game continues.

In theory this also affects tournament games, but in practice it doesn't, really. You can call a judge over to point out that a player hasn't been gaining life this whole time, but then you'll both get a warning. It's your fault, as well as your opponent's fault, for not keeping track of the game state, then the game continues.

As for the MTGO problem, you're right, that's a hassle. But I'm pretty sure Wizards is looking toward Duels of the Planeswalkers as being the future of digital Magic, and that game will just give you the life whether you want it or not. Duels has been one of the top selling downloadable games on Xbox for a few years running, and does an excellent job introducing how to play the game to new players. For hardened MTGO players, it must seem terrible... but as the AI gets better and better, the distinctions between MTGO and Duels should drop, and MTGO should eventually become an anachronistic artifact. I am, of course, assuming that Wizards wishes to give Duels all the features (drafting, buying boosters, customizing a deck from scratch) that MTGO has... they're just limited by current technology. ­

I think it's a rules era thing; for a while you'd get dinged by excessively snarky rules-lawyers if you forgot to do a purely-beneficial 'must'. Pretty sure they fixed that up.

Is there a reason that the lifegain is optional? When are you ever going to decline? Extraneous "you mays" are okay on paper, but they're a pain in the butt in Magic Online, so you probably want to make it happen automatically unless there's a good reason to make it optional.

I like the card otherwise, though.

Ha! ★!

Well, you can rest assured that if I ever do join the dark side, I will at least provide user options to "NEVER SHOW ME ANY FACEBOOK LINKS EVER".

I shall have to make a set with incredibly old school sensibilities at some point and time. 5 casting cost 3/3 creatures with Snow-Covered Plainswalk and whatnot. Lots of banding. Incredibly broken engine cards. Everyone will hate me. It would be pretty crazy to draft, though...

Stompy!

... I miss the days of Craw Wurm setting the standard.