Hey Magic Online players,
Today marks the release of the code for Dominaria on Magic Online, and while it mostly went well, we certainly didn’t do well communicating all the changes that were coming, especially since our build notes didn’t make it into this week’s announcements (a problem we will fix, but for now the full notes can be found below). In addition, we shipped a couple issues that we’ll look at fixing in the upcoming days and weeks.
First, Dominaria cards were added to all formats, which means that reprints of Dominaria cards became legal after downtime, and additional Dominaria cards will show up as they are opened in events and products. While the most engaged players know this is how it works, we need to be better at making sure everyone knows, so we’ll work on that. After downtime, however, we also discovered, Gaea’s Blessing and Nature’s Spiral reprint versions are not registering as legal. This will be fixed in the next week or so.
Second, along with all the cards, we shipped support for all the rule changes that accompany Dominaria, including things like the update to the Planeswalker redirection rule, which is a major change that should have been clearer before today’s downtime. Now, when dealing damage, Planeswalkers need to be targeted directly, so make sure you target appropriately. This also means that any opponent effects cannot be redirected to Planeswalkers. In addition, we also made some text updates that shouldn’t directly affect game play, such as the pronoun change.
Third, as part of adding Dominaria, we added the new legendary permanent frame to all legendary cards that use the most recent frame released with the Magic 2015 core set (assuming they didn’t use another special frame, such as Planeswalkers or double-faced cards). This was intentional choice. While MTGO tries to maintain a very close relationship with table top Magic, we also try to leverage our digital platform when it makes sense. This was one of those times. When looking at the future of card frames for Magic Online, we’d like to further consolidate the number of frames we use down to a classic inspired frame and a modern frame, with the corresponding variants as needed for Planeswalkers, special cards, and promo cards.
Fourth, we launched an exciting new format in Brawl, but in the process somehow broke the starting life totals for both Commander and 1v1 Commander. We will be fixing this tomorrow morning. In the interim, the 1v1 Commander league has been removed and will be replaced after the fix has been deployed. In addition, the storm counter appears to be broken, which we will be looking to fix in the next week or two. On the positive side, we’ve added the ability for players to yield until to a specific stop with via right clicking on the stop you want to yield to.
Fifth, we updated the MTGO logo and desktop icon to be more modern and fit in with some of our other efforts, digital and otherwise.
Finally, we know that we missed the mark in a couple places with this release. Luckily, we’ve just finished updating our internal processes to ship fixes more frequently without downtimes, so you’ll see a fix go out tomorrow, several more next week, and even more the week after, all without taking the system down. While it isn’t ideal to ship with issues, we hope an increased rate of fixes will help mitigate any disruption to the awesomeness that is Dominaria.
As always, if you want to drop us a line, email us at [email protected] or on Twitter @MagicOnline.
Chris Kiritz
Senior Product Manager – Magic Online
Card Set | Added support for Dominaria card set the Dominaria rules changes:
The planeswalker redirect rule has been removed and planeswalkers now need to be directly targeted for damage to take effect
Updated gender pronouns to use the singular "they"
Removed the "to your mana pool" from mana sources
Added the "this spell reference"
Duel Scene | Added the ability to yield until a specific phase.
Formats | Updated MTGO 1v1 Commander banned and restricted list and changed league to a Friendly League
General | Updated Magic Online logo and desktop icon
General | Fixed a rare crash on log in
Draft Scene | Fixed an issue where cards could be visually duplicated while drafting
Collection | Updated the results pane “Cards” to say “Items” to account for the different products shown in the collection tab
Collection | Fixed an issue where “Add more to open binder” option wasn’t available for Event Tickets
Collection | Fixed an issue where some promo cards were using the wrong frame. The list of affected cards can be found below:
