7 ms·

The History of Magic: The Gathering Online

59 points by Adrock 11y ago

CurtMonash 11y ago
I remember arguing in the Magic Usenet group as to whether such a thing was even possible. I was on the "Yes" side, touting the virtues of object-oriented programming.
minimaxir 11y ago
Magic the Gathering Online was basically the entirety of online gaming in my teenage years (the rest was World of Warcraft and Guild Wars, ahem). The server problems and managers mentioned in the article triggered a lot of nostalgia, as it taught me back than that online servers are not made of magic and ponies, and QA is actually something companies should care about. I did actually get invited to a few beta tests for new MTGO sets, though. :) I gave up in college after I learned that Magic the Gathering is actually kinda expensive.
AndrewStephens 11y ago
I used MtGO version 1 as a filthy causal player and had fun, but the whole experience was very frustrating. For a game that involved occasionally moving a few rectangles around the screen, MtGO had huge (and ever increasing) system requirements for the time and never really ran well even on my fairly well-spec'ed machine. As I recall it also had some weird limitations on screen modes which led to stupidly crowded playing surfaces. I hear the recent versions on MtGO are better, but it still isn't cross-platform or system friendly. It's a shame, because the basic game shone through the cruddy front-end and the servers actually enforced the rules well.
- minimaxir 11y ago
  > I hear the recent versions on MtGO are better From what I've read, the recent versions of MTGO are worse. Yes, worse than the client made in 2002, with fewer features and a worse UI. https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/2gz8k2/an_average_draft_with_v4/ https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/2gz8k2/an_average...
  - gbraad 11y ago
    Recent versions still do not seem to work well (It is based on .NET :-s). I tried it about a month ago, and it crashes instantly on starting to play a game. Many people suggest to play it from a virtual machine. I just gave up for now... and went back to paper Magic, Duels and CardForge.
    - itsdrewmiller 11y ago
      I started playing when v4 was just moving into "wide beta", and honestly it was a pretty solid experience for what I was doing - mostly drafting and sealed. I had a few games lost to server issues, but they always refunded the entry fees whenever that happened and they let you keep any prizes you won, too. The stability has improved quite a bit over the past couple of years, too, to the point where now the only problem I ever really have is wireless blips causing needless disconnects (do some retries on a timeout, folks!). There was one day where v4 was down, so I got v3 to try to keep playing. For all the people saying v4 is a step down, I want a hit of whatever it is you are on. v3 seemed worse than apprentice, which I am pretty sure I played on windows 95 when it first came out. I think the commentary on features/UI is almost completely dominated by people who are curmudgeonly and view any change as bad. I can't really speak too much to previous version stability, but right now things are good.
- Lazare 11y ago
  > I hear the recent versions on MtGO are better Oh god no. Yeah, version 1 was bad, (Leaping Lizards was clearly in over their heads) so Wizards stepped in and made everything utterly worse. First they made a half-assed attempt at a "version 2", which they bungled so badly they had to actually shut the game down while they recovered the pieces. But this, rather than convincing them that they hadn't a clue how to write or operate MTGO, instead convinced them that they needed to double down. For version 3, they decided rewrite the entire thing from scratch. Sort of an unholy amalgamation of second-system effect, NIH syndrome, and the coding skills you'd expect from a company that had never made a computer game before. Version 3 was hugely delayed, hugely overbudget, and...well...utter, utter crap. The UI was worse, many features were lost, performance was bad, stability was terrible; there was literally no advantage over version 2. It took them 5 years to launch it, more to make it playable, and when it was done, it was so bad I stopped player literally because I couldn't stand the client any more. Apparently there's a version 4 now, but it's basically just 3.1; they didn't fix any of the core issues. If they could bring back something that looked and worked like version 2, I might start playing again, but really, every version they released was some form of pathetically bad. There's literally a half dozen half-assed shareware deck builders from 15 years ago that had better UIs than any MTGO client has ever had. :( Even before Hearthstone, I used to wonder what might have been if Wizards had signed a deal with a "real" developer like Blizzard to build and run the game properly. With the launch of Hearthstone, I think we know. Oh well.
  - ploxiln 11y ago
    When the years add up like that, you have to wonder what they're thinking internally. So many years! You also hear this about state payroll systems being built by defense contractors, or the F35, etc. They're in a position where they have too much money to be forced to change, regardless of their incompetence. I know it happens, I know why, but it's still so amazing...
  - thaumasiotes 11y ago
    > Version 3 was hugely delayed, hugely overbudget, and...well...utter, utter crap. The UI was worse, many features were lost, performance was bad, stability was terrible; there was literally no advantage over version 2. From the players' side, v3 was just much, much, much worse than v2. But I'm pretty sure WotC realized that. I've heard, though I can't personally attest, that the reason they stuck with v3 was that v2 ran on a single server, and they didn't know how to fix it.
ericdykstra 11y ago
Tangential, but this is such a great illustration of how Blizzard as a company has succeeded time and time again in taking nearly impenetrable games and genres and turning them into something that new players can enjoy, while still retaining enough depth to make the games interesting for advanced players. From MtG and its everchanging sets, significant expense, multiple formats and awful online experience/UI came Hearthstone. A card game that tens of millions have gotten into. It looks fantastic, takes no initial investment, and costs a fraction of what a MtGO deck costs to go from nothing to a top tier competitive deck. Other examples: - Roguelikes -> Diablo - RTS -> Warcraft & Starcraft - MMO -> World of Warcraft - DotA/2 -> Heroes of the Storm - Team Fortress/2 -> Overwatch (not yet released) It's an interesting case study on a company that's succeeded in taking genres usually reserved for a niche audience and bringing them to the masses. It's not a company without flaws and missteps, but it's an interesting lesson in bringing existing markets to a wider audience. I wonder if there's something more general that can be gleaned from their strategy to products outside of games.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
  - Steko 11y ago
    Diablo 3 was mediocre because the entire genre has been trumped by MMOs. Diablo, x-craft, WoW and HS were all landmarks in their time and good examples of what grandparent is talking about. HotS was beaten to the punch by LOL and Overwatch who knows.
    - minimaxir 11y ago
      The real reason Diablo 3 was mediocre was because of the balancing around the Real Money Auction House and the perverse incentives that resulted. Since it was removed, and now that they've been adding good content for free, the game has improved significantly.
      - Steko 11y ago
stevecalifornia 11y ago
My friend and I spent about 5 years making an online collectible card game. We started around 2003, around the same time that MTG was reporting scaling issues. Their scale issues inspired me to architect a game server that was horizontally scalable-- theoretically infinitely. Our game, from the start, was built to: 1) playable from the web with no client (1mb flash, I suppose) 2) bi-directional socket based to avoid polling and be snappy 3) server is scalable horizontally 4) adding complex cards and rules will not require a client update and would be easy. We managed to complete all these goals and produce what I still consider to be our magnum opus of software development. The scaling worked by having socket servers provide the end-point to the client, and then behind the socket servers were chat services, game services, trading services, card building services and deck services. So, lets say we had 4 socket servers running: you and I might end up on different socket servers, but we could still play against each other because all the socket servers are doing is relaying your commands to a game server that is running our game. In order to scale, we just add more servers. (Also, if we get disconnected you can reconnect easily. Also, spectating is easy.) My friend came up with the idea of making the Flash front-end use generic commands. So instead of the server telling the front-end "Ship A attacks Ship B for 5 damage" it says "Draw a red arrow from Card #123 to Card #456 and display a red number 5". This allowed us to make cards that did all kinds of crazy things without having to do anything to the client. To implement a card that does damage to all of a player's ships you just have to update the server to send the command "Draw a red arrow from Card #123 to Card #456, Card #789, etc...". Finally, the core game engine on the server was an event loop. Thus, making new cards and rules was super easy because all you had to do in code was say "I want this new card to subscribe to the Player Draw Card event, and in that event code: "if drawer is this.owner, draw twice the amount as regular and then this.sendtograve." I was continually blown away by what crazy cards we could make up and how little code it took to implement. As we were creating this game our day jobs became more and more serious and when we finally had the final version complete we both agreed to burn the code and resources to DVD and put it on the shelve. The idea of starting a new journey in marketing and building a company was overwhelming. (Just three months ago I got it all running in the cloud with very little effort for nostalgias sake). I still think about pinging WOTC and asking if they'd like to see what we have and maybe make use of it. I knew WOTC had an online version of MOTG but I had NO idea it had so many rough patches or I would have been down in front of their office with a sign asking them to look at what we have. If anyone from WOTC or other would like to see or talk about the game, feel free to message me.
Hosohoso 11y ago
I still remember buying full boxes of cards starting with Antiquities and made a lot of money selling rares from Legends boxes later. What a time.
MrGando 11y ago
I've been playing MTGO since the end of v2. Someone should write a book about how badly managed this game is. The guy in charge of the thing "Worth" has o real technical background whatsoever, and you can see how that affects the vision and goals of the product. It's a disgrace. And should be a software case study. PS: been playing MtG since 1995
- Everlag 11y ago
  It doesn't help that transitioning to digital is hilariously difficult. Even with a properly managed team, moving 20+ years of edge cases and odd interactions for a turing complete game is going to be difficult. The fact that they need to come up with a usable ui on top of that only adds to the suffering. Its not unsurprising that what they currently have can only be considered working in the most generous and utilitarian sense. Don't mistake me for covering for Worth: a top quality group led by management who knew what they were doing would be much farther in both correctness and UX.
  - MrGando 11y ago
    Totally agree with you, this is not an easy task at all, totally the opposite. And that's why I state that Worth is completely underprepared to tackle such a challenge. And still, it would make a great case of analysis... I see it as one of the biggest -and saddest- failures in Digital Gaming (if not the greatest), of the last 20 years.
  - Lazare 11y ago
    What's interesting, I think, is that MTGOs failures have been basically 100% on the other side. They've been plagued by a nightmare lack of stability and scalability, to the point where they've had to shut the game down, roll back the database to restore corruption, aggressively limit logins, and for long stretches of time simply not hold the events which are the main attraction (and money maker) for the game. On the other hand, the actual cards just work. The hard part for them, it seems, is "operating a game that more than a few hundred people want to play", not the rules engine.
  - bsder 11y ago
Lazare 11y ago
For another take on MTGO, see: http://thedailywtf.com/articles/Do-You-Believe-In-Magic-Online http://thedailywtf.com/articles/Do-You-Believe-In-Magic-Onli...
Yhippa 11y ago
Very good recollection of the history of this game. I've been playing since 2002. I really wanted to keep up with this game but WotC just made it difficult to with each successive release of the game which tended to be worse than the previous one. I have no idea what is going on over there. People had to have been throwing money hand over fist to allow them to fail so badly and keep going. It frustrates me to no end that we don't have anything playable on the web or all over mobile. DotP and Duels Origins don't count. I feel that this type of thing should have been figured out. I also wonder what internal conversations were going on about the Hearthstone ascendant. I keep hearing that they're not trying to do the same thing and that they're not truly competitors but I see a whole generation of kids and adults that have moved on to that. I like the deep play of MtG but Hearthstone just feels holistically better.
- ubernostrum 11y ago
  I have no idea what is going on over there. People had to have been throwing money hand over fist to allow them to fail so badly and keep going. Reports have indicated that Magic Online is around 17% of Magic's revenue ($43 million out of $250 million).
praptak 11y ago
I've had a glance at MtG and my first thought was that this thing must be a nightmare to code with all the cards that change rules of the game. Anybody care to comment whether that's the case and how well did they cope with the complexity?
- nkassis 11y ago
  That part of the game (game rule logic) usually works (with some bugs) but the UI suffers from extremely poor UX and is unresponsive. This is endemic throughout the game including area where game rules aren`t being evaluated. Add on poor server stability that causes players who paid to participate in events to get kicked out and loose due to the issues and the experience is horrible. It`s a credit to the quality of the card game that such a crappy experience is even played at all.
cornhomb 11y ago
http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/03/11/392381112/episode-609-the-curse-of-the-black-lotus http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/03/11/392381112/episo...

59 points by Adrock 11y ago

I remember arguing in the Magic Usenet group as to whether such a thing was even possible. I was on the "Yes" side, touting the virtues of object-oriented programming.

minimaxir 11y ago

Magic the Gathering Online was basically the entirety of online gaming in my teenage years (the rest was World of Warcraft and Guild Wars, ahem). The server problems and managers mentioned in the article triggered a lot of nostalgia, as it taught me back than that online servers are not made of magic and ponies, and QA is actually something companies should care about. I did actually get invited to a few beta tests for new MTGO sets, though. :) I gave up in college after I learned that Magic the Gathering is actually kinda expensive.

AndrewStephens 11y ago

I used MtGO version 1 as a filthy causal player and had fun, but the whole experience was very frustrating. For a game that involved occasionally moving a few rectangles around the screen, MtGO had huge (and ever increasing) system requirements for the time and never really ran well even on my fairly well-spec'ed machine. As I recall it also had some weird limitations on screen modes which led to stupidly crowded playing surfaces. I hear the recent versions on MtGO are better, but it still isn't cross-platform or system friendly. It's a shame, because the basic game shone through the cruddy front-end and the servers actually enforced the rules well.

minimaxir 11y ago
> I hear the recent versions on MtGO are better From what I've read, the recent versions of MTGO are worse. Yes, worse than the client made in 2002, with fewer features and a worse UI. https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/2gz8k2/an_average_draft_with_v4/ https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/2gz8k2/an_average...
- gbraad 11y ago
  Recent versions still do not seem to work well (It is based on .NET :-s). I tried it about a month ago, and it crashes instantly on starting to play a game. Many people suggest to play it from a virtual machine. I just gave up for now... and went back to paper Magic, Duels and CardForge.
  - itsdrewmiller 11y ago
    I started playing when v4 was just moving into "wide beta", and honestly it was a pretty solid experience for what I was doing - mostly drafting and sealed. I had a few games lost to server issues, but they always refunded the entry fees whenever that happened and they let you keep any prizes you won, too. The stability has improved quite a bit over the past couple of years, too, to the point where now the only problem I ever really have is wireless blips causing needless disconnects (do some retries on a timeout, folks!). There was one day where v4 was down, so I got v3 to try to keep playing. For all the people saying v4 is a step down, I want a hit of whatever it is you are on. v3 seemed worse than apprentice, which I am pretty sure I played on windows 95 when it first came out. I think the commentary on features/UI is almost completely dominated by people who are curmudgeonly and view any change as bad. I can't really speak too much to previous version stability, but right now things are good.
Lazare 11y ago
> I hear the recent versions on MtGO are better Oh god no. Yeah, version 1 was bad, (Leaping Lizards was clearly in over their heads) so Wizards stepped in and made everything utterly worse. First they made a half-assed attempt at a "version 2", which they bungled so badly they had to actually shut the game down while they recovered the pieces. But this, rather than convincing them that they hadn't a clue how to write or operate MTGO, instead convinced them that they needed to double down. For version 3, they decided rewrite the entire thing from scratch. Sort of an unholy amalgamation of second-system effect, NIH syndrome, and the coding skills you'd expect from a company that had never made a computer game before. Version 3 was hugely delayed, hugely overbudget, and...well...utter, utter crap. The UI was worse, many features were lost, performance was bad, stability was terrible; there was literally no advantage over version 2. It took them 5 years to launch it, more to make it playable, and when it was done, it was so bad I stopped player literally because I couldn't stand the client any more. Apparently there's a version 4 now, but it's basically just 3.1; they didn't fix any of the core issues. If they could bring back something that looked and worked like version 2, I might start playing again, but really, every version they released was some form of pathetically bad. There's literally a half dozen half-assed shareware deck builders from 15 years ago that had better UIs than any MTGO client has ever had. :( Even before Hearthstone, I used to wonder what might have been if Wizards had signed a deal with a "real" developer like Blizzard to build and run the game properly. With the launch of Hearthstone, I think we know. Oh well.
- ploxiln 11y ago
  When the years add up like that, you have to wonder what they're thinking internally. So many years! You also hear this about state payroll systems being built by defense contractors, or the F35, etc. They're in a position where they have too much money to be forced to change, regardless of their incompetence. I know it happens, I know why, but it's still so amazing...
- thaumasiotes 11y ago
  > Version 3 was hugely delayed, hugely overbudget, and...well...utter, utter crap. The UI was worse, many features were lost, performance was bad, stability was terrible; there was literally no advantage over version 2. From the players' side, v3 was just much, much, much worse than v2. But I'm pretty sure WotC realized that. I've heard, though I can't personally attest, that the reason they stuck with v3 was that v2 ran on a single server, and they didn't know how to fix it.

ericdykstra 11y ago

Tangential, but this is such a great illustration of how Blizzard as a company has succeeded time and time again in taking nearly impenetrable games and genres and turning them into something that new players can enjoy, while still retaining enough depth to make the games interesting for advanced players. From MtG and its everchanging sets, significant expense, multiple formats and awful online experience/UI came Hearthstone. A card game that tens of millions have gotten into. It looks fantastic, takes no initial investment, and costs a fraction of what a MtGO deck costs to go from nothing to a top tier competitive deck. Other examples: - Roguelikes -> Diablo - RTS -> Warcraft & Starcraft - MMO -> World of Warcraft - DotA/2 -> Heroes of the Storm - Team Fortress/2 -> Overwatch (not yet released) It's an interesting case study on a company that's succeeded in taking genres usually reserved for a niche audience and bringing them to the masses. It's not a company without flaws and missteps, but it's an interesting lesson in bringing existing markets to a wider audience. I wonder if there's something more general that can be gleaned from their strategy to products outside of games.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
- Steko 11y ago
  Diablo 3 was mediocre because the entire genre has been trumped by MMOs. Diablo, x-craft, WoW and HS were all landmarks in their time and good examples of what grandparent is talking about. HotS was beaten to the punch by LOL and Overwatch who knows.
  - minimaxir 11y ago
    The real reason Diablo 3 was mediocre was because of the balancing around the Real Money Auction House and the perverse incentives that resulted. Since it was removed, and now that they've been adding good content for free, the game has improved significantly.
    - Steko 11y ago

stevecalifornia 11y ago

My friend and I spent about 5 years making an online collectible card game. We started around 2003, around the same time that MTG was reporting scaling issues. Their scale issues inspired me to architect a game server that was horizontally scalable-- theoretically infinitely. Our game, from the start, was built to: 1) playable from the web with no client (1mb flash, I suppose) 2) bi-directional socket based to avoid polling and be snappy 3) server is scalable horizontally 4) adding complex cards and rules will not require a client update and would be easy. We managed to complete all these goals and produce what I still consider to be our magnum opus of software development. The scaling worked by having socket servers provide the end-point to the client, and then behind the socket servers were chat services, game services, trading services, card building services and deck services. So, lets say we had 4 socket servers running: you and I might end up on different socket servers, but we could still play against each other because all the socket servers are doing is relaying your commands to a game server that is running our game. In order to scale, we just add more servers. (Also, if we get disconnected you can reconnect easily. Also, spectating is easy.) My friend came up with the idea of making the Flash front-end use generic commands. So instead of the server telling the front-end "Ship A attacks Ship B for 5 damage" it says "Draw a red arrow from Card #123 to Card #456 and display a red number 5". This allowed us to make cards that did all kinds of crazy things without having to do anything to the client. To implement a card that does damage to all of a player's ships you just have to update the server to send the command "Draw a red arrow from Card #123 to Card #456, Card #789, etc...". Finally, the core game engine on the server was an event loop. Thus, making new cards and rules was super easy because all you had to do in code was say "I want this new card to subscribe to the Player Draw Card event, and in that event code: "if drawer is this.owner, draw twice the amount as regular and then this.sendtograve." I was continually blown away by what crazy cards we could make up and how little code it took to implement. As we were creating this game our day jobs became more and more serious and when we finally had the final version complete we both agreed to burn the code and resources to DVD and put it on the shelve. The idea of starting a new journey in marketing and building a company was overwhelming. (Just three months ago I got it all running in the cloud with very little effort for nostalgias sake). I still think about pinging WOTC and asking if they'd like to see what we have and maybe make use of it. I knew WOTC had an online version of MOTG but I had NO idea it had so many rough patches or I would have been down in front of their office with a sign asking them to look at what we have. If anyone from WOTC or other would like to see or talk about the game, feel free to message me.

Hosohoso 11y ago

I still remember buying full boxes of cards starting with Antiquities and made a lot of money selling rares from Legends boxes later. What a time.

MrGando 11y ago

I've been playing MTGO since the end of v2. Someone should write a book about how badly managed this game is. The guy in charge of the thing "Worth" has o real technical background whatsoever, and you can see how that affects the vision and goals of the product. It's a disgrace. And should be a software case study. PS: been playing MtG since 1995

Everlag 11y ago
It doesn't help that transitioning to digital is hilariously difficult. Even with a properly managed team, moving 20+ years of edge cases and odd interactions for a turing complete game is going to be difficult. The fact that they need to come up with a usable ui on top of that only adds to the suffering. Its not unsurprising that what they currently have can only be considered working in the most generous and utilitarian sense. Don't mistake me for covering for Worth: a top quality group led by management who knew what they were doing would be much farther in both correctness and UX.
- MrGando 11y ago
  Totally agree with you, this is not an easy task at all, totally the opposite. And that's why I state that Worth is completely underprepared to tackle such a challenge. And still, it would make a great case of analysis... I see it as one of the biggest -and saddest- failures in Digital Gaming (if not the greatest), of the last 20 years.
- Lazare 11y ago
  What's interesting, I think, is that MTGOs failures have been basically 100% on the other side. They've been plagued by a nightmare lack of stability and scalability, to the point where they've had to shut the game down, roll back the database to restore corruption, aggressively limit logins, and for long stretches of time simply not hold the events which are the main attraction (and money maker) for the game. On the other hand, the actual cards just work. The hard part for them, it seems, is "operating a game that more than a few hundred people want to play", not the rules engine.
- bsder 11y ago

Lazare 11y ago

For another take on MTGO, see: http://thedailywtf.com/articles/Do-You-Believe-In-Magic-Online http://thedailywtf.com/articles/Do-You-Believe-In-Magic-Onli...

Yhippa 11y ago

Very good recollection of the history of this game. I've been playing since 2002. I really wanted to keep up with this game but WotC just made it difficult to with each successive release of the game which tended to be worse than the previous one. I have no idea what is going on over there. People had to have been throwing money hand over fist to allow them to fail so badly and keep going. It frustrates me to no end that we don't have anything playable on the web or all over mobile. DotP and Duels Origins don't count. I feel that this type of thing should have been figured out. I also wonder what internal conversations were going on about the Hearthstone ascendant. I keep hearing that they're not trying to do the same thing and that they're not truly competitors but I see a whole generation of kids and adults that have moved on to that. I like the deep play of MtG but Hearthstone just feels holistically better.

ubernostrum 11y ago
I have no idea what is going on over there. People had to have been throwing money hand over fist to allow them to fail so badly and keep going. Reports have indicated that Magic Online is around 17% of Magic's revenue ($43 million out of $250 million).

praptak 11y ago

I've had a glance at MtG and my first thought was that this thing must be a nightmare to code with all the cards that change rules of the game. Anybody care to comment whether that's the case and how well did they cope with the complexity?

nkassis 11y ago
That part of the game (game rule logic) usually works (with some bugs) but the UI suffers from extremely poor UX and is unresponsive. This is endemic throughout the game including area where game rules aren`t being evaluated. Add on poor server stability that causes players who paid to participate in events to get kicked out and loose due to the issues and the experience is horrible. It`s a credit to the quality of the card game that such a crappy experience is even played at all.

cornhomb 11y ago

http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/03/11/392381112/episode-609-the-curse-of-the-black-lotus http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/03/11/392381112/episo...