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I have not played on this beta. Therefore I do not know whether there are problems that make it worse than v3 that I don't know about.

But looking at these screenshots, I have to say I feel very encouraged and excited.

It seems they have taken seriously several deep complaints about v3. This looks a lot more intuitive... and a lot prettier, too. No, it doesn't look like the most amazing design I've ever seen for a game, but it's not dark (which was eyestrain-inducing for a lot of people) and the textures appear to finally be rid of that horrendous stretching and resizing problem that made everything look horrid all the time.

My hope is that some of the bugs (the same thing that happens to caladan happens to me, and also my deck list will start overlapping itself and making a mass of unreadable text) are gone as well, though I am certain since this is in beta that new ones will likely replace them. :-)

And now I want to see how foils look. I loved how they looked in v3 at first but now I feel the colorshifting is overdone much of the time (and turning the colorshifting off doesn't look good either.)

I must also admit however that I might be more optimistic than some people in general. I actually liked v3 and although I think it had problems, I was much less bothered by them than most.

One thing I don't see mentioned here though is any mention of a possible return of the avatars sitting at tables. I loved that about the previous version and was really hoping that it would eventually come back in v3. (Anyone remember those initial screenshots of v3 when it was in development that showed this? It looked so awesome. Sigh.)

ETA: One question I do have though is whether the "piles" happen automatically. It seems to me they should for land, and I'd be thrilled to see an opponent's Empty the Warrens tokens in a neat little pile instead of making everything smaller and smaller.

But if I've played two Chittering Rats , I might not necessarily want them on top of one another. How many of a certain permanent do you have before they start to "stack" and is there an option to "de-stack" them?

Again, if there are, say, more than four in play I think making it automatic is fine. But if there are less, I wonder about it. So how's it implemented exactly? If they are creatures, do they de-stack when they attack? Obviously they would if, say, one token attacks and the others stay back. But what if five of the same token attack? Are they still in a pile?

That sounds really awesome.  Even better, if

We have many improvements to the Magic Online experience lined up, many of which players have wanted for a long time.

means leagues, I'll actually start playing MTGO again.

This version isn't Mac compatible? Seriously? After all this time and all the feedback you've gotten, you chose to ignore one of the biggest complaints about the current client? This isn't the late 90s. Lots of people use Macs now and you're alienating a large audience by making the client Windows only. It's just so frustrating that after all this time you're still ignoring Mac users. Wake up and smell the coffee.

And for the record, I am not a Mac user but I totally agree. It's inexcusable that the client is only available for one platform. Given how much time there's been since each redesign, I deeply hope that there is some immensely good reason why you are locked into this.