Community

I remember hearing this update would fix the classified system that has been a major complaint many have had for a long time, myself included. Any word on this? Or did I just get incorrect information that got my hopes up. Just changing it to a broker system would be abosolutely amazing.

Forcing people to use the new client is going to cause a backlash. The new client is worse when it comes to playing an actual game. If I am forced to use an inferior client, I will simply quit and I'd imagine that a lot of people feel the same way. If the new client is superior, then people will naturally transition over. No one likes change forced upon them.

No acces to beta server. Can't this be fixed? Or at least some sort of feedback.

"Beta is running right now (I'm logged in as I write this). Maybe you were trying to access the beta server instead of the live one? 

During the sneak peek, we had to uninstall the beta client that accessed the beta server in order to install the beta client for the live server. How about this time?"

That must be it, someone forgot to set this up on the update. We need some clarification from Wizards.

We took two steps to address this concern. First, the red zone does not open until the Declare Attackers step, and if there are no legal attackers, Magic Online skips over this step. That means the red zone won't open unless combat is actually possible.

Slightly less annoying, but meh.

For those who want to take it one step further, we also added an option to keep the red zone always open. You can find this setting in the "Options" menu in the game window, and in the "In-Duel Settings" on the Accounts tab.

That seems about the best you can do if you really want it there, though. Thanks.

(Perhaps an option to turn it off entirely, also?)

In the long term, we will broaden the "sticky settings" list to include how you have your game chat docked.

Huzzah! Thank you.

The "Card View" feature in the current Magic Online client is the window that shows whatever card you are mousing over, at whatever size you have made the window. Many Magic Online players let us know that this was an important feature to them. We've added it in this Wide Beta release by making it a free-floating window we are calling the Preview Pane. It can be toggled in the "View" or "Options" menu of any area in the beta client that displays cards, as well as in the Account tab.

I didn't use it often, but I missed not having it when I wanted it. Thanks.

Many Magic games end with an "alpha strike" in which one player sends all creatures that can legally attack into the red zone for (hopefully) lethal damage. Other times, an opposing player is tapped out without any creatures, and it's a no-brainer to attack with everything available. To make these attacks more streamlined, we have added "attack with all" functionality to the new client.

That's handy. And it'll make waiting for people playing Storm to declare their attack much less painfully annoying. And I also like how you can use the feature and then pull creatures back, so that you can easily declare everyone as attacking but one guy you're holding back to block, etc.

I do wonder, however, if the right-clicking to get to it is the easiest/most intuitive way to use this option.

We also decided that as long as we were applying this functionality to creatures, we should apply the same tech to tapping a pile of identical lands for mana. Now, if you want to tap all the lands in a pile for the same colored mana, you can do it with a single right click instead of tapping each one individually. Further, if you want to cast, say, a Canyon Minotaur and you have twelve Mountains in a pile, you can click on the Minotaur, then right-click on your Mountainpile and use the "All of these cards: add " function, and it will tap exactly four of them and cast the spell. You can use this for X spells like Fireball to add an entire pile's worth of mana to the X as well.

Sounds good, but I want to see how it works in practice. I can't tell whether that sounds intuitive or not. ("All of these cards" sounds like "tap all of them" to me, not "tap just enough to cast this guy.")

we are working on some other visual and audio communications about changes in the game state.

I hope this means you're working on a better set of sounds. The one thing I was deeply disappointed with in the sneak peek was the sound effects.

While I do think the beta had problems when I used it in the sneak peek, I generally liked it and have missed not being able to use it. I'll be glad to use it again. (Though I tend to be the sort of person who gets used to new versions of things quickly, so I may be more optimistic than many. I didn't hate V3, if that gives some idea.)