Just download the program and look for yourself. You don't even need to create an account or logon or anything. Just go to the collection tab and set # owned = 0. you might want to turn the foil animations off in the settings first if you don't have a fast computer.
I agree the program is subpar. I don't play very many paid events so I haven't had any problems with that yet, but I have had my share of crashes and dropouts. It seems to be very sensitive to small network interrupts, so If you're on a wireless connection or you have a high ping you might have more issues. The worst part about it is that you don't know you're disconnected until it's too late. I tend to keep a chat room open so I can check to see that I'm still receiving new messages (and therefore am still online), trade and support are both good options.
So while I think that the program needs to be fixed, if you're going to spend money on it while it's still in this condition I would keep an eye on the "mtgo v3 bugs and technical issues" forum over on wizards boards. cya
Is there a reason you want to play classic? I don't know a whole lot about pauper, but I do know that older cards tend to be harder to find and can be more expensive. You might want to start out with standard since the cardpool will become much smaller very soon and standard commons tend to be very cheap (often less than a penny)
Actually, although you do have to pay the $10 for the account, you get $10 worth of store credit which you can sell (or turn into tix/boosters which you can then sell) to get most of your money back. Also, there are free play (as in you don't need the cards) options, but they are limited to certain premade decks. I think there was free drafting during the last release, but I'm not 100% sure.
I won't complain about getting more snow-covered lands as an added bonus to a set with necropotence and the dual lands. I never tried to build a snow based deck because I couldn't justify the cost of the basic lands for just one or two decks.
The feature is still there, although you have to have an account since there's no free trial server running atm. Also, they accidentally disabled it an update or two ago and I don't know if they've gotten around to switching it back on.
Well, among other things, vanguard PEs are standard only. Once you move into the extended cardpool there are quite a few vanguard avatars that enable turn 1-2 wins.
It's not you, it's them. MTGO is currently DOWN because it is having some issues at the moment and nobody seems to know how to fix it. I suggest you wait a week (or a month, maybe two) and then try again. Hopefully things will be better.
I get the impression that wotc is waiting until they have mtgo v3 improved enough to have a free trial help them get customers and not chase them away. Considering they could barely spare the manpower to run the shm beta server (many testers didn't even all have full sets to find bugs with) it's really not surprising that the free trial is not up yet. Too bad nobody's clever enough to make the references to it disappear.
If you do get an account I remember reading that you can play the mono color 10th edition precon decks even if you don't have the cards. Which is all the free trial ever was anyhow. I haven't checked it personally, but maybe someone else knows more about it. You can also probably get most of the $10 back you use it to buy boosters and trade/sell them for tix which you can then sell on ebay or whatever.
You can also upload a .dek file from mtgoV3 and then buy that.
So while I think that the program needs to be fixed, if you're going to spend money on it while it's still in this condition I would keep an eye on the "mtgo v3 bugs and technical issues" forum over on wizards boards. cya
If you do get an account I remember reading that you can play the mono color 10th edition precon decks even if you don't have the cards. Which is all the free trial ever was anyhow. I haven't checked it personally, but maybe someone else knows more about it. You can also probably get most of the $10 back you use it to buy boosters and trade/sell them for tix which you can then sell on ebay or whatever.