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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 r

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.

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.