William Spaniel
2/6/2007

this article! - or -

The video is below. If you want to skip straight down to it, go ahead. Otherwise, bear with me for a moment…

A Brief History of Magic Online III

Well, actually, before we even get there, we need to go over that headline with a fine tooth comb. I said “Magic Online III.” Not “MTGO III,” not “MTGO 3.0,” not “MODO #3,” and not “Magic Online 3.0.” The official name, so I have been informed, is Magic Online III. While I have no doubt that no one is going to go by that, instead opting for “that third version of MODO or whatever,” I am going to try to stick as close to that original name as possible.

So what about Magic Online III?

That's a long story. I first became aware of Magic Online III when one of Wizards' old PR representatives sent along some new photos of the client. Take a look at a few of them. They look very pretty:



This is an old one of the integrated login page. With the current version of Magic Online, once you are logged in, you are basically stuck on MTGO—all you can do is go to the tournament, duel, trade, etc. rooms. If you have any desire to go…oh, I don't know…buy cards, you have to get out the regular internet browser. Same goes for news items and the MTG.com homepage. Magic Online III solves that problem by simply lumping everything together, meaning you no longer have to ALT+TAB your way out of the program to get to other Magic related materials.



This one is of the dueling screen from back then, though I'm sure that it has changed greatly in the past eleven months. Again, it looks pretty. Also of note is the tab on the right. A major flaw with MTGO 2.0 is how often the dueling interfaces get clogged up with chat boxes, trade screens, and clan homes to see the game itself. Magic Online III fixes that by allowing you to anchor said boxes to the screen much as AOL Instant Messenger does with its buddy list, thereby giving you full access to the match at hand while still keeping the chat visible.

Then came the next batch of screenshots. These focused on the newly enhanced, “3D” avatars. For example:







For the third time, these images look pretty. However, no one really knew what exactly was meant by “3D avatars” other than well-rendered graphics. Would they look as cool once they were sent in motion? Do they actually move around well? Will that black screen of death in the background ever be replaced with something of substance?

I think this new, exclusive video will shed some light on this:



Certainly this doesn't answer all of the questions that we have about Magic Online III. There are still the matters of how well the new dueling interface work, if the program won't be buggy, and how many new tournament formats the program will be able to support. But, from a graphics standpoint…

WOW.

Meantime, Wizards is getting closer to pinning down a release date for Magic Online III. What once was slated for late Q3-early Q4 2006 when I spoke to the Magic Online developers at last year's E3 and was later moved back to Q1-Q2 of this year as reported by Frank Karsten is now scheduled for just the second quarter of 2007. We'll keep you up-to-date as the information gets passed along to us.

Until then, feel free to salivate over the video one more time.

-William Spaniel