Good thinking Zim. You have once again shown us the way. It is probably a narrow track we tread, this path of criticique and praise. Because while we are hopeful for the best, past years of bitter experience lead our thoughts down a negative lane, perhaps even against our will at times.

That is how I feel about v4 in general. I feel that it could be the next best thing since MTG became an online thing. On the other hand the sneak peak revealed some very nasty and perhaps detrimental features if left unchanged.

I too, am glad for the chance to publically talk about the things I see here. There is much to be glad of but much to be concerned about too. There were some very nicely put pieces of advice and observation in these forums, even where I totally disagreed, I had to acknowledge the effort, wisdom and spirit with which they were written.

And I will repeat what I have said elsewhere: Speak up, be polite but clear about your opinions, articulate and let WOTC know what you think about this. Because going forward we will never have a better opportunity. Most importantly get into the nitty gritty. Be specific. Saying stuff like "As for v4, I think it's bad." while evocative isn't very helpful towards making it less so.

Specifically features I want:
- the trading and collection gui to be separate from the deck editing at least optionally.
- .txt and .csv saving and loading.
- list views in both editor and collection guis.
- binder views in the collection gui instead of the editor gui that is there now. (The collection box is essentially the same thing as the v3 deck editor if you take out all the pulldowns, filters and checkboxes and remove the list view. This just doesn't work for me.)
- keep the new added binder functionality. Such a cool concept.
- keep the new Autosave feature but allow people to save to their machines.
- get rid of the attack bar or make it a stable feature of the game screen.
- make better use of the space in the game screens.
- allow for multiple tabs and lists for buddies.
- add a buddies notes feature.
- make chat more irc-like and flexible to player whim and less about designer aesthetics.
- classifieds should be full page. On the classifieds page, we should be able to uprate/downrate sellers/buyers so that our favorites always show at the top and our pariahs either get hidden or show at the very bottom of the list.
- classifieds should not jump (as they do in v3.) They should be fully sortable by the player.
- speaking of sorting all fields where a player could sort should have the full boolean capacities common to most search engines.
- add back the / commands to chat.
- add in some match making software so that a person can sign up to be a mentor and actually have opportunities to help new players adjust to the online experience. The planeswalker set/mentor format is a great first step but without match making I have found helping out new players to be very tedious to the point where my efforts have basically been with those who make their way into the just for fun room and run across me randomly playing standard. (Or those who manage to make their voices heard in chat asking newcomer questions. The ORCs do a pretty fantastic job of answering questions but occasionally they seem unable to tune into what the new player is actually asking. (In some situations that's because the correct answer can't be an official answer.) Having an active teaching program available to sign up for might actually positively impact the game.
- have an optional and pre set publically available api for those who wish to create trading bots for use with MTGO. There should be no security issues with this. It should be something safe from injection, hacking, scamming and phishing.
- ideally there should be an official bot script written specifically for MTGO. Players might have to pay for this but it should not be exhorbitant. Hosting, stocking, pricing and staffing and that sort of thing would still be up to the player to provide.
- add in the ability for players to create novelty formats on the fly for playing in the client without having to use a big catch all (such as Freeform.)

In a more general comment Id like to see the v4 client be a redesign with the following foremost in mind: Do NO harm. Adding new features is awesome. But if that means doing away with a useful feature we enjoy, and love then don't. Make it optional instead. I know option bloat is a problem (nightmare?) for programmers and designers but better that than too few options in a sea of alien changes.

Thanks for listening to us and thanks for involving us.

I was disappointed in the current state of the new client but am optimistic about the end result.

What nushae said...I was amazed that after all this time that's what they came up with, but it seems like it has the potential to be fine. Specifically I like that games and chat are in seperate windows, but I don't like that they take up all the space of your task bar. Collection was terrible, hoping they fix that, and I don't know if it was a setting I missed but all the cards looked out of proportion...like words and symbols and stuff were all too big or too small.

TBH I kind of feel the same way as I did when v3 came out....there were a few cool new features but overall the interface seems worse and less intuitive, but of course this one isn't out yet, so I'll hold off on judgement.