f13.net

v3 delayed again.

Announcement on new date is due next week. But the current date (end of Q2) is now impossible, as wotc have said they will give at least 28 days notice to allow leagues to shut down in an orderly fashion.


Also, on multiplayer play in v3...

Wait, isn't the point of MtO to play against other people? Or is this some sort of weird mode where you play more than 1 v 1?

Someone needs to KILLLLLLLLLL the programmers on this project. Who hired someones daughter as lead and has an ape as QA. Rather, THE QA member. Man, fuck WoTC. I should pull an Eve and give all my rares to the first noob I see in the training room.

I assume they mean team play - 2v2, free for all, etc. - for multiplayer...  right?  Right?

This is the smart move for Wizards.  The current client works fairly well - better to keep this one and actually make the new version playable.  Who knows how many players they lost for good with the 2.0 clusterfuck; they can't afford to do that again if they really want to 'grow' the brand online.

Mulitplayer in magic means anything with more than 2 players, so there are various team formats, or 6 player free for all, or whatever.

Here's the problem.

V3 sucks.

It's crap. I'm sure the UI can be redesigned and optimized for minimal funds.

Yes, it is truly awful.

Pretty obvious it was going to be delayed again, progress has been minimal and TSP cards still don't work.

I can't even bother to fire it up any more. The kicker sucks and every time there is an update I have to manually delete files to get it to work.

Launch date now set to "By the end of 2007".

Beta to go down for a few weeks as of today - presumably to comence some rework without having to support beta at the same time.

Given the current rate of progress, by end of 2007 it should be at least 10% better than it is now.

This has got to be easily the worst development process I've ever witnessed, even worse than the MOO3 trainwreck. Wizards simply has no clue whatsoever. None.

I haven't played MTGO (other than freebie decks in the casual room) in a couple of years… …I have an account with purchased cards for league play, but cannot remember my password… …and Wizard's online account web panels are useless, referring me to call CS but problem is, their hours of service is the same time I am at work… …perhaps it's better that way, keep me from spending money in such a fruitless fashion……

Wizards has been really pushing the alternative multiplayer formats lately in cardboard,  so I'd be greatly suprised if this went live before they were in.

For my part,  I would kill someone (obviously at this point in the dev cycle they need to resort to human sacrifice) if they managed to get a workable version of DC10 or Mental Magic in the Online game.

The formats they've been pushing through cardboard are the new rules team and 2HG formats. Both of which have already been cut from v3.

The multiplayer stuff they are talking about here is old rules multiplayer as it is in v2.

Given all the recent headlines on F13, I think we all know how hard it is get an accurate picture of what is going on internally in a game development company, without being inside. I do think that people have a lot of legitimate concerns and especially with us taking down the beta for a few weeks to do some internal work, I understand the fear people will have that we're not making the progress they'd like to see.

What I've started is a monthly milestone blog to help people get some insight on where some of the larger deliverables stand on the project. This will help customers see the progress (or lack thereof) on some of the systems that may not be easily seen by the end user. This way, we're not just saying to people "trust us", we're telling them to check back next month and make their own determination if the progress we're making meets their expectations.

 

Explain to me how in version 2, you allowed newbies to enter into two seperate draft games and allow their tickets and packs to be used, knowing full well a newbie couldn't handle that fast an action?