Well, MTGO v3 sucks.

I'm pretty much out of the world of Magic: the Gathering... something I wish I could've said about $1,500 ago (if not more). The majority of that money was spent on Magic Online, the direct digital translation of the cardboard game. For those who are unaware of what a ridiculous money-making scheme this is, Magic Online (MTGO for short) charges you full retail price for a digital version of the same booster packs you'd buy in stores. You don't get actual, physical cards, but instead you "own" digital representations of the cards. It sounds ridiculous at first glance (but not so ridiculous when you consider how much a piece of cardboard is worth anyway) but it's been massively successful because it allows Magic players to find a game whenever they want. The game also rewards prizes (more digital cards, of course) for winning tournaments, adding a small but hard to resist element of gambling to the whole package.

Despite being riddled with bugs, general shoddy performance, and occasional server instability, Magic Online remains massively popular. A few months ago, they "upgraded" from MTGO v2 to v3 - a more or less complete overhaul of the interface (the gameplay, predictably, remains the same, based exactly on its cardboard sibling).

Right about the time v2 went down for the transition, I decided to sell all my cards. Now that v3 finally launched, I've just set about doing that in the past couple of weeks. At first glance, v3 was looking pretty snazzy. The new splash screens were pretty, and the game's initial loading screen was reminiscent of a proper video game... but it was pretty much downhill from there.

The v2 interface was no jewel, but v3 is just a mess. It's just plain ass-ugly, it responds painfully slowly to your clicks, and the navigation is not nearly as intuitive as it should be. The marketplace used to buy, sell and trade cards was once just simple but functional, but v3 has made it both uglier and harder to use. Listing are no longer sorted by buying and selling, so if you want to search for a specific card, you'll have to scour through players both selling and buying the card. Trading cards still works largely the same, but I was extremely disappointed to discover that the limit of 32 cards at a time in v2 has not been changed in v3. There are bots offering to buy your commons 200+ for a ticket (roughly $1 in actual currency), but between having to open 8 different trades and wait through all the interface lag to actually get your measly $1, it's scarcely worth it. I have over 10,000 commons to sell but it just seems like a waste of time!

Now, I haven't actually played a game in v3... I'm hoping I can resist the urge to do so altogether. One might hope that WotC put all their work into that aspect of the program, but I sincerely doubt that it functions any better than v2 did. Shoddy work, WotC - and kind of ridiculous considering the minimal overhead that MTGO must take to run. Let's hope D&D Insider turns out better.

-- Schmitty

All Things Awesome Episode #3

Episode 3 is up!

Download it here: All Things Awesome Episode #3 (right click and save as)
(recorded: Saturday 3/8, hosts: Schmitty, Foz, Tim, Shawn) duration: 1 hour 38 minutes, 45.0mb)

We had some more technical issues on this one. The quality came through better, but whenever Shawn talks, you can hear some crackling static. It's mostly just a minor nuisance in the first hour, but then gets horrendously bad. Unfortunately it was unfixable, so for some this will only be an hour show. Eventually we'll get all this crap worked out.

0:00 - 11:15: Intro, Mike and Judge are dead, more importantly, Gary Gygax is dead, our role-playing beginnings and influences: Schmitty's Raistlin, Tim's middle-school D&D, Shawn's boxes (gotta catch 'em all), the legacy of Fosberry torment, "Juvenile" vs. "Mature" D&D

11:15 - 22:00: Nerd Heroes: Jeff Hannes of Inquest, FRP vs. LARP, Joss Whedon, Monte Cook stories - he has real magic power

22:00 - 31:40: Gamer rituals, Tim's annual/semi-annual Evathon (Neon Genesis Evangelion marathon), camping out, geek hierarchy, dark side gamers, why do we hate things that people like?

31:40 - 40:00: Flavor vs. Mechanics vs. Style in games, Tim remembers to talk into his mic, Deadlands, Doomtown and HKAT, flavor in 4th Edition

40:00 - 54:45: Flavor vs. Mechanics continued: Magic vs. Legend of the Five Rings TCGs, Tim grows as a person, lack of flavor and frustrating mechanics and WoW?

54:45 - 1:00:00: Researching flavor outside of games, L5R's metaplot, Tim dishonors his family, AEG gets a thumbs up

1:00:00 - 1:05:50: Flavor vs. Mechanics: Video game and movie edition: Silent Hill, Crackdown, From Hell, The Matrix, Sin City

After our second break, Shawn's mic issues intensify significantly and he sounds like a staticy robot. You can still understand him for the most part, and everyone else comes through clearly, but it may be unlistenable in parts, as Shawn does have a lot to say about 4e. Nothing we can really do for it at this point though. We'll make sure it doesn't happen again.

1:05:50 - 1:21:00: More D&D 4th Edition talk from the D&D Experience, roll vs. role playing, Robo-Shawn attacks!, striking the balance between simple and interesting, Tim's guns, the CCG-ificiation and MMO-ification of D&D, Vancian spellcasting

1:21:00 - 1:38:30: The problems of high-level D&D, "quest rewards" and magic items in 4th, the chicken-standard economy, more complexity concerns, 4th Edition and OGL