I started heavily playing some time around when Mirage first came out, and damned if I'm not still digging it. It introduced me to the whole concept of gaming as I know it now, a massive glorious umbrella featuring CCGs, table-top RPGs, super-geeky board games and non-collectable card games, and of course my beloved video games. It's damn fun, ate up a lot of hours in our especially geeky house back in college, and to this day is the easiest way to find something to do with old buddies when they drop by, to the extent that it's not uncommon for most of us keeping a deck on hand- often a rather gloriously outdated deck, but still -for such visits.
tl;dr, Magic kicks ass and anyone who wants to play it kicks ass too.